Dave Feit’s Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 68 – Jake Young

The bittersweet success of one of Nebraska’s greats, and how a viral moment can change the way a career is perceived.

Counting down the greatest Nebraska football players by jersey number. / HuskerMax

Dave Feit is counting down the days until the start of the 2025 season by naming the best Husker to wear each uniform number, as well as one of his personal favorites at that number.  For more information about the series, click here.  To see more entries, click here.


Greatest Husker to wear No. 68: Jake Young, Center, 1986 – 1989

Honorable Mention: Bill Lewis, Steve Lindquist, Mike Mandelko

Also worn by: Jeff Clausen, Jake Cotton, Nick Gates, John Kirby, Tom Pate, George Prochaska, Dan Vili Waldrop, Keith Williams

Dave’s Fave: Jake Cotton, Offensive Lineman, 2010 – 2014


Jake Young often found success, even when he wasn’t looking for it.

In his senior of high school, Young took an official visit to Texas Tech. While at a Tech basketball game, he was chosen in a random drawing to shoot a half-court shot. The prize for making it was a week’s interest on $1,000,000, (which in 1986 was $1,538.46, around $5,000 today). Tech had been running the contest for years and nobody had won. You can see where this is going, right? Young walked onto the court and swished the shot. The crowd went wild.

Unfortunately, he had to turn down the prize money. It would have been a violation of NCAA rules and likely jeopardized his eligibility.

That is perfect encapsulation of Jake Young’s life: Opportunity. Success. Bittersweet ending.

Jake Young / Nebraska Football Media Guidfe

Young, a Midland, Texas native, did not end up at Texas Tech. Instead, he signed a letter of intent with Nebraska. When Young arrived in Lincoln, Tom Osborne had been the head coach for 13 seasons. Every single offensive line recruit to that point had started his career in one of three ways: 1) playing on the freshman team, 2) redshirting, 3) both.

Young did play with his fellow freshmen, but the 6-4, 250 pounder had an opportunity to practice with the varsity in his first week on campus. He showed enough skill and potential that he was moved up to the varsity full time and earned Saturday snaps as a guard in 1986. Young earned a letter, making him the first true freshman offensive lineman to do so since freshman eligibility was restored in 1972.

In the spring before his sophomore season, Young was moved to center, with an eye towards him earning the starting job. Unfortunately, he broke his leg a week into spring practices. He managed to rehab back to full strength by the fall. In 1987, Young was the starting center – the first true sophomore to start on the line in 14 years – and earned second-team All-Big Eight honors.

Offensive line coach Milt Tenopir said he would occasionally have to reign Young in during practices because he could get too intense. “He regarded every play in practice as if it were the first play of the Oklahoma game. Nobody will ever exceed his intensity.”

Young’s junior and senior seasons were filled with success and accolades. He was first-team All-Big Eight, first-team All-America, and an academic All-America in both 1988 and 1989. Young joined Rik Bonness and Dave Rimington as the only Husker centers to earn back-to-back All-America honors. Young was also a semifinalist for the Lombardi Award.

Despite his dominance at Nebraska, the NFL scouts weren’t enamored with Young. Aside from the worn-out “Nebraska linemen can’t pass block” stigma, scouts believed Young was too short and too slow to play in the NFL. He did sign a free agent deal with Detroit, but was cut before the season began.

The end of his football career just gave Young the opportunity to start his career in law. Young graduated from Nebraska’s College of Law in 1994 and passed the bar.

He worked for a Kansas City based firm with offices in Hong Kong. While overseas, Young started playing rugby with a local club. His rugby club would travel the world for tournaments.

That is how Jake Young ended up in Bali, Indonesia in October 2002. After a match, he and his teammates went to a club to celebrate. Terrorists detonated two bombs in the nightclub district, killing 202 people. Jake Young was one of seven Americans killed in the attacks. He was just 34 years old.

In 2003, the Jake Young Memorial Scholarship was established. The scholarship is awarded to a football player (almost exclusively an offensive lineman) who, like Young, “demonstrates a high level of athletic and academic achievement, along with effective leadership skills.”

A bittersweet legacy for one of Nebraska’s greatest centers.

***

Football, like life, can be fickle.

You can do everything right 99.9% of the time and end up infamous for one blunder.

Take Jake Cotton for example.

The son of former Husker player and assistant Barney Cotton, he’s one of four members of his family to play for Nebraska (the careers of older brother Ben and younger brother Sam were bookends on Jake’s time at NU).

Jake was a solid player who earned four letters, was a two-year starter, and earned Honorable Mention All-Big Ten recognition as a senior. In the classroom, Cotton was a four-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. In his spare time, he was active in the community volunteering with numerous outreach efforts. He was a team captain and won the Cletus Fischer Native Son Award. Believe me when I say that is in the top 10% of Husker resumes.

Jake Cotton / Nebraska Athletics

But the odds are good that when you read Jake Cotton’s name, you knew exactly where we were headed. The one play – turned viral video clip – that will likely define his Husker career and overshadow his many accomplishments.

Nebraska at Michigan State, 2014. The Huskers are trailing 7-0 midway through the first quarter, but they’re close to field goal range. It’s third-and-eight from the 38-yard line. The Spartans are moving around as quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. looks to the sideline for the play call.

Cotton, at left guard, is locked into his two-point stance. Suddenly, something – A gust of wind? A loss of equilibrium? A minor earthquake? – causes him to slowly rock back. Armstrong is still looking to the sideline as the forces of momentum (and gravity) start to take over.

Cotton is going down, and nothing is going to stop it. He lands squarely on his backside with – as ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit described it – a “boink”.

And just like that, a very respectable career is overshadowed by a single blooper.

Football, like life, can be fickle.

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