Nebraska
Ohio State vs. Nebraska prediction: Who wins, and why?
Both coming off tough Big Ten losses, Nebraska and No. 4 Ohio State meet in college football’s Week 9 action on Saturday looking for a turnaround. Here’s what you should watch for in this matchup, with our updated prediction for the game.
Ohio State was just 1 point shy of taking out Oregon two weeks ago and needs to be on its A-game against the Cornhuskers with a trip to Penn State coming up after this one.
Nebraska also needs a pick-me-up after getting shellacked on the road against Indiana in a 56-7 decision that drops the team to a 2-2 mark in Big Ten play this season.
What can we expect as the Buckeyes play host to the Cornhuskers in this Big Ten clash?
Here’s what you should watch for as Ohio State and Nebraska meet in this Week 9 college football matchup, with our updated prediction for the game.
Ohio State is 1 of 6 teams nationally to average over 500 total yards per game, ranking No. 6 with 503 yards on average, and it places 5th in FBS with 7.53 yards per play.
Nebraska comes into the game ranked 87th in FBS with 370 yards per game on average, and is 88th nationally with 5.54 yards per play.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State is No. 2 in college football in defensive production, allowing 251.3 yards per game, and is 7th nationally by surrendering 4.37 yards per play to opponents.
Nebraska ranks 18th in the country in allowing 304.3 yards per game on defense, and is top 25 nationally in letting opponents post 4.87 yards per play.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State ranks No. 6 nationally in scoring output, putting up 43.5 points per game on average, and its 36 total touchdowns are good for 12th in the country.
Nebraska is No. 88 among 134 FBS teams by scoring 25 points per game, and is 81st nationally with 23 total touchdowns scored on offense.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State is 3rd nationally by allowing opponents to score 11 points per game on average, and is No. 1 in surrendering 66 total points on the year, while its 8 touchdowns allowed are 3rd fewest.
Nebraska is 19th nationally, allowing 17.7 points per game this season, and the 16 touchdowns the defense allowed are the 28th fewest in the country.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State ranks 15th nationally in third down production, converting 48.61 percent of its chances, amounting to 35 conversions on 72 attempts.
Nebraska is 41st in FBS by moving the chains on 41 of 94 opportunities (43.62 percent).
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State has allowed opponents to convert 27 of their 84 third down opportunities for a success rate of 32.14 percent.
Nebraska has surrendered 34 successful third down conversions against 91 attempts (37.36 percent), ranking No. 61 in FBS.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State is No. 1 nationally in red zone offensive production, scoring points on 100 percent of its 26 opportunities, and its 24 touchdowns are 5th best (92.31 percent).
Nebraska is just 126th in red zone percentage, but still efficient at 71.43 percent, coming away with points on 20 of 28 chances.
Of those, 16 are touchdowns (57.14 percent).
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State has allowed opponents to score 7 times out of 10 opportunities inside the 20 yard line (70 percent).
And while half of those scores (5) were touchdowns, that’s still the second-fewest in FBS this year.
Nebraska is 41st nationally by allowing opponents to score 16 times out of 20 chances (80 percent), and 13 of those scores were touchdowns (65 percent).
Edge: Ohio State
Nebraska averaged 0.326 points per play, good for No. 91 nationally, against an Ohio State defense that is No. 4 in FBS by surrendering 0.184 points per play.
And the Cornhuskers average exactly 5 yards per play this season, ranking 96th nationally, while the Buckeyes allow 4.2 yards per play, No. 7 in FBS.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State is No. 6 nationally with an average of 0.644 points per play against a Nebraska defense that is 37th in the country allowing 0.314 points per play.
And the Buckeyes are No. 4 in FBS by averaging 7.5 yards per play, compared to a Cornhuskers defense that is No. 21 in allowing 4.8 yards per play.
Edge: Ohio State
Ohio State is 32.5 points better than its opponents on average this season, a figure boosted by some dominant victories against non-conference teams.
By comparison, Nebraska is averaging around 3.5 points better than its opposition, a number that came down after losing by 49 to Indiana last week.
Over the last three games, the Buckeyes have been 19.3 points better than opponents, while the Cornhuskers have averaged 8 points worse than their opposition.
In that time, Ohio State has averaged 34.7 points while Nebraska scored 16.3 points over that span.
At home, the Buckeyes are 41.3 points better than opponents, while the Cornhuskers are 15.5 points worse than teams when playing on the road this season.
Ohio State is scoring 48 points per game at home and Nebraska posts 17.5 points on the road.
When playing in the red zone on the road, the Cornhuskers have come away with points on 37.5 percent of their possessions, compared to the Buckeyes at 100 percent when playing at home.
Most analytical models favor the Buckeyes against the Cornhuskers in this Big Ten clash.
That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.
Ohio State comes out ahead in 96.5 percent of the computer’s most recent simulations of the matchup.
That leaves Nebraska as the expected winner in the remaining 3.5 percent of sims.
Ohio State is projected to be 29.7 points better than Nebraska on the same field in both teams’ current composition, according to the model’s latest forecast.
Ohio State is a 25.5 point favorite against Nebraska, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook.
FanDuel set the total at 48.5 points for the game (Over -110, Under -110).
And it set the moneyline odds for Ohio State at -6000 and for Nebraska at +1800 to win outright.
Don’t underestimate the Cornhuskers’ front seven to marginally curtail the Buckeyes’ ability to get whatever they want right away, especially as the latter just lost left tackle Josh Simmons to a season-ending knee injury.
But after the performance of the defense, or lack thereof, last week against the Hoosiers, it’s a safe bet that Ohio State’s blue-chip skill players will eventually take the top off this secondary.
College Football HQ picks …
When: Sat., Oct. 26
Time: 12 p.m. Eastern
TV: Fox network
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SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (KOLN) – A Nebraska woman faces 41 charges after dozens of dogs were rescued June 5 from her home in Scotts Bluff County.
The Scotts Bluff County Sheriff’s Office was called to a home east of Scottsbluff around 2 p.m. for a report of possible animal abuse. According to court records, a dog from the home had been seen on Highway 26.
When deputies arrived, they contacted the owner of the dogs, 75-year-old Jody Staman. While speaking with Staman outside the home, a deputy saw numerous small dogs in wire cages. Further investigation found some of the dogs did not have food or water, and several were breathing heavily and appeared stressed. Dogs that did have water had bowls filled with algae, vegetation and mud. The dirt floors were covered in dog feces.
Staman told deputies she used to sell the dogs but stopped around 2020. She said she originally had 30 dogs and one puppy.
Deputies later returned with assistance from Nebraska Game and Parks and members of the Panhandle Humane Society. Court records state 40 live dogs and one dead puppy were collected from the property. Another puppy, which was in poor health, was taken to the Wildflower Animal Cottage.
Deputies and PHS staff described the conditions as “deplorable,” with the residence covered in dog and rodent feces. In some areas, animal feces were more than one foot deep. In most areas, it was impossible to take a step without stepping in feces.
Staman was charged with 40 counts of cruel neglect of an animal and one count of cruel neglect of an animal resulting in death.
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Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
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