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LINCOLN — It's an hour before practice on Valentine's Day. I'm waiting outside Darin Erstad's office — coach Darin Erstad's office.

Here comes the coach, in full uniform. Erstad looks like he wears that uniform everywhere. His office used to be the batter's box. Now, he has a nice desk and a bookcase with, by the way, three stunning Gold Gloves on top.

Erstad is walking fast. He looks like he's ready to take off and slide in headfirst.

That's probably not a bad idea.

Opening Night is Friday night. The Erstad Era begins against Gonzaga in Peoria, Ariz., spring training home of the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. But this is no time for pomp, circumstance or goose bumps.

“I'm excited, but I'm ready to go to work,” Erstad said. “It's game time.”

There's an urgency in Erstad's voice. That's a good thing. Once upon a time, in a land known as Big 12 Baseball, these early exercises were more about figuring out a lineup and a rotation and getting ready for the heavy lifting in March and April.

But that was then and this is now: The most important games on Nebraska's schedule will be in late February through mid-March.

That's not necessarily true this year. Gonzaga, Utah, West Virginia, New Mexico State, Cal, Louisiana Tech and Cal State Bakersfield (and Creighton and Wichita State) aren't going to turn the NCAA Division I baseball committee's head.

To make an NCAA regional this year, the Huskers will have to win the Big Ten tournament. The Huskers' new conference is traditionally a one-bid league with an RPI in the dregs.

So in future years, to give themselves a chance at an at-large berth, the Huskers will make or break their season in the first six weeks, against a schedule that will be ambitious and totally necessary.

“Anyone, anywhere,” Erstad said. “There's two reasons for that.

“One, to have a strength of schedule in the nonconference to put yourself in position to get an at-large berth every year. I don't feel like it's in the best interests of our program to put it in the hands of having to win the conference tournament every year.

“And, if we're truly going to prepare our kids to win a national title, they're going to have to face the best in the country. There's no better way of doing that than playing those teams through the nonconference schedule.”

That may mean, for the most part, Erstad's Huskers will learn to be road warriors. Conference seasons begin in late March. Most nonconference weekend series are done by then.

Meanwhile, it won't be easy to get the big names — most of whom live in the South or West — to come to Lincoln in late February or March. Not impossible — UCLA came to Haymarket Park in early March a year ago.

Even if you do get a home series early, you play it only if there's not snow on the ground.

“We'll have to find teams that want to do home-and-home,” Erstad said. “Are we going to have to travel to hostile territory? Absolutely.

“But if you're going to go where we want to go, you have to prepare. Cal-State Fullerton, they're going to Florida first weekend. They're preparing their team for what they're going to see down the road. We're taking the same mentality.”

Erstad has Director of Operations Curtis Ledbetter working the phones for future games. He won't say yet who's on the wish list. But don't look for South Carolina or LSU. Erstad wants to play where NU recruits, and with Will Bolt and Ted Silva on the staff, that will be Texas and California.

Texas is a natural, though coach Augie Garrido told me last spring that he didn't see his program coming to Lincoln before April. Fullerton. UC Irvine. UCLA. USC. Cal (2011 College World Series participant). Stanford. Arizona State. Oregon. The Huskers' schedule should have a heavy West Coast flavor in the future.

What a coincidence: The Big Ten and Pac-12 are beginning a scheduling alliance in 2017 in most sports. That could send some Pac-12 schools to Lincoln.

“I think it's fantastic,” Erstad said. “Anything we can do to toughen our conference overall, get our conference RPI up. Now if that's more for football or basketball, time will tell.”

There's a rub, though. Because NU's RPI will depend heavily on the nonconference schedule, it's not enough to play those games. You have to win them. That means coming out of the chute in February pitching and hitting well. After you thaw out the bats from a Nebraska winter.

Good thing Erstad inherited a brand-new indoor facility. It's pretty slick. It's pretty big, too. Erstad said because the entire building is covered with net, you can take live hitting indoors.

Cold weather, he said, is “part of the deal.”

“We were lucky to get outdoors this winter,” he said. “It's not something I focus on. We have some of the best indoor facilities in the country. We have every opportunity to prepare our team.

“Wherever we go, we'll go outside the day before (the game) and take fly balls. I've just never worried about that.”

Last year, former NU coach Mike Anderson said that he had met with Big Ten baseball coaches about upgrading the nonconference schedules of the league teams, changing certain league rules, etc., to promote the league's stature. He said some of the coaches wanted Nebraska to come in and change the way the league did business. Other coaches, Anderson said, had the attitude of too bad, this is the Big Ten way.

Erstad said he's found the same thing but doesn't care.

“We talked about that stuff,” Erstad said. “At the end of the day, all we can control is what we do. We're going to show (the Big Ten) it's possible.”

The compelling stuff this year will be in the Big Ten schedule. The baseball people in the Big Ten are not impressed with Big Red baseball and all its tradition. The Huskers were picked to finish fourth, behind Michigan State, Purdue and Minnesota. That's not to be confused with Texas, Baylor or Texas A&M.

The Huskers don't play MSU, and they face Purdue and Minnesota at home. The Big Ten tourney is in Columbus, Ohio, though Werner Park is making a bid to host future Big Ten tourneys.

There will be pressure on Erstad to win the league. The expectations of the program changed while Erstad was away earning Gold Gloves for the Anaheim Angels. He saw that last year, as a volunteer coach when Anderson was fired. He sees it every day as he walks into the Haymarket Park office, with its championship murals and trophy cases full of memories.

“It's hard to describe, the transformation of the baseball program since I left here (1995),” Erstad said. “Things that were unimaginable have happened. The total culture change of the expectations have gone through the roof.

“I couldn't be more excited to be part of it. It's a very humbling feeling.”

Then he left for practice. Time to get the uniform dirty.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com

twitter.com/tomshatelOWH

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