Go Big Red: The Ultimate Fan's Guide to Nebraska Cornhusker Football
256
Go Big Red: The Ultimate Fan's Guide to Nebraska Cornhusker Football
256eBook
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Overview
Go Big Red covers Nebraska football in a way no other publication has, with personality profiles, anecdotes, and original research, as well as questions of fact and trivia, some of which will test even the most devoted and knowledgeable Cornhusker fans.
Nebraska has enjoyed thirty-six consecutive winning seasons, made twenty-nine consecutive bowl appearances, and won five national championships. During that time, the Cornhuskers have had just two head coaches, Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne.
Without question, this is the golden era of Cornhusker football, and Go Big Red is a celebration of that indisputable fact. It is much more than a trivia book--it goes beyond the hefty and comprehensive media guides published each season by the Nebraska Sports Information Office.
There is a section devoted to the best of Broderick Thomas, the loquacious outside linebacker. And there are also some things you won't remember, or things you might not have known. Can you name all of the assistant coaches on Osborne's first staff in 1973? Can you list Nebraska's starters for the 1941 Rose Bowl game? Do you know how the "Blackshirt" tradition began?
Devaney was a master storyteller, and the book includes a humorous story or two of his. The program became a haven for walk-ons under Osborne, and the book includes an all-walk-on team. Cornhusker football was king long ago. And this book offers insight into that past glory, achieved by the likes of "Jumbo" Stiehm, Ed Weir, and Guy Chamberlin.
All-American Trev Albert, the Butkus Award winner in 1993, has expressed the meaning of Cornhusker football in the introduction, which is an integral part of the book's experience. Reading Go Big Red isn't the same as sitting in Memorial Stadium, awash in red on game day. But it's the next best thing.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250093783 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/11/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Go Big Red
The Complete Fan's Guide To Nebraska Football
By Mike Babcock
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1998 Mike BabcockAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09378-3
CHAPTER 1
CHEER ON THE BUGEATERS:
The Early Years
Dry-goods stores in Lincoln did a brisk business in ribbon sales. It was a "boom," a local newspaper reported. "But only the stock of scarlet and cream was depleted to any extent."
Scarlet and cream were the colors of the University of Nebraska, which was about to play a football game against the University of Illinois on a Saturday in late October 1892.
They were the new school colors, replacing old gold. And "everybody in the remotest degree in sympathy with the Nebraska team" wore them, the newspaper account said. Spectators arrived in carriages "decked out in red and white ... university professors wore the colors, carried flags and got as excited as anyone. Flags with every combination of scarlet and white were swung to the breeze on canes. Red neckties were common, and one fellow even wore a vest half red and half white."
It was a festive event, attracting an estimated 800, including a small but vocal group of students from Doane College in nearby Crete, Nebraska. Illinois had defeated Doane during its visit to Nebraska 20–0 in a game at Omaha, and the Doane students had come to cheer for — and bet on — Illinois.
Nebraska had played only six football games in its two-year history, and four of them were against Doane. In 1891, the schools had met three times, with Nebraska winning twice.
The rivalry between the schools was brief, lasting only until 1896. But it was spirited enough that the Doane students would make the 20-plus-mile trip in order to lend their support to Illinois.
The football game was Nebraska's first in Lincoln against an out-of-state opponent, and a handful of amateur photographers were on hand to record the activity surrounding the historic occasion. The contest met expectations, according to the Daily Nebraska State Journal.
An unidentified reporter, in the hyperbole of the times, described the game as the best "ever seen in Nebraska." That meant it was better than any of the previous six involving Nebraska.
Illinois and Nebraska, referred to in the newspaper account as the "bug eaters," were evenly matched. The bugeaters managed the only score in 90 minutes of play, a touchdown worth four points and a two-point conversion. The key play on the scoring possession was a 25-yard run by George Flippin, the fifth African-American athlete to attend a white university, according to A Hard Road to Glory, Arthur Ashe's history of African-American athletes.
Ironically, Flippin, the son of a freed slave from Port Isabelle, Ohio, didn't earn a degree at Nebraska. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois and attended medical school in Chicago, then returned to Nebraska to set up practice and establish a hospital in Stromsburg.
Flippin helped coach the Nebraska team in 1892. J. S. Williams, an attorney from Omaha, also worked with the bugeaters early in the season, without pay. But they had no coach until 1893, when Frank Crawford, a Yale graduate, was hired at a salary reported to be between $300 and $500.
Crawford's compensation came at least in part in the form of a tuition waiver.
In any case, Flippin's run set up Nebraska's touchdown in the 1892 victory against Illinois. As the teams were leaving the field immediately after the game, George Huff, "the heavyweight of the Illinois team," punched Nebraska's A. B. Jones in the face, "knocking him flat and bringing the blood freely."
Huff's behavior, punctuated by laughter, nearly precipitated a riot. "Had it not been for the chancellor and several professors, violence would have been done the perpetrator," the Daily Nebraska State Journal reported. Police took the names of witnesses and considered arresting Huff.
Nebraska had intended to play host to the Illinois team at a local theater that night, a common courtesy extended to visiting teams. The bugeaters went to the theater, but Illinois, which never issued an apology for the actions of its player, did not. Such was football before the turn of the century.
Quiz 1: There Were Coaches Before Devaney and Osborne
1. Match the Nebraska coaches with the schools at which they played.
1.___ Tom Osborne
A. Western Reserve
2.___ Bob Devaney
B. Nebraska
3.___ E. N. Robinson C. Brown
4.___ Fielding Yost
D. Oklahoma
5.___ W. C. Booth
E. Illinois
6.___ E. O. Stiehm
F. Wisconsin
7.___ E. J. Stewart
G. Hastings College
8.___ E. E. Bearg
H. Princeton
9.___ D. X. Bible
I. Carson-Newman
10.___ Glenn Presnell J. Pittsburgh
11.___ Bill Glassford K. Alma College
12.___ Bill Jennings L. Lafayette
2. Three Cornhusker coaches played collegiately at Michigan. Name them.
3. Match the Nebraska coaches with their nicknames.
1. Fielding Yost ()
A. Snap-It-Up
2. W. C. Booth ()
B. Potsy
3. W. C. Cole ()
C. Ernie
4. E. O. Stiehm ()
D. Jumbo
5. E. J. Stewart ()
E. Bummy
6. Fred Dawson ()
F. Biff
7. Henry Schulte ()
G. Pa, Indian
8. E. E. Bearg ()
H. Doc
9. Lawrence McCeney Jones () I. Hurry-Up
10. George Clark ()
J. King
4. Bill Glassford's nickname was the same as one of those above, but he was never referred to by his nickname at Nebraska because Cornhusker fans had a special place in their hearts for the coach who produced Nebraska's first bowl team. What was Glassford's nickname?
5. Glassford came to Nebraska from what eastern school? Hint: It's a state university, which plays in Division I-AA of the NCAA. Its nickname is Wildcats. This is tough.
6. This Cornhusker coach had a penchant for quoting Scripture. He was a southern gentleman, born and raised in Tennessee. He left to become coach and athletic director at Texas. Who was he?
7. Nebraska's first football coach came from Harvard. He was an instructor in agriculture and bacteriology. He wasn't paid to be the football coach. In fact, he had the title because he brought a football with him from Harvard, to which he returned, probably before Nebraska's second football game against Doane College in February 1891. Who was he?
8. D. X. Bible was Nebraska's football coach from 1929 to 1936. What did his initials stand for?
9. Frank Crawford was Nebraska's first paid football coach, receiving compensation of between $300 and $500, at least part of which was in the form of a tuition waiver. Crawford coached the team in 1893 and 1894, when there were complaints on campus about insufficient funds to pay him. However, after Nebraska lost to Doane in the second game of the 1894 season, it hired the Doane coach to assist Crawford. In 1895, the assistant became the head coach. Who was he?
10. This Cornhusker head coach played for Fielding Yost at Michigan after playing at Marietta College. He was king of the hill at Nebraska from 1907 until 1910. Who was he?
11. This Nebraska head coach came from Oregon State — which Nebraska played in Portland in his first season — and installed a unique offense in which there was no quarterback. There were two fullbacks and two halfbacks. The center called the signals and passed the ball sideways, instead of back between his legs, to the player who would carry it. Who was this coach?
12. After his Cornhuskers defeated Pop Warner's Pittsburgh team 10–0 at Pittsburgh in 1921, a sportswriter described them as "man-eating mastadons." Who was he?
13. Before he came to Nebraska, he was an assistant coach under Bob Zuppke at Illinois. While he was there, he worked with Red Grange, "the Galloping Ghost." Who was this coach?
14. This Cornhusker coach was known as the Little Colonel. Who was he?
15. Biff Jones was the coach of Nebraska's Rose Bowl team. What was his army rank?
16. In 1911, Nebraska tied Michigan 6–6 in Lincoln. Michigan's head coach had earlier spent one season as the head coach at Nebraska. Who was this famous coach?
17. What coach has the best winning percentage in Nebraska history (.913)?
18. Frank Crawford was the first paid football coach in Nebraska history. But Nebraska didn't have a full-time football coach until two decades later. Who was he?
19. D. X. Bible's record as Nebraska's head coach was 50–15–7, a winning percentage of .743. Ten of the 15 losses were against two teams. Bible's record against them was 0–10–2. Name the teams. Hint: They regularly appeared on the schedule but were not conference opponents.
20. The student newspaper wrote of this coach: "He raised Nebraska from a second-rate team among those of the Missouri Valley to a position where even the leaders of the conference look upon her as an opponent to be feared." He had been a practicing attorney in New York City. He coached Nebraska to two undefeated and untied seasons. Name him.
21. By December, 1998, six coaches who spent at least one season as head coach at Nebraska will have been inducted into the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame. Name them.
22. This coach spent two pre-1900 seasons at Nebraska. He was known as the Walter Camp of Brown Football. This is a tough one. Name him. Hint: His middle name was North.
23. Nebraska didn't have a football coach in 1891. But before it played Iowa at Omaha, the Iowa coach spent time working with Nebraska. As a result, Nebraska's records list him as the coach for that season. Despite his help, Iowa defeated Nebraska 22–0. Name this Yale graduate.
24. After Ernie Bearg resigned following the 1928 season, Nebraska went looking for a new head coach. The Cornhuskers hired D. X. Bible at the suggestion of perhaps the most famous coach in college football history. Nebraska had contacted this coach to see if he would be interested. He has the highest winning percentage all-time among coaches with 10 or more seasons. Name him.
25. In 1909, Nebraska lost to Haskell Indian School 16–5 at Lawrence, Kansas. The Haskell coach was a former Cornhusker who earned five football letters. Name him.
The Afro-American Legacy
George Flippin was a big man, weighing 200 pounds. He might not have survived three football seasons at Nebraska otherwise. His race was an issue throughout a distinguished career.
Missouri forfeited to Nebraska in 1892 rather than compete against Flippin, and when Nebraska played Iowa at Omaha in the last of five games that season, the hotel at which the team planned to stay balked at accepting Flippin. "There was the usual row over the admission of Flippin," said a Lincoln newspaper. "But the boys are bent on seeing that the civil rights bill is enforced so far as hotels are concerned."
Flippin's teammates "manfully stood up for their fellow student. The result was that the management yielded so far as to actually allow Flippin to eat in the hotel and pay for it."
The hotel provided a "private dining room," though certainly not as a courtesy to the team, which spent the night in rooms at the Omaha YMCA before returning to Lincoln the next day.
Flippin was the focus on the field as well as off. Nebraska played the Denver Athletic Club at Denver in 1893, and the Denver players "had a special pick at him," according to a newspaper account. "He was kicked, slugged and jumped on, but never knocked out, and gave as good as he received."
The Denver Athletic Club's penchant for punching determined the game's outcome in Nebraska's favor. With 10 minutes remaining and the score tied, the umpire awarded Nebraska possession of the ball as a result of a slugging foul. The Denver team left the field in protest, and the game was forfeited.
Flippin even had to deal with discrimination on his own team. Remarks directed at Flippin attributed to Frank Crawford, Nebraska's first paid football coach, were blatantly bigoted.
At least three other African-Americans played on Nebraska's football teams prior to 1917, when the university established a policy that prohibited African-Americans from participating in extracurricular activities. They were William Newton Johnson, Robert Taylor, and Clint Ross.
William Johnson, a graduate of Lincoln High School, earned letters at Nebraska in 1900, 1904, 1905, and 1906, playing for teams coached by Bummy Booth and Amos Foster, about whom he once said, "That man, he teaches too much trickery." Johnson helped coach and also wrote about the team for the student yearbook. His senior inscription read, "What he nobly thought, he bravely dared."
Taylor came from York County, Nebraska, as did Flippin (after moving from Ohio), and earned one letter, when he was a freshman. He didn't play in every game in 1905 because Nebraska was a member of a loosely organized conference that included Doane and conference rules prohibited the use of freshmen in conference games. The 208-pound Taylor apparently went out for the team again in 1906, but according to the student yearbook, "changes in the rules in some respects lessened the value of his weight on offense and Nebraska coaches worked out no scheme by which they could use the ponderous guard."
Ross also earned only one letter, playing for Jumbo Stiehm's 8–0 team in 1913. Nebraska posted four shutouts and allowed only 28 points total that season. Ross played tackle in a line that included Vic Halligan, who would be the first Cornhusker to earn All-America recognition in 1914.
Based on available records, Ross appears to be the last African-American athlete at Nebraska until the late 1940s, when Tom Carodine, a running back from Los Angeles by way of Boys Town High School, Nebraska, played for Coach Bill Glassford. Carodine did not earn a letter, however.
Dog
Earl Eager, a three-year letterman for Coach Bummy Booth from 1903 to 1905, was a 135-pound halfback whose nickname was Dog. The game was such then that when the Cornhuskers were near the goal line, they sometimes lifted up Dog and attempted to throw him into the end zone.
The strategy of tossing a teammate over the line of scrimmage was commonplace. Some canvas jerseys included straps on the sides that could be used as handles to lift or pull ball carriers.
Eager was none the worse for the experience. In 1906, he was appointed general manager of athletics for the university, a position he held until 1912. When he assumed the newly created position, Nebraska's athletic association was $400 in debt. Within a year, the association showed a $1,000 balance.
Under Eager's direction, Nebraska Field was built. Local businessmen John McDonald and Colonel C. J. Bills made substantial contributions toward construction costs of the playing field, which ran east and west and was located just south of where the South Stadium offices are now.
Nebraska's football teams had played on a makeshift field laid out by a civil engineering class on the northwest corner of the campus. In 1908, and in the early years, the Cornhuskers played at Lincoln's M Street Ball Park — in the area where the municipal swimming pool is now. On October 23, 1909, the first game was played at Nebraska Field. The Cornhuskers and Iowa tied at 6.
Nebraska defeated Notre Dame 14–6 in the final game at Nebraska Field on November 30, 1922.
Winded
Nebraska defeated Oklahoma 24–0 in the first game played at Memorial Stadium on October 13, 1923. Dave Noble, the Cornhusker captain, scored the first touchdown there, on a four-yard run.
On the kickoff following Noble's touchdown, the ball deflated and had to be replaced.
You Are What You Eat
Coach Bummy Booth established the first training table for the football team in 1901. An account in a newspaper explained: "Fatty substances and rich foods are forbidden, as well as tobacco in any form. In order that no man will be tempted beyond his power to resist, the training table has been established."
The Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which was organized in 1907 and evolved into the Big Eight, prohibited training tables for a time, allowing them again in the late 1930s.
Bill Glassford, Nebraska's head coach from 1949 to 1955, established a "fat-man's table" during preseason practice at the dreaded "Camp Curtis." Players whom Glassford considered too heavy were required to eat at the fat-man's table. In the fall of 1951, Wayne "the Bear" Handshy, a 240-pound tackle from Hollywood, California, was convicted by a kangaroo court of taking an extra piece of chicken at the Camp Curtis fat-man's table. Glassford was the prosecutor at Handshy's "trial."
Handshy's teammates Cliff Hopp and Nick Adducci served as judge and defense attorney, respectively. Adducci's defense was imaginative but ineffective. He argued that Handshy could have taken an extra helping of potatoes, which would have meant starch overload, but he opted for the chicken.
Hopp ruled against Handshy and in favor of his coach, of course. Handshy's sentence, which was imposed by Glassford, the prosecutor, was to sing for the team and to run extra laps at practice. The singing constituted cruel and unusual punishment, Handshy's teammates argued — for them.
Dick Goll, a 6-foot-2, 196-pound guard from Tekamah, Nebraska, ate 21 pieces of chicken in one sitting at Camp Curtis in the fall of 1951 without punishment. He was not seated at the fat-man's table.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Go Big Red by Mike Babcock. Copyright © 1998 Mike Babcock. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
TITLE PAGE,COPYRIGHT NOTICE,
PREFACE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
INTRODUCTION • Trev Albert,
1. CHEER ON THE BUGEATERS: The Early Years,
2. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: Cornhusker Style,
3. THE BEST OF THE BEST: Husker All-Americans, Award Winners, and Other Great Players,
4. THE BIG RED MACHINE: Offense,
5. BLACKSHIRTS RULE: Defense,
6. VERY SPECIAL TEAMS: The Cornhusker Hit Parade,
7. GAMES OF THE CENTURY: The Husker-Sooner Rivalry,
8. ALWAYS IN THE HUNT: The Postseason Bowl Games,
9. FROM COWBOY TO CORNHUSKER: The Bob Devaney Years,
10. AN UNBEATABLE LEGACY: The Tom Osborne Years,
11. BEGINNING A NEW ERA: Frank Solich, Head Coach,
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE A TRUE HUSKER FANIAC: 25 Really Tough,
Questions,
ALSO BY MIKE BABCOCK,
COPYRIGHT,