• Video: Bo Pelini at Big 12 media days:



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DALLAS — Coach Bo Pelini relayed Monday that Zac Lee is back to 100 percent, but said Nebraska has “some guys who are pretty even going in” as the Huskers prepare to evaluate their quarterbacks in preseason practice.

Lee is recovering from surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon in his right arm that forced him to miss spring practice. As of late, the senior appears to be his old self in seven-on-seven summer drills.

“He's back,” NU receiver Niles Paul said. “He's throwing real well. I threw with him on Saturday. His arm is very strong. It kind of caught me off guard. It hit me kind of fast. I was like, ‘Wow.'”

Still, Lee will have sophomore Cody Green, redshirt freshman Taylor Martinez and others to deal with before a starter emerges. Pelini said NU will distribute practice time fairly equally among the quarterbacks when camp starts Aug. 7.

“At the quarterback position especially, you get a chance to watch and see who makes plays, see who's being consistent, see who's doing what's necessary to win football games,” he said. “We'll rotate them through a little bit, but it's going to be pretty equal and I think it'll eventually be fairly obvious who the guy needs to be.”

Asked if it needs to happen before NU travels to Washington on Sept. 18, Pelini said: “I would hope it would be fairly clear by then, but if it's not, it's not.”

Admire reneges on pledge

Nebraska's 2011 recruiting class has just lost a member.

Offensive lineman Dylan Admire, of Overland Park, Kan., reneged on his pledge to sign a letter of intent in February and play for the Huskers next year, according to Rivals.com.

Admire, who made an oral commitment to Nebraska five months ago, did not return a message left for him Monday night.

Nebraska now has 12 known pledges for 2011. Four of those players are offensive linemen.

Still no word on Heard

Pelini offered no concrete resolution on the status of NU recruit Braylon Heard, a talented running back who has yet to join his new college team on campus.

Heard, who signed a letter of intent in February, hasn't completed all of the necessary academic requirements to become eligible for his first season as a Husker.

“It's close,” Pelini said. But the third-year Nebraska coach also said that there are certain aspects of the situation that remain unclear.

It's unlikely that Heard will enroll in time for the start of preseason camp, which begins Aug. 7.

Heard, who's from Pelini's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, is listed in Nebraska's 2010 media guide. He's assigned No. 23. As a senior at Cardinal Mooney High School, Heard rushed for 1,973 yards and 24 touchdowns.

Crick has help filling void

Nobody at Nebraska is expecting one single player to replace the production of Ndamukong Suh.

So any notion that junior Jared Crick is putting extra pressure on himself to replace the All-America game-changer is wildly inaccurate, senior Pierre Allen said.

Sure, Crick has lofty goals. The 6-foot-6, 285-pound defensive tackle from Cozad, Neb., was an All-Big 12 first-teamer last season and earned preseason Big 12 co-defensive player of the year honors last week. Crick finished the 2009 season with 73 total tackles and 9½ sacks.

But he's also humble and realistic, according to Allen.

“He understands that he doesn't have to do it all by himself,” Allen said. “We have a great scheme. There are 10 other guys out there.”

Silver lining in Texas loss

Nebraska came up short in the Big 12 championship game, but Pelini said there was some good to be taken away from the 13-12 loss to Texas.

“I think it finally made them understand, ‘Hey, we are pretty good. We can be pretty good,'” he said. “Sometimes you don't give yourselves credit. It takes lining up against Texas — a team that was getting ready to play in the national championship game — to understand we can compete with anybody in the country.”

As far as rallying around that game, and any bitterness toward how it ended, Pelini said that's something that was never discussed. Players during spring practice, however, talked about having sheets of paper in their lockers saying “:01” — the amount of time put back on the clock before Texas' game-winning field goal.

“We didn't talk much about it,” Pelini said. “Our guys understand it's onto the next thing.”

Glad to leave Tigers behind

There's at least one road trip that Husker players won't miss now that Nebraska's headed to the Big Ten in 2011.

Senior receiver Niles Paul said Missouri fans are the least hospitable of any he's seen in the conference. His viewpoint was reinforced on that rainy Thursday night in Columbia, Mo., last year.

“They hate us. It's obvious they hate us,” Paul said. “They didn't want us there. They told us that.”

Missouri plays at Nebraska on Oct. 30 this fall, the Huskers' final year in the Big 12.

Osborne getting head start

Nebraska's Tom Osborne will go to the Big Ten athletic directors' meetings next week with a sense of humility that would seem to belie his stature as one of the giants in college football history.

The administrators meet next Monday and Tuesday in Chicago, where divisional alignment and a possible conference championship football game will be among the issues discussed.

“I will express my opinion at the Big Ten meetings if asked. However, as a nonvoting member of the Big Ten, I am not certain as to what level of input I will have,” Osborne said Monday in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

Big Ten spokesman Scott Chipman said Osborne is invited to all conference business meetings in advance of Nebraska becoming an active member next July 1.

“They will be a part of all discussions,” Chipman said of the Huskers.

Osborne, who won or shared three national championships before retiring from coaching after the 1997 season, declined to comment on how he would like to see the divisions set up.

“We will look at all the alternatives before making any statements concerning preferences,” he said.

When the Big 12 was being formed in the mid-1990s, Osborne was an outspoken critic of conference championship games in football because he believed that it was an “impediment” to a team trying to win a national championship.

He said a championship game in the Big Ten “appears to be part of the landscape with the addition of a 12th team.”

“The Big Ten will make the decision, not me,” Osborne said. “We are willing to do whatever is best for the conference. At this time most conferences do have a playoff and, oddly enough, the Big 12 now appears to not have one after this year.”

The Big 12 is set to have only 11 teams next year after Nebraska's departure, and Colorado is also poised to join the Pac-10. NCAA rules require a league to have 12 teams to have a title game.

Osborne also said he doesn't anticipate the move to the Big Ten to interfere with Nebraska's nonconference schedule to the point that the Huskers would have to buy out any contracts.

— Rich Kaipust, Jon Nyatawa and the Associated Press

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• Video: The Big Red Today Show from day one at Big 12 media days, with Lee Barfknecht, Rich Kaipust and Jon Nyatawa:

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