LINCOLN--The long awaited firing of head coach Bill Callahan is already paying dividends for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. On Monday, the Associated Press rankings showed that the 5-7 Huskers had climbed all the way to 15th in the nation, meaning they are now eligible to play in the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl.

AD Tom Osborne, who dismissed Callahan on Saturday, called the latest rankings “a pleasant surprise.”

“This is quite a pleasant surprise for everyone here in Lincoln,” said Osborne. “We knew that jettisoning Bill would improve our standing in the eyes of the media, but we didn’t expect something this drastic. I guess this proves that I made the right decision in letting him go, so all you people who questioned me can kiss my ass. Actually nobody questioned me, except Bill. He thought I should have done it earlier.”

Osborne refused to get too excited about the high ranking since the team still has many glaring weaknesses and probably won’t fare well in a bowl game should it get invited to one.

“Let’s all be honest here: we are still a very flawed team,” he said. “Our defense is, um…flawed. It needs a little work. Okay, it’s a goddamn abortion. Though to be fair, if we were a basketball team, we would be like the fourth best defense in the country.”

Osborne said the next coach will be a defensive-minded leader who can bring back the dreaded “Blackshirt defense” that used to strike fear into opponents.

“We want to bring back the Blackshirts,” said Osborne. “We want to make our defensive unit one of the most feared units in the nation. We want teams to say ‘No! We don’t want to play Nebraska! We’re afraid of the Blackshirts!’ The only way to do that is to rebuild the defense from the ground up - or only play Division III teams who are afraid of their own shadows.”

Some critics contend that a 5-7 team should never be nationally ranked, regardless of which coach they just fired, but AP voters defended their decision on the grounds of “addition by subtraction.”

“It’s the epitome of addition by subtraction,” said Brian Landman of the St Petersburg Times. “The very fact that they got rid of Callahan bumps them up to the Top 20 in my book. I even considered putting them in the Top 10, but there were too many other deserving teams. Next year, however, they are my preseason number one pick. That is unless Notre Dame fires Charlie Weiss.”

If the Huskers do end up being invited to the Holiday Bowl they would be huge underdogs, but Osborne isn’t worried about that. The ones who are worried? Their potential opponents, who now face the possibility of seeing a Callahan-less Nebraska team in a bowl game.

“Wow, that would really be a challenge for us,” said Arizona State head coach Dennis Erickson. “The Huskers have had a terrible season, but when you remove Bill Callahan from the equation, they don’t look so bad. I certainly wouldn’t want to face a non Callahan-coached Cornhuskers team. Non Callahan-coached Huskers team have historically fared pretty well. Why should this one be any different? Oh, by the way. Who are they interviewing for the head coaching position? I’m already sick of this job.”

Copyright 2007, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.