Let your freak-less flag fly

Nebraska is freak-free entering 2025 per Bruce Feldman's annual list. Big deal or no?

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

For the third time in the past five years, Nebraska enters its upcoming football season free of freaks. At least that’s how it is according to longtime college football reporter Bruce Feldman’s annual “freaks” list, the source of record on this fungible concept. Perhaps the only source.

I like Feldman’s list. I’ve come to count on it as a late-summer piece of the college football narrative, one that is both well-reported and fun. Per an editor’s note on the latest edition, the freaks list “chronicles the strongest, fastest and most physical players in college football.” That’s a reasonable description though, as is often the case with most good lists, it carefully slides around the fact that the reporter and the outlet are likely doing this because no one else is. If there was a college combine, we could all have the same data for assessing who is freakishly talented athletically and who is not.

But we don’t have that. Instead, Feldman does his best to do it himself. You have to acknowledge the presence of an editorial hand here even if you have very few concerns (as I do) about its weight.

So, what do we do with the fact Nebraska has none of the top-100 freaks entering 2025? How many freaks will the Huskers face? Let’s talk about it.