We need to start watching the rate of disastrous failures for those "<insert color>-out" promotions that everyone is doing now. You know, the "white-out" or "red-out" or whatever color your school is where everyone in the crowd is asked to wear the same color or are given shirts to make the effect happen.

OK, this was pretty cool. But they lost.

Though it involved that horrible orange, I have to admit that one of the better ones was the checkerboard effect that Tennessee did last year. And guess what? Tennessee lost.

It might be just me, but it seems that these games often end up as spectacular losses. It makes sense – crowd gimmicks are usually used to get sell-outs for big games in which the home team is often the underdog, so it’s not really a surprise that the visiting team wins.

The best example I can think of is the hapless "blackout" games of South Carolina football. In 2001, South Carolina organized a blackout for the Florida game. It looked great, and the overflow crowd was out of its mind. Florida proceeded to lay a 54-17 score on the Gamecocks. Steve Spurrier, then coaching Florida of course, made one of his infamous quips after the game saying that the black background made it easier for his receivers to see the ball.

That stood as a pretty good benchmark for the futility of crowd color gimmicks until last night. Nebraska organized a "red-out" for their basketball game with Kansas. Huge game, big-name ranked opponent, national TV. The crowd obediently packed the arena with red, and the stage was set for the upset. Right? That lasted about a minute. Kansas soon had a 39-6 lead which included a 27-0 run. A "yellow-out" might have been more appropriate given how Nebraska wet the bed on the national stage.

So we’ll try to look out for and highlight the future successes or, better, outright beatings that come from these games. A few groundrules:

1. Has to be more or less a one-time or once-a-season thing. If it’s something that the students or a large part of the crowd does every game, it doesn’t really count.
2. Has to be organized or at least endorsed or promoted by the school. Thus the "wear black for Dooley" grassroots campaign a few years ago doesn’t count, but the "wear red for Brophy" one last weekend does.
3. Has to involve more than just students. Free t-shirts of the same color in the student section from the local chicken finger place isn’t what we’re talking about.

Congratulations, Nebraska. You’ve got us off and running.