Nebraska’s Game of the Century Resonates Decades Later

Big Ten Media Days are right around the corner. The festivities kick off on July 23 in Indianapolis. USC will be there. It’s time for the Trojans to get to know their Big Ten neighbors, even those who only recently moved into the area. Nebraska hasn’t been a Big Ten school for very long, so naturally the program’s best football moments occurred long before Big Ten membership existed.

Nebraska was an elite college football program from the early 1960s through the 2002 Rose Bowl against Miami, a period of about 40 years. What was the greatest moment in that 40-year period?

There are three candidates. One is the 1995 Orange Bowl victory over Miami in the 1994 national championship. That moment carries an emotional charge in Nebraska because coach Tom Osborne, after more than 20 years of trying, finally won his first national championship. It is perhaps the most significant moment in the history of Nebraska football.

The 1996 Fiesta Bowl victory over Florida cemented the 1995 Huskers as the best college football team of the modern era. Only Miami of 2001 rivals Nebraska for colossal talent. Anyone who saw that 1995 NU team knows it was one of the best teams ever.

Yet perhaps the greatest moment—both immensely satisfying within the Nebraska family and resonant and important on a national scale—was the 1971 Thanksgiving game against the Oklahoma Sooners. In a back-and-forth classic, the Huskers had the final say, beating their legendary prairie rival 35-31. The game is still talked about more than 50 years later. It was called the “game of the century,” like few other college football games of the era. This one lived up to its name more than any other.

After defeating Oklahoma in an epic battle, the 1972 Orange Bowl was relatively easy for NU. Nebraska crushed Bear Bryant’s Alabama team 38-6 to complete a 13-0 season and win the national title. The 1971 Huskers were back-to-back champions. A program that had been irrelevant 10 years earlier had become a behemoth under patriarch Bob Devaney, who then turned the reins over to Osborne to continue Nebraska’s long reign as a college football powerhouse.

You can’t really go wrong with either of those options, but we’ll go with 1971, if only because that moment established Nebraska football at an elite level. Osborne’s successes may have been more spectacular, but they stood on the shoulders of what Bob Devaney started in Lincoln.

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