There is NO place like Nebraska
Two weeks ago, I accompanied my little brother to an event that’s considered life-changing around here. My father was with me for mine when I was 13. A child’s first Nebraska Cornhusker football game is a Big Deal around here.
Ask any one of the 85,000 fans in Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium, and they all remember when their first Husker game was. Maybe it was decades ago, in the early part of Nebraska’s incredible streak of 296 consecutive sellouts*. Maybe, in the case of a guy in my row today, it was only a few years ago because he grew up in Virginia and married into Husker Nation.
That guy was the best. He’s only been a Nebraska fan since he got married, but he’s awesome. He came into our section on crutches, and later revealed that he needs leg surgery but is waiting until after the season so he can follow the Huskers to Manhattan, Kan., next week, come back to Lincoln for the game against Colorado the day after Thanksgiving, and then to whatever bowl game Nebraska finds itself playing in December. Yep, this guy was born to be a Husker fan.
*side note about that sellout streak: Every home game since 1962 has sold out - today was #296 - despite numerous expansions to Memorial Stadium’s capacity. Go back to 1962 to see what kind of changes the world has witnessed since the last time there was a single unsold seat in Lincoln…newspapers printing in color was a new thing, as was a human orbiting the earth. East Germans had to worry about that pesky Berlin Wall. The first Wal-Mart opened in that year, ditto for Target. The Beatles released their very first single, and the first James Bond movie was released. Before 1962, the term “personal computer” had never been used in the media. ZIP codes didn’t exist yet, and gas cost about $.40 per gallon. Our president-elect was crawling around in diapers. This sellout streak has spanned 9 U.S. presidencies. Incredible.
Next to me today was an adorable 8-year-old boy with red hair, freckles, and a few missing teeth who braved the cold today to attend his first game with his dad. I’m always delighted to hear that someone is attending his/her first game, and this kid was certainly no exception. He never complained about the cold, but occasionally needed his dad to help him put his hood back up (a difficult task when one’s little hands are bundled up in mittens!), never asked to leave his seat to go buy snacks or find somewhere warm to stand, high-fived everyone whenever Nebraska scored, and asked his dad lots of questions.
This kid being there was such a delight, and an opportunity to think back to my own first Husker game. I don’t even have to look up the date; I’ll remember forever that it was October 27, 2001. Nebraska hosted Oklahoma, which at that time was a matchup between #1 and #2 in the country. My dad and I got up long before the sun rose to drive from our home in western NE to Lincoln for the 11:00 kickoff.
It was the first sporting event I attended after 9/11, and there were American flags everywhere. Dad bought a flag decal for his car window from a random charity, and that sticker is still there (it’s my car now). I’ve been to many, many Husker games since that day, but the loudest and quietest I’ve ever heard that stadium were both that day.
Before the game there was a moment of silence to honor and remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It was the only such moment I’ve ever witnessed in which everyone was actually silent; usually there are people who continue their conversations and keep moving around the stadium, but not that day. The 77,000+ that day stood as silent as they could be in one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen.
That silence turned to an absolute frenzied roar later as quarterback Eric Crouch, that year’s Heisman winner, caught a touchdown pass to seal the 20-10 victory for the Huskers. You can sort of get a sense of that roar in the background of the video. I remember feeling the stadium shake under my feet.
A Nebraskan child’s first Husker game is as big a rite of passage as any; most of us hold that day in the same level of personal importance with the first time we drove, first kiss, high school graduation, and so on. I’m so grateful that my first was not only a win, but a classic chapter of one of the country’s finest rivalries. The befreckled 8-year-old next to me today has a lot of greatness to remember from the Husker win over Kansas. We had a defensive lineman take the field with the offense and grab a touchdown pass late in the game. A B-2 flew over during the National Anthem. Joe Ganz threw for 324 yards. The Huskers are now bowl-eligible. That’ll be something fun for our little first-timer to tell his classmates on Monday, right?