 I'm Nathan Meyer, I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and I want to thank you for joining us today at the Nebraska State Fair for a special Nebraska lecture with Husker-esque expert and enthusiast Mike Babcock. As part of the university's 150th anniversary celebration this year, UNL is hosting a series of talks about the university's history and its impact on the state. We are excited to bring this speaker series from Lincoln to Grand Island, especially at one of our state's iconic events. And we want to thank Humanities Nebraska and the National Endowment for the Humanities for providing the financial support necessary to help make this expanded programming possible. I also want to welcome the guests joining us via the live web stream and through Facebook Live. If you're using Twitter during this event, share your posts using the hashtag Neb Lecture. We would love to hear about your favorite Husker football moments. After the lecture, I will moderate a question and answer session with today's speaker. And after that, we hope you'll stick around to enjoy some nifty 150 ice cream from the UNL Dairy Store and to attend a reception that's hosted by the Nebraska Alumni Association. Now please help me welcome Chancellor Ronnie Green, who will introduce today's lecture. Well good afternoon and welcome both to the Nebraska State Fair and to our Nebraska 150th lecture for the University of Nebraska. What you may not know is that both the University of Nebraska and the State Fair of Nebraska are celebrating their 150th anniversaries this year. We like the State Fair, then the state kind of grew up together. Our state celebrated its 150th anniversary two years ago, you might remember. For statehood in the state, two years later in 1869, the people of the state established the University of Nebraska. And we've had a great 150 year history since. We've been celebrating it all of this year since our official birthday date of February 15th earlier in the year and we're excited to be here celebrating it together with the State Fair this coming week. So welcome. We have a special treat for you today. As Nate said, we've had a series of what we've called N150 lectures that started in January. We've had one per month. This is the first one we've done off campus at an off campus location in the state. We're going to be at the State Fair doing that together. They've been co-sponsored this year with Humanities Nebraska and we want to thank Humanities Nebraska for helping to support our 12 lectures during the year telling different aspects of the story of the history of the University over these 15 decades. Before I introduce our speaker, I do want to draw attention to this space that you're in. We're very proud of this space. When the State Fair was moving from Lincoln 10 years ago, the 10th year we've been here in Grand Island with the Fair, there was the desire to develop some new kind of learning space for agriculture and for natural resources. And the last building that was put in place on the new fairgrounds here, thinking the third year of the Fair's run, was this raising Nebraska building that you're in. So on the other end is Game and Parks with learning about natural resources and that kind of environment. And in this end, you learn about ag and everything to do with our ag industry as an ag leader here in the state, our state in the industry and the raising Nebraska exhibit that you're in is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It's open year round for school children, staff, our University of Nebraska extension and put in place with partners from across the industry as you see. So surely take it in while you're here and learn about the ag industry as well. It's a real pleasure to introduce our our storyteller. I'm not going to call him a lecturer because I don't think he wants to be called a lecturer. Mike Babcock to you today. Now, one of the things you may not know is that football and of course, you know the legacy of Hustler football in the state and in the nation and the world has been around for 120 of our 150 years in our history started in the late 1800s as a sport here with a with a huge history as you all know that we're so proud of. Today you have the opportunity to hear from one of the experts, Mike Babcock, who is a 40 year career in Hustler Athletics and knowing about Hustler Athletics and the history and the reporting of that in the media. First with the Lincoln Journal star, then with Hustler's illustrated for many years, more recently with the Hail Varsity. So I'm pleased to welcome to the stage to tell these stories to you. Mike Babcock, please join me in welcoming Mike. Thanks Chancellor, appreciate the opportunity to be here. And I just to sort of establish my credibility. 2008 I wrote a history of Nebraska. It's called the Nebraska football vault and the publisher asked me if I would go out would go to Omaha to for a book signing when the book came out. And I said, I guess I would and he said, well, you know, we're gonna have Tommy Frazer that's gonna be there with you. And, you know, an hour or so signing books at Costco in Omaha. So my wife and I, we went to Omaha, never been to Costco before. We walk in and we say, where's the book signing? Well, just go straight to the back. You can't miss it. So we walked to the back. There's a line of people always getting ready to get book signed. And a young lady comes up to us and she said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, I'm here for the book signing. And she said, well, there's the line right there for the book signing. And I said, no, see, I'm the person that wrote the book. I'm really sorry. This is where we're gonna have you. So Tommy Frazer wasn't there yet. When Tommy got there, I said to Tommy, you'll sit here first and then I'll sit next to you so that when they come through they'll get to you first and so he said, okay, that would work. And so a couple of people come through and probably two or three times that happened, they came through. Tommy signed it and they started to walk away. And Tommy said, this is a gentleman that wrote the book, don't you want his signature? And the response was, no, that's okay, I'm fine. And they took off. So there's my credibility right there, you can see that. And the other thing I guess is that when you're dealing with really old history, there's nobody around to refute whether you're right or wrong, so that's kind of the area where I'm the expert. Although with the internet now it's, you can check those kinds of things. You know, what I would probably say is, and as I was preparing for this, I had typed up about six pages worth of notes and my wife said, wait a minute, you're gonna have to get some kind of focus here. You can't just be going on and on and on. So I'm probably not gonna talk a whole lot about the Devaney Osborne era. I'm probably gonna go back a little further than that to the beginnings of the program. But before I do, I wanna point out some things that you're probably familiar with. But Nebraska ranks currently number six all time among major colleges in football wins, 897 victories. The only schools that are ahead of Nebraska on that list are Michigan, Ohio State, of course, Texas, of course, Alabama, and Notre Dame. And if you counted some, there are eight victories that Nebraska used to have that are no longer counted. They were against Lincoln High in the early 1900s, and they're now treated as exhibitions, which I think is appropriate. But if you also look at some of the early years of some of the teams, Notre Dame, for example, Notre Dame has a couple of its victories were against high schools. You scheduled what you could do. Notre Dame counts those. So if I were to add Nebraska's eight victories against Lincoln High, Nebraska would be tied with Alabama for a fourth. And I don't think Alabama had any listing of high schools there. But number six all time in victories. As we all know, 368 consecutive sellouts that started with the Missouri game in 1962, Bob Devaney's first season. There were 348 consecutive national polls that Nebraska was in. That's an NCAA record. Of those 348, 293, Nebraska was in the top 10. And that stretched from 1981 to 2002. The second on the list, Florida State, 211. So you go 348 to 11. We know that Nebraska's had eight Outland Trophy winners who have won nine Outland Trophies because Dave Remington won it twice. The only person to have won it twice, that's more than any other school. Nebraska's had five Lombardy Award winners. That's second only to Ohio State. Nebraska has five national championships, has played in 53 bowl games, which is third most of any program. And of course, three Heisman Trophy winners. And for the Grand Island folks here, Bobby Reynolds finished fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1950. He was the first Husker to rush for 1,000 yards, 1,342 yards he rushed for in nine games. He led the nation in scoring that year, his Consensus All-American scored 157 points. 22 touchdowns, 25 extra points. I hope that adds up to 157, had a remarkable sophomore season. He did all this as a sophomore. Then he had problems, he got a shoulder separation at Camp Curtis. Missed three games his junior year. Then he got the line that they used to mark the field, got it in his eyes, missed some more games. He only played 13 games his final two seasons at Nebraska because of injuries. So he would have been in that list. Tom Novak played at a time when Nebraska, it was a dark period in Nebraska football. But Tom Novak was a four-time all-conference first team selection. Only Husker that's ever been so honored that way. Tom Osborn, Bob Devaney got the five national championships, we all know that Tom Osborn in his 25 seasons as coach, 255, 49, and one. He had one season in which he lost to a team that finished with a losing record. 1992 Iowa State managed to beat Nebraska. That was Tommy Fraser's freshman year. A remarkable record, Bob Devaney, 101, 20, and two. Back-to-back 100-yard victory coaches. Hadn't happened before, double 100. All of these, Tom Osborn, 13 conference championships in his 25 years, nine of those outright. Bob Devaney, eight conference championships in 11 years, seven outright. All these things speak to the success the program had. All of these things, for the most part, happened after Bob Devaney came here. But if you go back to the beginning, there were some pretty good coaches. There were some very successful coaches. I want to start off with the second year that Nebraska played. The first year Nebraska played a game was in 1890. The Omaha YMCA, they played that game up in Omaha. Nebraska agreed to do it for two-thirds of the gate to cover travel expenses from Lincoln Dome Mall. Nebraska won the game. Nebraska won later in February. Nebraska played Dome and won that game as well. So undefeated that first season. In 1883, the student newspaper wrote an editorial saying Nebraska couldn't become a real college until it had a football team. But it took them seven years to get there. But I'm going to talk about the first time Nebraska played a team from out of state. And who was it? Iowa. 1891, Iowa. And before I talk about the game a little bit, I want to, this is always interested me. And it was in the university records and it was in the media guide. You could get this information in the media guide until 2001. And I think we got it changed because it wasn't accurate. But the media guide always had a note that said, Nebraska had a coach for one game that year. And his name was T.U. Lyman, Theron Lyman. And the footnote was that Theron Lyman was the head coach at Iowa. And it was such a sporting gesture that he helped prepare Nebraska to play Iowa. And there's a history of Nebraska football. It was written in 1940. It's called 50 Years of Nebraska Football. It's written by Frederick Ware and Greg McBride, both of the World Herald. And I've got a quote from that book in which they said, Iowa, this is a quote, Iowa wanted a good contest and lent its teacher in an effort to ensure it. And then there was another history of Nebraska football written in 1966 called Go Big Red. And it said that this decision to loan Theron Lyman to Nebraska was with a magnanimity seldom equaled in the game's history. Okay, that's quite a deal, right? Giving their coach to prepare you. And I was looking at that, I kind of thought, I saw it a lot of times. I was, well, it's really interesting that they would do that. And then I got to thinking Iowa City is over here and Lincoln's over here. How did Theron Lyman get from here to here and get back to help his team or did he just prepare Nebraska? So I pulled out an Iowa history, history of Iowa football, because I wanted to see what kind of record Theron Lyman had. Because if he's coaching both teams in this game, he's gonna get a win and a loss, it turns out he would have got a loss if he was coaching Nebraska. And I can't find any place where he ever coached there. He never coached at Iowa. Then I'm reading this section, Iowa's early rival before Nebraska was Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. And Iowa played Grinnell College in 1889, 1890, and 1891 before the Nebraska game and lost to Grinnell in each of those three games. Grinnell was known at the time as Iowa College. And Theron Lyman was the star player for Iowa College in Grinnell. And he was listed as a student coach in 1891. So with a magnanimity seldom equalled in the game's history, it was in fact someone from Iowa's rival who came across the river to help prepare Nebraska to play Iowa. He wasn't Iowa's coach, and yet that story had been carried along. So Theron Lyman, he prepared Nebraska, but it didn't happen that way. And it's been changed subsequent. So now the footnote says he was the coach at Iowa College, even though he was a student coach there. The other thing that it showed is that he had the background in Yale, which meant that he must have been pretty young at Yale because he was 22 when he prepared Nebraska and he had played three years at Grinnell College. So he must have been in his early teens when he went to Yale University. It never did clear that up. After he finished at Grinnell, he went on to Wisconsin, spent two years there, captained the team for two or three seasons, and got a law degree. Okay, so he got the game here. You're playing in Omaha. You've got this one game coach from Grinnell. Estimates were, depending upon the newspaper account, 2,500 to 3,000 people showed up. The game was delayed for 45 minutes because somebody forgot to put up the goalposts. They didn't put any ropes around the field, and there's no bleachers. So the field is surrounded by Nebraska fans who tried to intimidate the Iowa players by going on the field. One newspaper account said there were two policemen trying to keep the people off the field. Another newspaper account, I think the Morning World Herald, said there were no policemen. They could have used anywhere from 11 to 20 policemen to try to keep these people off the field from trying to intimidate the Iowa players, which didn't work because Iowa won the game 22 to nothing. One of the players that played in that game for Nebraska was George Flippen. He was the first African American letter in a sport at Nebraska. He lettered three years at Nebraska, 1892, 93, 94. It's unclear, apparently, they didn't start giving letters until 1892. Although you can find a couple of guys who had letters from 1891. I have not figured that one out yet. But Flippen played prominently in that game. And according to Arthur Ash's definitive hard road to glory, it's a three volume set about African American athletes. George Flippen was only the fifth African American athlete at a predominantly white university to earn a letter. Missouri in 1892, good old Missouri, forfeited to Nebraska rather than play against an African American. The Western Interstate University Football Association, of which Nebraska was a member, along with Iowa, Missouri and Kansas, said, if you ever do that again, you're going to be fine. They changed the rules, so that it was only a four foot in 1892. But any subsequent attempt to refuse to play would cost you money. So that wasn't a problem from that point on. George Flippen was so popular on campus that he was elected president of the Palladian Literary Society, which was a very prominent organization on campus. Nebraska had its first paid coach while he was a player. In 1893, Frank Crawford was paid roughly $500, which included some tuition and some other things. George Flippen was elected captain in 1894. Frank Crawford said he couldn't be the captain because he wasn't smart enough. Yet he was president of the Palladian Literary Society. Frank Crawford didn't last, he was gone. Flippen was followed by, here's another inconsistency, three African American football lettermen and one basketball letterman. The basketball letterman was Overwood, he was lettered in 1908, 9 and 10. The football letter winners were Bill Johnson, who was listed as having lettered in 1900, 1904, 1905, and 1906. More about that in a minute. Robert Taylor, who was who lettered in 1905. And Clinton Ross, who lettered in 1913. Okay, now Bill Johnson, lettered in 1900, 04, and 05, or in 6. I couldn't figure this out because the student yearbook from 1905 said the previous two years prior to 1904, he was a star player at Lincoln High School. So if I'm to believe the letterman's record, he lettered at Nebraska. Then he went and played for Lincoln High for two years. And then he came back and played it in Nebraska for three. I don't know how that got confused. But, okay, so we've got Flippen, Star Sea African American letterman. We've got the first paid coach. We've got the first two years, 1890, 1891, they're called the old gold knights. Gold is the color. For some reason, somebody got all excited when Nebraska opened the season in 1892 against Illinois, first victory against an out of state school, by the way. Somebody, this is according to the Lincoln newspapers, red is the new color. Red is the new color because people showed up wearing red ties. One guy had a vest that was white and red, half and half. And so, and the nickname then, according to the Lincoln paper, was bug eaters. They were the bug eaters and their color was red. It was kind of up to the sports writer, you know, what the nickname was. The sports writers just kind of did whatever they wanted. And so Nebraska was called the bug eaters and Nebraska was called the tree planters. Nebraska was the tree planters state. Initially, the legislature made it the tree planters state. And they stayed in 1895, they were the antelopes, they were the rattlesnake boys. That would, you know, how would you like to play the rattlesnake boys? If you look at some of the pictures of some of those teams with those helmets with a thing, they look like rattlesnake boys or axe murderers. You know, I mean, it was a, they were a tough bunch of people. And it was a rough game. 1905, in 1905, there was a player, his name was Earl Eager. He weighed about 150 pounds. They called him dog. And the rules allowed this. And again, this is according to newspaper accounts, they get down by the goal and they'd pick up dog and try to throw him in the end zone. So hey, I guess he was, he scored some touchdowns by getting thrown in the end zone over the line of scrimmage. 1897, I found another newspaper account. They're still called the bug eaters. And you might know the story about it. We've got a bigger corn here. But Sy Sherman, who was a sports writer for the Lincoln Star, decided that he didn't like bug eaters. He didn't like the rattlesnake boy. He didn't like any of this stuff. He liked corn huskers. Now you go back to 1894, a writer for the Palladian Literary Society got a sign to cover the Nebraska Iowa football game. Thought it was beneath him. Didn't want to do it, but he did. Nebraska won the game. He used the term, we have met the corn huskers, two words, and they are ours in a disparaging way. Sy Sherman thought that was a pretty good nickname. So in 1899, he starts using it as a nickname for the Nebraska teams. Already in 1895, I think Scarlett and Cream had become the school colors. In 1900, Sy Sherman and Albert Watkins Jr., who was a journalism professor, got it through that that became the official nickname for the athletic teams, the corn huskers. In 1907, the student yearbook, which had been the sombrero, they changed the name to the corn husker. And in 1945, the state legislature made Nebraska the corn husker state. So Sy Sherman was the guy that started it all. He was eventually inducted into the Letterman's Club. Okay, so I want to jump forward now. And one other thing I would mention, a Dome football player was killed playing football in 1897. That's how violent this game was. And there was some thought about, you know, should this be continued or not. It was. Nebraska's coach in 1900 and 1905 was a guy named Bummy Booth. I think his background was Princeton. Always good to be an Ivy League person at that time, because that's where that was sort of the birth of football. Rutgers and Princeton had played in 1869, it was first game. Bummy Booth comes in, he's the coach. He coaches until 1905. His records 46, 8, and 1. He has a 24 game winning streak during that stretch, 20 of which are shutouts, including a 6-0 shutout against Minnesota, which was sort of the standard. If you could beat Minnesota, that was good. Nebraska didn't do it very much early on. And after 1905, he indicated that he was going to leave and the student newspaper said, yeah, it's probably good, it's about time he left. You know, maybe he needed to do some things like recruit players and need bigger players and whatever. So he's gone. Amos Foster's here for one year, he's gone. King Cole, everybody seemed to have a nickname back then, King Cole. William C. King Cole from Marietta College comes in as a coach in 1907. That's the same year that the Missouri Valley Conference was formed and Nebraska's involved in that with Iowa. Iowa had dual membership for a while in the Western Conference, which was to become the Big Ten. Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Washington of St. Louis. That was the original of the Missouri Valley Conference, 1907. 1908, Nebraska Field was built. William King Cole, he does okay. But not good enough, not good enough. The Missouri Valley Conference passes a rule that you got to have an all season coach, got to be your round, got to pay the guy. So William C. King Cole says, I'm out of here, he's gone. His last game, it's kind of like the weather. His last game, 119 to nothing against Haskell Indian School. Pretty impressive victory, he had to 119. So he leaves, they hire Jumbo Steen. Ewald O. Jumbo Steen. Now I don't think anybody called him Jumbo to his face. His first game, they beat Carney 117 to nothing, so it's a little bit impressive. Jumbo Steen is the winningest coach by percentage in Nebraska football history. 913, his teams won 35 games, lost two, and tied three. He coached from 1911 to 1915. He was called Jumbo because he had big feet, this is according to the student year book. He was six foot four, he's a big man. He had played against Nebraska basketball in 1908, had scored 28 points for Wisconsin in a 43 to four victory against our boys. And he had been coaching and the athletic director at Ripon College before he came to Nebraska. Nebraska hired him for $2,000. He has his great record, he wins the Missouri Valley Conference title. I think all of his seasons that he's here, there is talk of building at this point a concrete and steel stadium because there is so much interest. He beats Minnesota, and up to that point, Foster didn't beat him. King Cole tied him once and lost three times. Ruth was one and four against him, didn't play him one year. But in the third year, first two years, he loses to Minnesota. Third year he beats him, 1913. When Nebraska played Minnesota in 1912 in Minneapolis, he had his assistant coach, Owen Frank, take photographs of the Michigan shift. I don't know, I think they had the tackles in the backfield and they'd all of a sudden jump up to the line of scrimmage and then they snapped the ball. And he had his assistant coach take pictures of that shift. And so preparing for Minnesota in 1913, he used pictures of the shift to prepare for Minnesota. And he won the game seven to nothing. And it set off a near riot in Lincoln celebration that lasted for a couple of days. Henry Williams, who was the head coach at Michigan, or Minnesota, I'm sorry, was so upset by it, he dropped Nebraska from the schedule. He wouldn't play him again. They weren't on the schedule consistently again till the 1930s, because Williams would have no part of that. That's how Nebraska began playing Notre Dame. The last year that steam was the coach. And again, he didn't take kindly to, I'm sure, Jumbo. There was an entry in the student yearbook that said that after one of the games, the student newspaper editor had written that the Huskers had played well because they had a lot of steam behind them, playing on his name. And the yearbook said that Jumbo's steam went charging into the student newspaper office and, quote, devastated the sports editor. And the next day, the sports editor resigned from the paper. So Jumbo was not someone to be messed with. And the story was that the players that even had, if you came out, if you were hurt, you never played again. So guys were playing with minor broken bones and it was a tough bunch of people that played for him. Why did he leave? Indiana offered him, at that point, he's making $3,500 a year. In comes Indiana and says, we'll pay you $4,500 if you'll come to Indiana. So the business people, football's good for business even back then. Businessmen get together and say, look, we'll make up the difference of $3,500 to $4,250. We can do that if you'll stay. And steam said, well, yeah, I'd stay for that. And the university faculty said there's no way that a football coach is going to make more money than we do, than administrators do. It's not going to happen. Too much emphasis on football, it didn't happen. So he went to Indiana, he left for Indiana. But you're playing Notre Dame now. Nebraska plays Notre Dame from 1915 to 1925. Notre Dame loves it because it's big money. You know, Nebraska packs that Nebraska field. They split the money. Memorial Stadium is built in 1923, got an even bigger venue. Notre Dame likes it. But the problem is that the Klan is big in Southeast Nebraska at that time. The treatment of the Notre Dame fans gets progressively, or I don't know, progressive is the word, but it degenerates. It gets worse and worse. There is a, and by the way, the four horsemen, you know, they were identified as such by Grant Leroyce in 1924. But they played those, that backfield played against Nebraska three times. The four horsemen together in three years only lost two games, both to Nebraska, one tie in there, I think. But it got so bad that Nebraska even, the Notre Dame fans that came to Lincoln said they felt uncomfortable. The administrators felt uncomfortable in the stadium and Notre Dame ended it. Said that's it, no more. So Nebraska Notre Dame didn't play again until the late 1940s. So Jumbo steam's gone, Doc Stewart comes in. Jumbo ends up with 29 game unbeaten streak when he leaves. It continues up to 34, which I think is a school record. They go through some coaches, you know, what's gonna happen? You get to 1928, and Nebraska breaks off from the, okay, I'll wrap this up. Nebraska pulls out of the Missouri Valley Conference and forms the big six. You know, it's Nebraska, it's Kansas State, it's Kansas, it's Missouri, it's Iowa State, who am I forgetting? Oklahoma, right? Interesting story how Oklahoma got in the conference too. And the Missouri Valley, they suspend play in 1918 because of the war. 1919, the Missouri Valley Conference has a rule about you have to play games on campus, and Nebraska schedules Oklahoma, which is not a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, schedules Oklahoma in Omaha. And a doubleheader, Craton's plays Marquette in one game and Nebraska plays Oklahoma in the other game. Because Nebraska scheduled the game off campus, Missouri Valley Conference throws them out of the conference. So 1919, Nebraska's not in the conference. 1920, Nebraska's not in the conference because they had, they were tossed out because they had scheduled that game. Who replaces Nebraska in the conference? Oklahoma. So Nebraska and Oklahoma become conference rivals when Nebraska is readmitted in 1921, they petition and say, hey, we're sorry, back in. So Nebraska now, so now you've got, you move step forward, you're in, you've got the big, you've got the big six. The coach that Nebraska hires is DX Bible. Nebraska tries to hire Newt Rockney, he's not interested. But he says, you know, you ought to, you ought to hire DX Bible. So DX Bible comes in, he wins six conference championships in eight years. And Texas offers him a better deal. And he's from Texas and so he says, that's the only reason I would go anywhere other than stay at Nebraska is if Texas called. So he leaves, he says, why don't you hire Biff Jones? Nebraska hires Biff Jones, who's a military guy. He comes in, gets Nebraska to the Rose Bowl after the 40 season. The 41 Rose Bowl, Nebraska plays, loses to Stanford 21 to 13. Bob Devaney always said he was at Nebraska for several years before he figured out that Nebraska had lost that game. Because fans were so passionate about, they got to the Rose Bowl, 39 of the 40 players on that Rose Bowl team were Nebraska players. From Nebraska, the other guy was from Kansas. People had great, I mean, there was great passion for it. 1941, after the Bowl, Biff Jones is called back to military duty. Which he ends up being at the Military Academy, coordinating athletics there. So Nebraska goes from that point on, in the 20 years that follow, Nebraska goes through seven coaches. Bernie Masterson, for example, former Husker from Lincoln, Nebraska. Coaches three years, they don't renew his contract. Get out of here, you know, you're not winning. During those 20 years after Biff Jones, seven coaches, Nebraska's record, season record is three winning seasons, 17 losing seasons and 1,500 season. So there's 21 years there, counting the last year of Biff Jones. So, you got Bobby Reynolds in there in 1950, got Bill Glasford in there. You know, Bill Glasford has some success. He's the one that has the winning seasons and the 500 season. But he has a player revolt. The alums convinced the players to sign a petition to get rid of him. He overcomes that, sticks around, has an option to continue to extend his contract there for 1955, says, I don't need this, I'm out of here. So the higher-peat Elliot, who was 29 years old, been an assistant coach at Oklahoma, youngest head coach in the country. He brings in Bill Jennings as an assistant coach. Jennings had played at Oklahoma, had been an assistant coach at Oklahoma. And in the mid-50s, when there was an investigation into Oklahoma recruiting, Bill Jennings was the guy that took the fall for it. They got him a job working for an oil company in Dallas, off the staff. He'd been out of coaching. Pete Elliott hires him back. Pete Elliott comes to Nebraska. They lose this, the spring game was a varsity alumni game. It's the only time Nebraska ever lost the alumni game. Nebraska used to beat by the alumni 14 to nothing. So he figured it's not starting too well for Pete Elliott. He does manage a four and six season and he's out. He takes a job at Cal, so they promote Bill Jennings. So now he's the head coach. Bill could really recruit, but he never had a winning season. Things just go south on him, but he had a big upset. 1959, he ends Oklahoma's 74 game conference on Beaton Street. There were two ties in that street. But 1961, you're out of here. You can't win. That's when they hire Bob Devaney. So I did get to Bob Devaney. And I want to say one thing about this, because I read this. I was looking, trying to verify some stuff. And I saw this on Wikipedia, said that Bob Devaney was their fourth choice of athletic director, Tippi Dye. That's not true. He was the second choice, actually. Bob was recommended by Duffy Doherty. Nebraska had tried to get Duffy Doherty to come from Michigan State because the chancellor at Nebraska, Clifford Hardin, had been an ag professor at Michigan State, new Duffy Doherty. Tippi Dye wanted to hire Hank Fulberg. Tippi Dye came from Wichita. Hank Fulberg was his coach at Wichita. He didn't get, Fulberg took a job at Texas A&M. So we got Duffy Doherty saying, I'm not interested, but why don't you look into this guy at Wyoming, Bob Devaney. He coached for us. He'd be the guy. So with the recommendation of Clifford Hardin through Duffy Doherty and all this, Nebraska, Bob Devaney is one of the finalists after Fulberg along with Ray Nagel and John Ralston. Ralston is the coach at Utah State. Nagel's the coach at Utah. They're all from this same conference with Wyoming. Bob comes in to interview, comes in under an assumed name. Don Bryan always told me that Bob Devaney was staying with the people right next door to him and he had no idea because it was, he came in under an assumed name. Mr. Roberts, I think he said it was. And they hire Bob Devaney from Wyoming except that he's got a contract that runs beyond, Wyoming wasn't gonna let him out of the contract. Took till February for Bob to finally get released from his contract at Wyoming to come here. He already had assistance here trying to start recruiting. And from that point on, it was success. Last thing I'll say, and you may know this, but two things about Bob and Tom. It was not a straight rise to success for either one of them. Bob came in and immediately got Nebraska to bowl game but he went six and four back to back in 1967 and 1968. Alums said, get rid of some of those assistant coaches. We can't be going six and four. He said, I'm not gonna do it. Bob was loyal to people that were loyal to him. Petition was circulated in Omaha among alums to get rid of Bob. Bob said always, his secretary was responsible for all of his mail and she'd go through it and the bad ones she'd throw away and the good ones he'd see. So he said he never knew about the petition. If he had, he probably would have signed it himself. Of course you could say that afterwards. Then you have Tom Osburn who replaces him and Bob's the athletic director. By 1967, he's both so he makes his hand-picked choice. Tom Osburn, people look at that and say, straight rise to that national championships and he was 60 and three his last five years. Could have actually had four, could maybe had five national titles. 1978, things were so bad. Couldn't beat Oklahoma, can't beat Oklahoma, can't beat Oklahoma. Finally beats Oklahoma in 78 and then the next week loses in Missouri. Can't beat Oklahoma. So in 1978, Tom looks at the Colorado job. Bill Mallory gets fired. Tom gets to the point where he and Nancy, his wife, go to Colorado so he can meet with the players. And the story he told, and I'm sure it was more complex than this, but he said, you know, talking to those players and realizing I'd be coaching them against the guys that I had recruited to Nebraska, I just couldn't do it. So he decides not to accept the job at Colorado, comes back to Nebraska, sticks around. In the late 80s, again it was like, Tom once told us after a bowl game lost to Miami, it was almost like, is the game passing me by? Cause people were complaining. They run the ball too much, you know? You need to throw it more. He thought that, you know, is the game really passing me by? Stuck it out. You know, had that running offense, that option offense, cause he had to play the way Oklahoma did to be able to beat Oklahoma. Changed his defense. You gotta be more aggressive on defense. Changed it to a 4-3 base so you could play those teams like Miami and the bowl games. And the rest is history. Tom, national championships. Three in his last four years. I consider it a blessing in my working life to have dealt with Bob Devaney as athletic director and Tom as a coach. And, you know, everything that followed, I think it's all part of the Nebraska tradition. But, you know, that's the heart of it there, I think. 1997, we're looking to get it back. I think Scott Frost is probably a good step in the right direction. And, as I said, my wife's heard me say this before. Bob Dylan did a concert in Pershing Auditorium one time. And, you know, he played a song, and then he goes, well, that's it. And he walks off the stage. That's the way he was. Well, that's it. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Mike. That was really great. We appreciate the historical story. The historical story you told of Husker football from the early days through the modern era. I think you deserve extra kudos for powering through the weather announcements. So, thanks for that. Are you willing to stick around and answer a couple of questions? I'll certainly make up an answer if I don't have one. If you have a question for Mike, let me know, raise your hand. I'll get this microphone over to you and you can try and stump him. Anyone? Was it Devaney's staff in total from Wyoming that came here initially? Let me think about this a second. Yes, I think he brought everybody with him and then there were two people that he kept on staff that had been here. One was Cleet Fisher, who was, actually there was a big movement to hire Cleet Fisher. He'd been a high school coach in the state and there was a lot of support from the high school coaches in the state to hire him but Bob kept him on staff and he was an important part of the recruiting in the state. And the other coach was George Kelly who had just come to Nebraska. I think when Marquette dropped its football program but I think Bob brought everybody with him from Wyoming. I'm trying to think of maybe there was one that stuck around to be the coach out there but no, I think essentially his staff came with him and it was quite the, you know, the thing about Bob was he was extremely loyal to people that were loyal to him and you know, I don't know if you remember the, there was controversy over Moaiba basketball coach she'd had a practice at Mabel Lee Hall and he covered the windows so nobody could see what it was and there was a big movement to get rid of him, administration wanted to get rid of him and Bob stuck with him for a while and then he found out that Moaiba had not told him the truth about this thing and Bob told me one day, you know, with an expletive he said, if he would have just told me that's what he was doing, you know we would have been okay with it we would have figured something out so it was that kind of loyalty and I think that's why he brought his assistants, you know Mike Corgan was with him the entire time Jim Ross was his right hand man forever Melton Corgan, who else am I forgetting? Carl Selmer, that was a great group of assistant coaches there were some, you know, some as with any change I think when Tom was hired not everybody thought that Tom should have been the guy not everybody on staff thought that they should be there's a little bit different situation then but when Bob came in, I think there was everybody was pretty much happy with whatever he did when he, you know, however he did it and he was such a gregarious guy I think that helped a lot as well Yeah, any other questions for Mike? I'd like to know why Mike, why Nebraska hired Mike Riley Well, you're asking for some insight here that I don't have You know, I felt like I'm gonna say that I would say this about every coach that's been through here and I never, I wouldn't say anything disverging about Bill Callahan, for example and a lot of people would I think Bill Callahan's a great coach I don't think he was a good fit here I think I would say the same thing about Mike Riley I don't think he was a good fit here I think the thought when Sean Eichhorst brought him here was given the resources that he has at Nebraska and given what he did at Oregon State if you could just transplant that with the enhanced resources that he would have here things would work out, that it would be a good thing and I think that there was a fallacy in that that you can't just take Oregon State and move it to Lincoln, Nebraska and figure it's gonna work and that was part of the thing I think that, you know, that Mike tried to do what he had done at Oregon State offensively, defensively or whatever and it just didn't fit what they had here for one thing it didn't fit the players that they had for another thing you know, I don't think that they recruited very well I don't think that their recruiting philosophy fixed what needed to be fixed so it might have seemed like a good idea when Sean did it but when you looked at the dynamic of it you can't move Oregon State to Lincoln, Nebraska that's what it came down to I think Mike Riley is a good coach but you know, one of the things I think it was kind of telling was one of the assistant coaches Cosgrove I think said when the first media availability that we had said basically Oregon State was to the point where they thought they'd gone about as far as they could go it was kind of like the Bummy Booth thing and that they would have been looking for a job anyway had they not come here so it was kind of an unfortunate thing Mike Riley was a genuinely nice guy maybe maybe he looked at it as, you know, I've done a lot here's a great opportunity Nebraska is a, you know, all in kind of thing but Nebraska fans are, you know, they say the greatest fans in the country but like Tom Osborne said, I was never very I was about one seven and four season away from people getting upset it's like Bob Devaney going six and four twice two times, you know, you still have expectations and then when you come in with all that we you know that I mentioned here there are tremendous expectations here I don't know that Mike Riley understood that you have to understand the culture here it's different and I know every school price say that but it is unique here Mike, thank you so much no better way to spend a fall afternoon on Saturday when the Huskers aren't playing in my opinion you shared a lot of 40 years of experience with us and that's incredible look ahead for 40 years what do you see happening in college football or for Nebraska? Boy, you know, that's a good question football itself, you know, because of the health issues, the injury issues the, you know, what's gonna happen as you look at it now I think more and more kids are probably playing soccer which can be a, you do too many headers that can create problems as well but you know, I think parents get more concerned about you know, do I want my child playing football? If you can resolve some of those issues and I don't know if you can or not I think that it, I think for one thing you're not gonna have 300 division one schools playing for a playoff it's gonna, you're gonna narrow it down it's gonna be a smaller group of programs that can afford to compete at a very high level and you're probably gonna have an expanded playoff and that, you know, as TV does it TV is gonna control it more and more it's almost to some extent probably see it more in basketball but to some extent it's becoming very much about the players and not about the teams it becomes more and more that way with recruiting I think it's harder to find kids that wanna play for the school they're either playing for themselves long term or they're playing for the coach that recruited them and that that coach leaves and you know they don't have any loyalty to the school so it's a little bit different there and then the other thing is there's so much money involved in it I think at some point you have to figure out some way that the student athlete gets a little bit more than, and I, you know you can't place a value on education certainly but the amount of money that's generated with TV and all that sort of thing it's gonna have to figure into it as well. All right, Mike, that's great let's give him a round of applause for sharing his time and his expertise this afternoon Thank you, hope you enjoy the fair. I don't know too many people there's some Nebraskans that probably can cite a lot about the history of Hustler football it's in our blood I think but I don't know how many people could stand up here and do what Mike did out of his head without a note walking you through that history and that level of detail was that impressive or what? And to help Mike remember this we'd like to present him a little bit of a token of our appreciation for giving the N-150 lecture it's a framed poster of the announcement of the lecture by give Mike another big round of applause for that great lecture. You know I was sitting back there listening to Mike talk it certainly is an exciting time in Hustler athletics we've got little more than one week before opening kickoff here, a week from today we're pretty proud of the team we're putting together in Hustler athletics and I've listened to the question about leadership leadership's important and we think we have assembled a great leadership team Bill Moose has made some excellent hires in our coaches in football and men's basketball and baseball and gymnastics and tennis and in golf we feel like we're on the path to where we wanna be in Nebraska athletics and we're excited about it.