Fire and Ice

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Four days. They have four plus days to get ready for us. We have four plus days to get ready for them. And the thing that strikes me, Scott, and I think this is exciting, it's an exciting time of year if your team makes it in. And the Nebraska women's basketball team got in as a first four. They're going to play a play-in game on Wednesday against Richmond. But the inert pressure that exists in this program right now to win this game is more than I have ever seen. There is just this ungodly amount of pressure. to end this dreadful streak of not winning any NCAA tournament games. And there's evidence that suggests that the players feel this by how we've come down the stretch here of these last several games. I'm a little worried. It takes me back to 1991, and a lot of fans will remember that really good team. Really good. I personally thought that was a Final Four level team, and there are other observers of college basketball agree with me. But after that season, because Nebraska basketball had been so bad for so long, and they finally got to the summit in Danny's fourth year, the idea was, okay, this is the culmination of our program. Look at all of these seniors, the Bow Reeds, the Clifford Scales, the Rich Kings, these guys. We have every reason to believe that everything is in place for us. Got screwed by the officials in the Big A championship game in Kansas City against Missouri. At least we're still hanging on to that one. Yeah, I never let that go. But I can tell you that I sensed leading up to that game against Xavier in the first round of the tournament that year up in Minneapolis. This team was really tight, really jittery. Now, they also had to wait so long to play because the game right before them went into double overtime. So I know that the kids feel this. There is pressure. So it's really going to be incumbent on Fred and the staff to try and focus these guys on everything but that. As they foresee, this is a good place for this team to be, considering what the expectations were at the start of the season. We got more coming up in sports brief in just a moment. Regarding the Nebraska wildfires, we had crews from Omaha. And I believe this is the first time. in a long time maybe ever that Omaha firefighters left this area to go to fight wildfires elsewhere in the, whether it's the region or the state. This just doesn't happen very often, but we had several Omaha fire officials. They sent a crew out to that northwest central panhandle area of Nebraska that's had the wildfires. Lincoln sent some crews out there as well. As Craig Evans just told you, more than 700,000 acres burned more than 500,000 acres in the moral Nebraska County wildfire.

That's an area just north of I-80. As you go past Ogallala and stay on I-80, it's just straight north of the interstate, not very, very far, kind of between I-80 and Alliance. And you're thinking, well, we got all that snow yesterday. That probably had to help if not stop it, right? Yeah, but the snow missed that part of Nebraska. They got all the wind. They have all the dry. They missed all the precipitation. Some of the fires north of there would have been stopped by some snowfall in that area. But just, I mean, it's almost like it was on purpose. That snow just went over the northern edge of where these wildfires are and then came through and blanketed most of central and into eastern Nebraska. And Jim Flowers was on here with this Friday. He said three to six inches, potentially with the storm. Omaha, I'm not sure what the official totals are. I'm looking at some snow cover maps that said we got about two. Now, some of that is wind whipped into some drifts. It's certainly not blanket two inches everywhere you are. But you go just east of here, three to six inches of snow across Iowa. More like three inches in central Iowa, six inches into eastern Iowa. And none of it hit these wildfires. The websites I'm looking at here taking a look at these wildfires are talking about 0% containment. with these Nebraska wildfires. This is a lot of ranch areas between that and now they've got 3,800 workers at one of America's largest meat packing plants, this in Colorado, who are about to go on strike. This is not going to do anything good for the price of beef. None of it. But certainly, first concern is making sure that other people in this area of Nebraska are able to get out safely, like the sheriff in Garden County, Nebraska, who was able to escape his house with his family as flames were encompassing the home. It's very scary. It's a lot of areas covered by wildfires, and the winds today are certainly not going to help. Thinking about those firefighters and those crews out there trying to get that under some level of containment. Now, the 1110 KFAB certified transmission sports brief, here's Jim Rose. Very good, Scott. Good morning, everybody. Fred Hoyberg was not hired to win games during the regular season. He was hired to win games in the postseason. He's going to have a chance. We know there's a lot of work to do. A very important time of year. We've got to keep our walls up and really focused on the task at hand. He's ready to go as his Nebraska Cornhuskers are four seed in the West region. They're going to play in Oklahoma City on Thursday night against the Troy Trojans from the Sun Belt Conference. They won the regular season title down there with the 12 and 6 record and then went through the postseason tournament of Pensacola to win it.

They do present some issues that have affected Nebraska this year. It is a particularly physical team. They have a couple of strong rebounders, and then another kid named Singh, who has missed most of the last month. But he was one of their demons under the basket before he went out with an injury. But they have an all-conference player in Thomas Dowd at 15 points and 10 rebounds a game. And another kid, Victor Valdez, who his third team All-Sunbelt Conference also averages 15 points a game. But they were in the tournament last year. It's an experienced team that really pays off this time of year. You know, I thought we, our emotions got a little bit of the best of us. in that game the other day. We have to stay emotionally stable and, you know, we have to be on point with everything we're doing on every possession. So that's the preparation mantra for Nebraska this week as they head down to Oklahoma City. There will be a lot of Nebraska fans down there. It's old Big Eight country. So you'll see a lot of them trek across Kansas and go to this game, which just adds to the inert pressure that the Nebraska basketball team has this week. That long, long streak of being the only Power 5 conference team never. to have won an NCAA tournament game. It's not going to help when you essentially have a home game in Oklahoma City. Thursday at 1140. That's the best news. They're playing one of the early games in the NCAA tournament rather than have to sit around, wait, and watch all day. Iowa State Cyclones had a great season, and they were rewarded. They are a number two seed. They're playing in St. Louis in the first round on Friday at 150 against Tennessee State, and the Iowa Hawkeyes got in. Many had suspected that they would not, but they got in as a number nine seed. They're playing against Clemson. in Tampa, Florida at 5.50 on Friday afternoon as a number nine seed. What region is really stacked this year? The East Region. For some reason, the selection committee has something against teams like Kansas and Louisville and St. John's and Duke and Michigan State. They played every one, put every one of them, placed every one of them in the East Region this year. Women's basketball, Nebraska gets in in a first four game. The Huskers are in an 11 seed, but they're playing another 11 seed, Richmond, in Durham, North Carolina, on one. Wednesday, and the winner of that one moves on to play in the round of 64. There are 12 Big Ten Conference women's basketball teams in the NCAA tournament. There are nine.

And there are nine Big Ten Conference men's basketball teams playing in the NCAA tournament this year. It's officially here, released the 68 team bracket yesterday. Arizona is the number one seat in the west, Duke number one in the east, Michigan number one in the Midwest, and the Florida Gators are the number one seed in the South region. Baseball, Team USA advances to the World Baseball Classic title game, two to one, a victory over the Dominican Republic. Gunner Henderson, Roman Anthony, each hit a solo home. runs. The Americans got their only runs, so they take on the Dominicans for the World Baseball Classic Championship tonight. On the golf course, Cameron Young, birdies 17. Just putting the ball on the green at 17 at the tournament players club in Jacksonville, Florida is impressive. He birdied that hole. Meanwhile, Matt Fitzpatrick put it in the trees off the 18th tee, made bogey at 18, so Young captures the tournament players championship at the TPC course in Sawgrass. Sports is news on Nebraska's news weather and traffic station. Radio 1110 KFAB. President Trump said, if you guys depend on any oil going through this straight, then you guys need to help out. Who's he talking to? He's not talking to Lucy, but Lucy's ready to go if need be. Now, he's talking about the nations of the world, particularly NATO. countries says you guys face a very bad future if our partners here in America don't help us open this key oil route off of Iran fantastic idea by the way where should we have 20% of the world's oil tankers Find a way from where the oil is to where it needs to go. Well, I think here probably right through the middle of this powder keg would be the best thing. Fantastic idea. Did that guy get fired? The president reiterated yesterday that European countries and China. I'm sure China will come right along and help us. Hey, America, whatever you guys need. European countries in China, which rely heavily on that Gulf crude, should send minesweepers and special forces to help secure the waterway. The president said, it's only appropriate to people who are the beneficiaries of this strait will help make sure that nothing bad happens there. Nothing else bad happens there, I imagine. As far as the... United States helping out NATO countries, the president said, we've been very sweet. Despite, you know, we help out Ukraine, despite the fact that it's thousands of miles away from us. He says, I've said that we'll be there for them, but they won't be there for us. And I'm not sure that they're going to be there. But if Beijing or Europe or any of these NATO countries don't act,

then I don't he didn't say anything specifically about tariffs or whatever but he says look you guys you guys benefit from this and right now we're over there doing all the work and you're reaping all the benefits you're going to have to step up and help here meanwhile Iran had a pretty significant strike against the United States over the weekend, but it wasn't missiles or drones or mines along the street. It was a cyber attack. It ended up hitting a Michigan-based medical equipment giant that makes implants and surgical robots and surgical robots with implants. It's a group called Stryker. which told its 56,000 employees disconnect from networks immediately after their internal Microsoft systems were compromised, wiping data from Windows laptops and phones, knocking out ordering systems. It didn't impact directly this radio station, but we'll blame some of the problems you heard here on KFAB since Friday night on this cyber attack as well. It wasn't the reason, but we had some problems here on the radio station over the weekend, too. But it was a cyber group that has links to Iran called Handala that claimed responsibility for this cyber attack over the weekend. So they're fighting with everything they got. And the president's looking at the rest of the world's nations saying, hey, help. Give us a hand here. I saw the latest dispatch, and I have zero idea how I ever got on this mailing list. But I'm on the email list. Many of these come out in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic. I don't read it. But this one was in English and it comes from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is usually a lot of America needs to be in Israel. So I immediately thought, as I saw the headline, UN expert warns of deepening human rights crisis in Iran. It's like, oh, great. Now, the United Nations has come out here with a stance against America. But that's not what I read. It was one comment after another about what is happening in Iran by the vestiges of the Iranian regime against its own people. And it doesn't immediately come out and say it, but in suggesting about how Iran's security forces have been raiding hospitals, it hints around that maybe the attack on that school may have been... The courtesy of Iran itself. They're talking about the human rights issues that started in Iran with the protests there in late December, and the scores, the tens of thousands of people, protesters in Iran killed by the Iranian government, and how the last vestiges of the former Ayatollah's regime, which now, who knows who's in charge now, AI Ayatollah in Iran,

But they're talking about how protesters, including children, are being shot, beaten by security forces, held, denied legal representation. The United Nations says, we've been asking, let us come in there. Let's take a look at what happened to that school. Let us take a look at what's going on in hospitals and prisons in this area. Let us in so we can help you. Iran won't let anyone in. And the United Nations is saying this is Iran's fault. I'm telling you, I get emails three or four a week from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Never have I seen anything that wasn't in some way, shape, or form bad-mouthing America. and its allies. This was a pretty impressive email from the United Nations. I'm sure they won't let it happen again. Now everyone always complains about this when it goes the wrong way. Let's take an opportunity. Quit your muttering. Stop. Stop muttering right now. And they, hey, I don't know exactly what was the difference here. Perhaps it's because there's nothing left to be beaten and battered, but the power outages. In the OPPD area here in the wake of this storm over the last couple of days, two. There are two customers out, one south of Bellevue and one almost to Kansas. Two customers. With all the high winds, with the... Now, I know on... On Thursday evening, we had power outages across several areas of Midtown. But since then, they were able to get things reconnected and stay connected, and we didn't have any major power outages. And we don't now have power outages across this area. So. For those of you who always complain, or the power out again, nice job. I don't know what conditions are present that this didn't happen this time, but I would have expected with these kind of high winds and weather issues, we'd have these power outages. And Jim, we didn't. So quit complaining. Well, we also did not get 75 mile an hour winds. We got 40 mile an hour wins, which is enough, but we didn't get the 75 that was predicted sadly on this program on Friday. Well, that was Jim Flowers looked at some of the conditions and said, I see the possibility of three to six inches of snow and maybe 70 mile per hour category. You get preferred to hurricanes. Yeah, well, we got the three to six inches of snow as you got into Iowa. It blew right over the top of us. yesterday, but I don't know about those wins. But I'm not disappointed. I'm not disappointed we didn't get 70 mile per hour. Now, they might have gotten some upwards of 60 and some of these snow squalls in southeast Nebraska, northwest Missouri. They had some problems there yesterday afternoon.

I'm not disappointed we didn't see Category 1 Hurricane Force winds here in Omaha. Oh, we would have had power outages if we had, no doubt about it. I can tell you, it was a little hairy on Maple, on West Maple yesterday, when you get past 204th, because that's in a little bit of a swell, and there isn't anything to block the wind, and so you had white-out conditions for about a quarter of a mile. on West Maple, and that was a little scary. Why were you out driving around in that? Well, because I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to do my part to add to the commerce of the community. You know, we got a big problem with agriculture right now because half the state's burned up. Half the state's pasture land is burned up. So I'm trying to keep the economy afloat by helping out. You're going to help out Dingman's Collision Center if you drive around on those conditions. I was ready to probably help out Dingman's. I like those people that say, man, it's just, I'd like to. Go out and get some food, but the conditions are too tough for me to drive in. No one should be out there driving around in that stuff. So I'm just going to order Uber Eats. Yeah. You know, it's not a magic ferry that brings it to you. It is a driver in a car and a wheel of an automobile. I'm just going to get some of my groceries to go and have them deliver it right to my doorstep. Yeah, again, that's not a snap of the fingers. That's not a warlock who suddenly makes it appear. But I'm glad that we've had it was trouble. Lucy's been talking about cars slipping off the road here this morning. We'll get a full update here. She's working furiously in the traffic center and we'll give you that update next. I was messing with things over here and didn't exactly catch all the details of your latest traffic update. Do you have anything in the neighborhood of 115th in Dodge that looks like a major problem? Because here's a text message I received from my buddy Chuck. a few minutes ago. He said, hey, buddy. Good morning. Morning, buddy. Driving to work at 115th. And Dodge, there is a car on the overpass trying to get on to Dodge West. It's pointing the wrong way. It's going to be a big mess getting that car to move. There's still a person inside the car, but they're pointing the wrong way. Well, typically what, let me just give you a glimpse behind the curtain here. Typically what we get is we might get a report something along the lines of, in this instance, I did hear something, that on I 680 near Dodge, a possible crash, and you go to those cameras that you have available and there's nothing there. frequently we don't get a direction. But I don't have any reports of a vehicle doing that, and it doesn't look like, based on our speed maps, it doesn't look like it's affecting traffic any more so than usual. Right. Well, I'm thinking here, so it's trying to get on to Dodge Street West. So it's more in that old mill area of lower Dodge. So if it's from 114th, then wouldn't it be actually 120th? No. Because you don't have an on-ramp from 114th. Well, it's more like that. You'd have to go up to 120th. Unless you, well, let me go through all the configurations of my head. Yeah, that would be, that'd be the way I'd do it. But this will this. Well, that's the only way you can do it unless you got a flying vehicle. Well, he says he says the car is pointing the wrong way.

So it must think it's trying to get up onto Dodge, but it's going the wrong way. I'm taking a look. So it's going what would normally be the car is heading westbound and it's trying to come back against that flow of traffic. It's trying to swim upstream like a salmon. This car is trying to mate. And this is not the conditions for something like this. Calm down. St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow. People will be driving every which way on every street everywhere. But right now, you've got to stop that. Scott at kfab.com. And the Zonkers custom woods inbox, Donnie email says maybe you guys should have a discussion about how ridiculously bright snowplow lights are. I know they've got to be visible to everyone else, but it hinders your driving ability because you can't see anything. It seems to be more dangerous than the ice. That's from Donnie. Well, usually when the snow plows are out doing their snowplow thing, it's because the conditions are very bad at the time. This is a time when people generally shouldn't really be out driving. And every once in a while, a member of the unicameral drunkenly slides into one. So you've got to, it's only happened once, but it's every once in a while. So you've, yeah, if you're out there in very poor visibility, you've got to have the lights on. Now I've heard everything. The lights on the snowplows. The flashing lights there that are indicating, hey, there's a big snowplow here. They're too bright, Lucy. Well, I think we should go with some kind of a rule that other states have that the light colors have to be specific to each department. Like you cannot have blue lights on a snowplow because they also appear on police cars. So you can have an idea of what is ahead. You see red and blue flashing lights, you know, you're going to want to proceed with caution. That's generally, if you see any lights, you're flashing up ahead, this is a, hey, let's throttle her back here. Yeah, but it's easier. It would be easier to identify. Oh, that's a plow, so it's going to be moving slowly but moving, you know, that kind of thing. But they've got blue lights on there, so it's hard to see. You know, it's even worse is there are some of the plows out there, including, okay, I'm going to back that up. I don't know for sure if there's city plows, but they sure look like them. That when the blades are up, you can't see the headlights at all. The headlights. Hmm. I've actually called that in once. Yeah. Because I could not see the headlights at all on this vehicle. This has been a couple of years. Maybe they fixed that problem. Yeah, you can't put the headlights on the blade.

Of course not. So if the blades, that... You can't drive a vehicle that you have something on the front of it that blocks your headlights. And maybe they're able to see because of the big giant overhead lights, but... Well, I don't know. I guess I haven't noticed that. I haven't noticed it. No, that's a major concern there. But I probably shouldn't admit this. Because I'm trying to- You pay no attention to any of them. I'm trying to tie this all together and say things like, hey, this is our radio show. This is where we come together to laugh, cry, and get through the day. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I'm completely irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. The movie that I lasted about 10 minutes in. and turned it off because I was willing to deal with the first nine minutes or so of depravity, profanity, and absolute lunacy in this movie. But it was in about that, the last 30 seconds, I'm like, okay. It's like they produced a movie and said, let's see how long we can get Scott to watch this before he turns it off. And it was like they had a team of research scientist. He's still watching the movie. All right, have Sean Penn do this. What is it? I made it about 10 minutes into one battle after another, which last night was honored as the best picture of the past year. That was your Academy Award for Best Picture. If you ever want to know what's going on with the best picture, listen to the Bill Maher rant about it. I played on the air, but I imagine it contains. Oh, no, you know. You couldn't play it here. I don't mind a little profanity here and there, but my goodness. This was so bad. And I thought, this has got to be a great movie. It's Paul Thomas Anderson film. His stuff is usually a little quirky but good. Leonardo DiCaprio, I had not seen him do anything that I would consider to be a bad movie. Sean Penn's got a supporting role in here. He's interesting. He won a supporting actor last night, didn't even show up, which is pretty much Sean Penn. But yeah, I watched that movie for about 10 minutes and that said, I'm not going to waste the next two and a half hours of my life on this movie. Turned it off. Well, what was it essentially about? You know how you've got members of Antifa who are out there blowing stuff up and being domestic terrorists? It was kind of like, what if we have a movie that glorifies how great they are and also throw in some just really obnoxious sexual depravity? So it was just a propaganda piece? Oh my gosh. Okay. It was so bad. All right. So bad.

Certainly the best picture of the year. And why did I watch? Because I love Conan O'Brien, and I watched some of his early bits and skits, and I thought it was great. I thought Conan was great. Usually I watch the in-memorium segment every year, and it's just a lot of, oh, yeah, oh, my gosh, he died? Oh, that's right. She died? Wait a second. And I do that for about four minutes. Then I completely move on with my life and forget about most of it. I can't this morning watch the Billy Crystal Rob Reiner tribute. Billy Crystal is the, if I'm not mistaken, I think he's the one that went to the house and found him and his wife there. And Billy Crystal was the first one that came out last night. And I think Meg Ryan was part of it. And they had the kids from Stand By Me who were. now in their 50s, but it was... Well, he did a... You didn't see it. I didn't see it, and I will watch it later today, so how was it? He did a beautiful job in eulogizing Reiner, and, you know, sort of touched on each of the movies, and he had a wonderful phrase for each of the movies, and then they turned around, and the curtain came up, and here came cast members from each of the movies. including Meg Ryan from when Harry met Sally. And Demi Moore was there from a few good men. So that was wonderful. And then they went through the whole litany of Hollywood celebrities who passed away in the last year. But they had a special moment for Diane Keaton. and they did some of her things. And then came Redford. Yeah. And that was the big finish. And as you heard on the Rosie Did you Friday, Barbara Streisand made an appearance, and she eulogized Redford. It was not a long one. And then everybody was wondering, is she going to sing the song? And initially, the word is she's not going to do it. coming out of the Hollywood Press Corps on Friday, she can't get through the song because she and Redford were very, very close. So not just from the movies, but they stayed very, very close friends. So she did the eulogy. She's 83 now. They did the eulogy, and sure enough, she did the last line. The way we were. Yeah. Beautiful. The details here of the Garden County Sheriff. This is a guy named Randy Ross, Sheriff Randy Ross of Garden County, Nebraska. This is in the area where you've got the moral... wildfires. This is the Cottonwood Wildfires. There were about three different fires out there converging upon the ever-growing and still not contained moral wildfires. It's Moral M-O-R-R-I-L. This is an area north of I-80 between I-80 and Alliance as you go past Ogalala up into the panhandle of Nebraska, and it's one that has been burning now.

For several days, about 700,000 acres burned. And there in Garden County, the sheriff who was working with emergency crews evacuating residents Thursday night when suddenly the strong winds Thursday night shifted direction. And he starts kind of looking in the air going, oh, wait a second. If the fires are here and the wind's blowing this way, and I live there, he ran home and got his family out of the house. as flames were starting to surround their home. He says, we walk out the door. There's fire on the east side of us. The west side was already going around us. We hurry up and get going. They get in the car. And this is where, I don't know if you've ever given this any thought, where you're looking at all the things in your house, your house is on fire, or the fire in this case is bearing down on your house. And you've got to get your family out of there. And you think, do I have any time to grab anything here in the house, this priceless heirloom, the photo album? Do I grab anything? A sandwich? What do you grab on the way out of there? He was lucky to get out with his family so much so that as they're driving away from it. They've got the family in two vehicles. He's looking in the rear view mirror where I presume his wife was driving. He can't see the car headlights behind him because of the thick black smoke that they're driving through. And he said that was the scariest part of it. Looking in my mirrors, I can't see my family's headlights behind me. But the family was able to escape safely. Their home, along with much of the farming equipment on which he relies, was destroyed in the fire, and there are several ag producers and sheriffs in that area who will be saying the same thing. And you think, well, this has got to be contained now because we had the snow yesterday. No, no, we didn't. The snow went right over the top of it, I mean, north of there. And it didn't dip down south enough into the panhandle to take care of this. They got all the winds. And it's still dry, and they got all that wind out there yesterday, but they didn't get the snow and the freezing precipitation. That's incredibly cruel, Jim. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying it's very cruel. Well, this is very, very important, and I would offer to those who have pretty much ignored this story, which the national news media has for the last 72 hours. If 500 to 600,000 acres of California's woodlands were on fire, even though very few people would be killed and probably not too much property would be damaged, much like this one, how much attention would it get? It'd be leading every newscast after the daily Trump derangement syndrome update. But here in Nebraska, where we haven't elected a... a Democrat president since 1964. We haven't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006.

Because of that, people say that that state doesn't count. That state doesn't count, even though it's the number two producer of beef in this country and it's the number four producer of pork in this country. And I would ask all of you that think this is not a big deal, and there are those out there who do think this is a big deal. What are those cows and what are those pigs going to eat this spring? Okay, what exactly are they going to eat? Because what they were going to eat is gone, okay? And not just the grass. The seeds that produce the grass gone. We have an eco-disaster in western Nebraska. This is not a fire. This is an eco-disaster. With already very low cattle herds. Yes. With the Colorado meat packing plant, one of the biggest meat packing plants in the country, this is a swift plant in Colorado. Those workers are going on strike. this morning and probably on strike now, and I haven't seen anything that headed that off. So now we don't have the cattle. We don't have the ability to feed that, which might survive this fire here in central Nebraska or central west central Nebraska. We got the processing workers on strike at one of the biggest packing plants. Big mess. Big problems there. Thankfully, we're not looking at more deaths. It's not a well-populated area in terms of people out in the Panhandle, Nebraska. But for the people who are out there, these are not people just sitting around, you know, waiting for the next government check. These are producers. These are hardworking people. And it's an awful situation. We'll be updating it here throughout the day. And right now, according to a lot of the stuff, we're looking at 0% contained. President Trump is telling any TSA officers who have decided, well, if I'm not getting paid for this and I get back pay whether I show up for work or not, then why would I show up for work? President Trump says, keep fighting for the USA. Go to work. I promise I will never forget you. And it's noted here by the USA today that the president is blaming Democrats for the ongoing shutdown that is keeping TSA officials, FEMA, and among others, from getting regular paychecks. They said the president is talking about the pay of TSA workers amid a shutdown. He blames on Democrats. So let's see. The Republicans are in the majority in the House and Senate. The Republicans hosted a vote and had a vote on ending the shutdown and restoring the regular paychecks for TSA officials. The Democrats voted against it. It kind of seems like it's the Democrats who have kept the shutdown going. Well, we've got to defund ICE. ICE has already funded. The Big Beautiful Bill funded ICE for most of this year. So you're voting to continue to shut down for these TSA agents. Roughly 50,000 of them still on the job but not receiving regular pay after Congress shut down this government. This was in mid-February. And we've got longest security lines with unpaid agents struggling with bills. And in some cases are deciding, well, if I'm not getting paid.

If I'm not getting a regular paycheck, I've got to find something to do, so they're calling in sick to their TSA job and working someplace else to get pay. Now, they'll get back pay. But if you owe someone something now, it's not an easy situation to be in. President says, keep showing up, fight for the USA, go to work. And the Babylon B has a headline. over the weekend that says many TSA agents showing up for free just to continue to grope people out of the love of the game. Jim, I know you're typing up the Rosie Genozy, but I got to ask you a question here on behalf of Husker Nation. This morning, and it's a question that's popped up here quite a bit in the last month and a half or so of the Nebraska basketball season, and that is, have we fallen apart? I think Husker Nation right now is so nervous and anxious. Never mind. We've got beat by some of the best teams in the country. And Purdue, I think, proved that here in their run throughout the Big Ten tournament. But... Has the pressure gotten to these guys? Did Ringmast ever really come back from his sickness he dealt with throughout the winter? Are we going to win a and maybe a few tournament games here in the bracket? I'm a little worried about this one, and I'm a little worried for a couple of reasons. I think that Troy matches up with us better than most 13 seeds would match up with a four seed. This is a physical team that plays defense and rebounds. Good. And we all know that's been the problem for Nebraska this year. They're not super huge like Purdue, but they're big and they're burly, and that worries me. It's on a neutral site, and even though there will be a lot of Husker fans down there, it's not the home court, so everybody has to travel and they get the same amount of practice time in the arena. And I think that's important. There will be a lot of Husker fans there, and I'm not sure that helps. I think it would be better to be on a neutral court because you walk out there and you see all these people and you think, gosh, these people care so much. These people are here. Yeah, we know they're supporting us, but they're here because they want us to make history be the first Husker team to ever win an NCAA tournament. That's pressure. I mean, I know they're experienced, and I know they've been through the battles, and they've won some tough games this year. They've played great basketball at times. But these are young men, and pressure is pressure. Tom Izzo, the coach of Michigan State, believes pressure makes you great. Well, that's the culture of his program. It's what's gotten them to the Final Four repeatedly and won championships. Nebraska's never done that. So that's not the culture of our program. Our culture is not a top 10 team. That's new for us. Michigan State, it's expected to be in the top 10 every year. That's a different thing. It's like what Nebraska football used to be. Pressure, we expect to do this. Well, the basketball team has never been through that. The good news, I think, for Husker fans, is that this coach, and Fred was hired for this. Okay, this was a nice regular season. 26 wins. That's great.

But he was hired for today. He was hired for the next three weeks. He played in these games. He's coached in these games. He's won these games. So what you're hoping is that he knows how to emotionally prepare teams for the postseason. And that's Nebraska's best weapon, I think, this week. No one's looking past Troy, I would think. But I don't, and I'm glad that they're a tough team. I don't want to get some, all right, you guys waxed a cupcake on Thursday morning into Thursday afternoon. This is when Nebraska's playing. And now let's see what we got. But let's look ahead a little bit in the bracket. If we're going to make Sweet 16, it's going to be against. Probably Florida. Or Vanderbilt. I think Vanderbilt's on the bracket. Vanderville, that would be in the round of 32. So let's say, no, if we beat Troy on Thursday, then on Saturday we'd play the winner between Vanderbilt and McNeese State. Let's say that's Vandy. So we've got that. And then if we move it on to the Sweet 16 and play the following week, that would be the winner of Florida. Florida, I presume, will advance and then beat the winner of Clemson and Iowa. That's a toss-up game in the first round. That's an eight versus a nine. Iowa's looking pretty good here down the stretch. But I... I hope that the pressure of they were playing so great, this Nebraska basketball team at the start of the season with no pressure, no expectations. Hey, you guys are playing top 10 teams. Great. Let's go. And then it's really tightened up here. I've seen some interesting moves without playing Frager very much. I've seen Mast and Sanford not achieve this last part of the season, what they did in the first part of the season. I just, I want. Everyone to just strap on the heart of Sam Hoyberg and Kale Jacobson and let's go. This could be a really fun week and weekend for Nebraska basketball. Thursday morning tip off. And so find some lunch plans on Thursday. And let's watch some basketball. All of that sounds great, but really what this team needs to focus on is this first game. You really can't look at the bracket. You can't look at the fact that you're playing in the NCAA tournament. All of that stuff is prevalent and unavoidable. Somehow you've just got to focus on your preparation. What is it that we need to do against Detroit? How do we execute our base offense and base defense against Troy? Now, what I think is Nebraska's best strength in this game is how consistently hard we play on the defensive end. You really have to look a long ways to find somebody who is consistently for 31, 32 games.