Nebraska Cornhusker
What in the name of Cornhusker kickbacks just happened?
How does a state that has more in common with the Missouri River join a conference more associated with the Great Lakes and the Mississippi?
As a proud member of a family that originated in Nebraska and a diehard Husker fan who has lived in the Buckeye nation for the last six years, I am absolutely shocked about Nebraska’s upcoming move to the Big Ten Conference.
And yet, the more I try to get my mind around this turn of events, the more I know that in many ways, this may have been the ultimate outcome for both my beloved Cornhuskers and the Big Ten.
Just a bit of background on my story will inform Buckeye fans just what you’re getting in the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I grew up in a small town in South Dakota 30 minutes from the Nebraska border. My family actually originated in northeast Nebraska and we all bleed Big Red football. Growing up, Thanksgiving weekends were the ultimate. We would travel to our extended family home in Omaha for turkey dinner, and in the afternoon Nebraska and Oklahoma for the right to go to the Orange Bowl.
Growing up my football heroes were Tom Osborne, Johnny Rodgers, the Blackshirts and that HUGE offensive line running the ball right down the Oklahoma Sooners’ throats. Granted, during those years, we had a lot of trouble beating Oklahoma, which just made us hate them that much more, but once we broke through in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, those holidays just ended up that much sweeter.
Yet it was more than the Oklahoma game that defined Nebraska football. There’s been a lot of articles recently about how Nebraska doesn’t bring a lot of television sets to the Big Ten Network. That’s true if you consider only the state of Nebraska. But football Saturdays where I grew up was more than just the state of Nebraska. Cornhusker football was a regional event, from North Dakota to Kansas and from Montana and Wyoming to Minnesota and Iowa. Even in western South Dakota, which you would have thought would be prime Colorado Buffalo territory, it was Nebraska that everyone would tune into on glorious fall Saturday afternoons when we were destroying our Big Eight brethren. Very few people where I came from, if any, thought much of the Big Ten as Minnesota and Iowa were both pretty bad football teams, and the only time we paid attention was when Michigan and Ohio State were playing (we considered it the warmup to Nebraska-Oklahoma).
When the Big Eight became the Big 12 in 1996 and the Nebraska-Oklahoma game was reduced to a twice every four year event, a part of our heritage and culture died (Consider if Ohio State and Michigan only played twice every four years – the loss would be enormous). If that wasn’t bad enough, the conference winner doesn’t even go the Orange Bowl anymore (they’re supposedly Fiesta Bowl property in this new era). The shock is not that Nebraska is leaving the Big 12 now, its that it took so long after the institutions of the Big 12 South did all they could to destroy the history, culture and traditions of the Big 8. Nebraska’s current conference home just isn’t the same anymore and the loss of that history finally caused Nebraska to take another look at its future. I still wouldn’t have thought the Big 10 however, until I saw up close for myself just how important Big Ten football is here.
Watching the interaction the Ohio State Buckeyes and their fans on Saturdays the last few years, I now realize that not only is Nebraska landing in the right spot, but the Big Ten received a gem of incalculable value in the Cornhuskers. Just look at how my Huskers compare to your Buckeyes:
You have seven National Championship teams, we have five.
You have 819 wins all-time, we have 827.You had Woody Hayes, we had Bob Devaney.
You have Jim Tressel, we had Tom Osborne – two of the classiest men to ever walk a football sideline.
You have Archie Griffin and Eddie George, we have Johnny Rodgers and Mike Rozier.
You have the Game, we have the Game of the Century (1971).
Your official colors are Scarlet and Gray, ours is Scarlet and Cream.
You have Brutus Buckeye, we have Herbie Husker.
You have the O, we bring the N (as in bring it ON!).
Your team has played a few games in Arizona in recent years, our fans pay a radio station in Phoenix to broadcast ALL of our games.
You have Drew Carey, we had Johnny Carson (okay so we might actually be one up on you here).
You dot the I, our band, well our band doesn’t really do anything (guess we’re even).
In short Buckeye fans, what you’re getting is your long lost twin brother, separated at birth, and who grew up in humbler circumstances. I find it strangely poetic that the impetus for the move to the Big Ten was a meeting between Jim Tressel and Tom Osborne in Lincoln back in April. We know you, and you know us. Like you, we enjoy the passion, tradition, and history of college football. We bring a regional fan base every bit as devoted and passionate as yours, and with the same tradition of sportsmanship unmatched in college football.
Want proof? Last September I watched with pride the salute and tribute you gave to the Navy football team at Ohio Stadium, and thought it one of the best and classiest things I had ever seen in sports since Nebraska Cornhusker fans 80,000 strong giving a standing ovation to the University of Texas football team in 1997 for breaking Nebraska’s then 47 game home winning streak. The goose bumps for me were real in both instances.
I miss my home back west, but it is wonderful knowing that my home now is so much like my home then. I’m looking forward to our teams getting to know each other better.
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