Since this past winter was significantly warmer than normal, you may have been seeing signs of a very early spring where you are for quite some time now.
Regardless of what the temperatures have been - and how the trees, flowers, grass, and animals have been acting - the 2012 version of spring has many of the more traditional signs of the season popping up, including the annual Husker Spring Football Game.
It's a true rite of spring we've often had mixed feelings about over the years. Surprisingly, some folks involved in politics seem to think Nebraskans are having similarly mixed feelings about former Senator Bob Kerrey.
We really don't know where these people are coming from.
Bob Kerrey was not only born in Nebraska - in Lincoln, the capitol city - but he went to elementary, junior high, and high school in Lincoln, and graduated from the University of Nebraska, in Lincoln. Kerrey then chose to serve his country in the Navy SEALs, and served in Vietnam, at a time when so many others were finding any way they could to avoid serving.
Mr. Kerrey lost part of one leg serving his country - and when he was done with his service, he came back to Nebraska, where he became a successful businessman, then Nebraska's governor, and finally one of Nebraska's two U.S. Senators.
While Kerrey has spent some time working in other places over the past few years - mostly because far-away places were the ones to offer him challenging jobs that weren't in lobbying firms in Washington, DC - he's always kept property in Nebraska, and has come back to visit his family as often as he could.
All these Nebraska ties, to any real Nebraskan, certainly prove Kerrey's true nature as a fellow Nebraskan. Yet, according to people like the draft-dodging Karl Rove and his big-money, out-of-state SuperPAC, Kerrey is supposed to be a "carpetbagger" - someone who is, by definition, "a political candidate who seeks election in an area where they have no local connections."
For those of us who are REAL Nebraskans - regardless of how we feel about Kerrey's past political performances - we have to laugh at the hypocrisy of Rove and other out-of-state Republicans calling Kerrey "someone who has no local connections."
In a similar way to how the weather and the calendar have been giving contradictory signals, and to how Rove's minions have been calling Mr. Kerrey names, we have a similar feeling about the Husker Spring game.
Every year, no matter where we are at the time, when we see the pictures, and we read, hear, and watch the stories from the Nebraska media on how Husker spring football is going, we have to tell the little people inside of us to calm down, chill out, and not get too excited. We know exactly what's going to happen - because it's the same thing that's happened for many years now.
The young Huskers will play this weekend, Red squad against White - and then college football for Husker fans will be done until autumn.
Even when some in the media begin talk about potential spring scrimmages against other teams in their conference or division, everyone honestly knows, in their heart of hearts, that the real football season won't happen until fall.
Just as the truth of spring is both the calendar and the temperature, and the true nature of Bob Kerrey is a Nebraskan, the true season for college football is fall.
Even so, we sure will enjoy ourselves this weekend, as we watch the 2012 Spring Football Game.
Enjoy your weekend, whatever you're doing.
