NCAA Football nebraska Cornhuskers

Depending on who is debating, the Heisman Trophy is awarded to either the best college football player in the country or the one who simply means the most to his team.

Whichever side of the coin you fall on, you have to come back to Nebraska senior defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. Certainly playing in the trenches of the defensive line isn't the sexiest place to find the nation's most preeminent player.

Watching Suh defy double- and triple-teams the last two seasons has been every bit as exciting as a running back spinning out of the arms of several tacklers or a receiver blazing past the secondary or a quarterback dodging tacklers until he spots a receiver downfield for a critical touchdown.

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Former Nebraska running back Thunder Collins' life seemed to be just one misstep after another once he joined the Cornhuskers nearly a decade ago.

Years of being on the wrong side of law have caught up with Collins, who was sentenced to life in prison Thursday in Omaha, Neb., for his role in the 2008 murder of one man and shooting of another man. Collins, who played for the Cornhuskers from 2000-02, was convicted of first-degree murder and several other charges in August.

The 29-year-old was facing a mandatory life in prison sentence after being convicted of first-degree murder, but the Douglas County District Court judge tacked on another 110 years for second-degree murder, assault and two weapons charges.

The resemblance to the old Blackshirt defense is there, but make no mistake -- this isn't your father's Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Still, in this current cycle where parity and mediocrity have met to transform the mightiest of college football programs into mere mortals, these Cornhuskers are good enough to be part of the Big 12 North championship conversation. Seriously, these very Cornhuskers who a few weeks seemed down after dropping back-to-back home games against Texas Tech and ... gasp ... Iowa State could actually fulfill the preseason prophecy of the Big 12 media by winning the North.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Crist will come again ... in four to six months.

Notre Dame learned the fates of both back-up quarterback Dayne Crist and wide receiver Michael Floyd on Monday and the results were mixed.

Crist, a sophomore who went down in the fourth quarter of Notre Dame's 40-14 win against Washington State, learned on Monday that he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament of his right knee. Floyd, who broke his left collarbone against Michigan State in the season's third game, was cleared to play.

On Tuesday, Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis confirmed that Crist, who had an MRI on Monday, had torn his ACL and that he would have surgery on Friday. Weis said that the Irish staff consulted "the guru in Alabama" (Dr. James Andrews) and that the prognosis was for a four-to-six month rehab. That likely keeps Crist out of spring football.

"I know one thing," Weis said, concerning Crist's return. "We'll be conservative."

There is nothing new about Bob Stoops matching coaching wits with old mentor and boss Bill Snyder. They've done plenty of that over the years in Big 12 cross-divisional play.

But that doesn't mean Stoops isn't a little surprised to see Snyder, 70, back on the Wildcats sideline. The longtime Kansas State coach retired four years ago to pursue opportunities outside coaching, but was lured out of retirement last winter.

Stoops, whose 22nd-ranked Sooners host the Wildcats on Saturday, admits it's a little unexpected to be going up against his old boss again, but he was stunned when Snyder was no longer there, too.

It's just three weeks into the full-swing of Big 12 play but the North Division is looking like any of the six teams could win the race.

That doesn't necessarily bode well at all for the weaker half of the two-division league.

Nebraska and Kansas came into the season as the presumed favorites to represent the North, but after two weeks of inconsistent play neither seems as powerful. The same can be said for two-time North champion Missouri, which started the season a surprising 4-0, but has dropped its first two games of the Big 12 season.

So much for the Big 12 North being taken seriously this season.

On a day when division leaders Kansas and Nebraska had a chance to make a statement, both teams were upset, and stunningly so.

No.15 Nebraska was exposed offensively in a 31-10 loss to unranked Texas Tech in Lincoln, Neb. And the 17th-ranked Jayhawks, which hadn't played a quality opponent until Saturday, was stunned, 34-30, by a one-win Colorado team for their first loss of the season.

Both defeats have left the door open for supremacy in the North with darkhorses Colorado and Kansas State perhaps having a shot at the division title. The Wildcats exploded on Texas A&M Saturday for after struggling offensively most of the season.

It's not like Texas and Oklahoma ever needed a reason to make their annual Red River Rivalry game in Dallas any more intense.

The tradition of the two programs, the bordering states and the fight for superiority in fertile recruiting ground of Texas use to be enough. Who knew this early season game would take on so much more meaning when both teams joined the Big 12 in 1996?

This game has become about so much more than school pride and bragging rights, as one of these two teams has won the South each of the last 10 years, and it has sometimes set the stage for the national championship picture.

We all knew the Kansas Jayhawks offense had a chance to be lethal this season with quarterback Todd Reesing and wide receivers Dezmon Briscoe and Kerry Meier setting the pace.

Well, the trio took it to a ridiculous level Saturday as the receivers bested each other during the Jayhawks' 41-31 win over Iowa State. First Briscoe set the school record for career receptions, then Meier jumped ahead of him. Meier, a converted quarterback, has 167 career catches while Briscoe sits at 165 after making 12 catches for 186 yards and two touchdowns Saturday.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- If Nebraska had been looking for a defining moment, that one where lip service and projections give way to real proof the program is back, perhaps the Cornhuskers found it Thursday night.

Their backs were up against the wall in a major way against Missouri at Faurot Field when something miraculous happened.

In a hostile environment where they hadn't won since 2001, in the midst of a driving Midwestern rainstorm, after three quarters in which they couldn't couldn't have played any worse on offense and special teams, the Huskers found a way. In a span of a little more than three minutes in the fourth quarter, the 21st-ranked Cornhuskers swung a 12-point deficit into an eight-point lead on the way to stunning 27-12 win over the 24th-ranked Tigers that left most of the drenched 65,826 in attendance in disbelief.