WAHOO, Neb. (AP) — Eric Otte was killing time shelling corn in the back of his red pickup during a break from work on a warm afternoon this week when a buddy who owns the car repair shop across the street came over to chat.

The conversation, as it eventually does here and everywhere else in this state, turned to Nebraska Cornhuskers football.

It’s not all happy talk these days.

‘‘This is my year where I'm deciding if I like where it’s going because this is all of Bo’s picks, all his recruiting,’’ said Otte, a 24-year-old crop insurance adjuster. ‘‘This is the year where it will be figured out.’’

This is Bo Pelini’s fifth season as head coach. No one disputes he cleaned up the mess Bill Callahan left behind.

Pelini has yet to win fewer than nine games in a year.

But he also has yet to lose fewer than four.

Twelve seasons have gone by without a conference championship for the proud Huskers, their longest such drought since 1941-62. And it’s going on 11 years since Nebraska last played in a Bowl Championship Series game.

Judging by the tenor of fans on social media and radio shows — or in Otte’s case, in the back of a pickup on Sixth Street in Wahoo — they’re not willing to accept a new normal of nine- or 10-win seasons that end in second-tier bowl games.

They want the Huskers playing for the conference championship — every year — and in the national title conversation most years.

Asked what he would say to a fan base growing edgy, Pelini said: ‘‘What do you want me to say? I'm pretty edgy myself.’’

Tom Osborne, who retired from coaching in 1998 after three of his last four teams in Lincoln won national championships, hired Pelini shortly after becoming athletic director in 2007. Osborne, who announced his Jan. 1 retirement this week, declined an interview request for this story.

Lots of other folks are talking in this state of 1.8 million, in addition to fans around the nation, as 22nd-ranked Nebraska (3-1) heads into Saturday’s Big Ten opener against two-time defending champion Wisconsin (3-1). The consensus is that last year’s third-place finish in the Legends Division was a big disappointment.

This year they believe the Big Ten, based on its collective mediocrity the first month of the season, is there for the taking. A caller to an Omaha radio show this week suggested it would be a ‘‘colossal failure’’ if Nebraska doesn’t win the conference.

Are the high expectations justified?

The Huskers’ offense, for the most part, looks better than a year ago. But the defense is still a question mark. Nebraska surely doesn’t stand out over any of the other teams mentioned as title contenders, not after its humiliating loss at UCLA the second week of the season.

Still, the fans are clamoring for Pelini to deliver.

‘‘I try not to concern myself with what people think or say or anything else because that in the end can lead to me making bad decisions,’’ Pelini said. ‘‘I do the best I possibly can, day in and day out, to run the best football program I can and make our football team the best I possibly can every single day. As long as I do that, and I can look myself in the mirror every night before I go to bed knowing I've done that, knowing I've done everything in my power, I can live with myself.’’

The state’s passion for football dates back more than a century. Nebraska was the only team to beat Notre Dame and the Four Horsemen in the 1920s. Dana X. Bible built the Huskers into a Big Six power in the 1930s.

There were the bad years in the 1940s and ‘50s before Bob Devaney arrived in 1962 and raised the program’s stature. Devaney won national championships in 1970 and ‘71, and the Huskers remained a fixture in the Top 10 under Osborne until he broke through with his national titles in the ‘90s.

From 1993-97, the Huskers won 60 of 63 games for the most dominant run in major-college football history.

Fans still pine for those glory days.

‘‘People hang their hat and ego on the success of this football team,’’ said 72-year-old Gary Mouden, a Lincoln native who attended his first game in 1945 (a 61-7 loss to Minnesota) and now is president of the Huskers’ Las Vegas booster group.

Every home game for 50 years has been a sellout. Saturday’s will be the 322nd in a row. Athletic administrators are counting on that streak continuing after Memorial Stadium’s capacity grows from 81,000 to more than 90,000 next year.