Dave Feit’s Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 69

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. 69: LaVerne Torczon, Center / Guard, 1954 – 1956

Honorable Mention: John Havekost, Mike Kennedy, Tom Welter

Also worn by: Bill Bobbora, Mel Brichacek, John Brown, Turner Corcoran, Dave Jensen, Adam Julch, John Lee, Brodrick Nickens, Steve Ott, Marvin Paul, Jordan Picou, Nick Provendo.

Dave’s Fave: Kurt Glathar, Offensive Guard / Center, 1979 – 1982

The 1950s were not a banner time for Nebraska football.

The Cornhuskers were 39-58-3 in the decade (.405), trailing only the 1940s (.374) for the worst decade in program history.*

*At the halfway point of the 2020s, Nebraska is 22-35 (.386) in the current decade. No pressure, Matt Rhule!

Head coach Bill Glassford accounted for most of the success in the 1950s. NU’s only three winning seasons between 1940 and 1962 came under his leadership. That said, Glassford had four seasons at or below .500. Glassford owns the third worst winning percentage of all Husker head men with at least three seasons as head coach:

Mike Riley, .500 in three seasons
Bill Glassford, .471 in seven seasons
Scott Frost, .341 in four and a third seasons
Bill Jennings, .310 in five seasons

Head coach Bill Glassford’s seasons had a rollercoaster’s amount of peaks and valleys. His best season (6-2-1 in 1950) was the year Bobby Reynolds became Mr. Touchdown, U.S.A. After that, 2-8-1 in 1951. A rebound to 5-4-1 in 1952 and a dip to 3-6-1 in 1953.

Frankly, that’s how things went in the Glassford era. Successes were few and fleeting.

In the case of the 1954 team, success only came on a technicality… and after a near mutiny.

At the end of the 1953 season, 35 players signed petitions demanding his resignation. The players were frustrated by the grueling practices and militaristic leadership of the coach they referred to as “the Baby-Faced Assassin”. Players wrote letters stating the “fear” they felt playing for him. Their allegations: injured players were being forced to play, Glassford would not allow them to take classes that interfered with practice, and that scholarship monies were withheld or revoked.

The book and ESPN movie “Junction Boys” describes the hellish summer training camp Paul “Bear” Bryant conducted for his Texas A&M team in remote Junction, Texas. The players would practice from dawn to dusk in sweltering summer heat, usually without water breaks. The Bear’s camp took place in 1954. From 1949 – 1951, Glassford held his own version at the ag college in tiny Curtis, Neb. Players would routinely quit the team because they were unable – or unwilling – to endure the conditions. Longtime NU trainer George Sullivan once said that 25 or so players (out of the 70 they started with) quit* or were injured during a stay at “Camp Curtis.”

*And since Curtis isn’t exactly a metropolitan area, “quitting” meant hitchhiking to McCook or North Platte (40+ miles away) in hopes of getting a ride back to Lincoln, 215 miles east.

However, in the 1950s tough – even abusive – coaching was tolerated, if not encouraged. The Omaha World-Herald appeared to go out of their way to defend Glassford, saying the players grievances were “all in their minds – their mixed-up minds” and characterizing them as malcontents “utterly lacking in the mental requirements for top-grade ball.”

In January of 1954, the UNL Chancellor and Board of Regents gave Bill Glassford an unanimous vote of confidence. At the end of a gloating column, the World-Herald’s Floyd Olds wrote “this could be the turning point – the start of the road back to success for Nebraska football.”

Nebraska’s 1954 season got off to a rocky start, as NU opened 1-2 with losses to Minnesota and Kansas State. Then the Cornhusker rollercoaster started climbing, winning four straight games before losing to Pittsburgh in November.

Good news! Going into the conference finale, the Huskers were in second place in Big Seven conference.

Great news! At the time, the Big Seven had a “no-repeat” rule for postseason games. Oklahoma won the conference in 1953 and beat Maryland in the Orange Bowl. The Sooners – despite winning the Big Seven again in 1954 as part of their lengthy run of dominance over the conference – could not return to Miami.

Bad news. Knowing they would not be able to play in a bowl game, the No. 3 Sooners took their frustrations out on Nebraska. The 55-7 final score tied the (then) largest margin of defeat by a conference rival. But the blowout loss didn’t repeal the no-repeat rule. The Huskers were headed to Miami* for their second-ever bowl game.

*After the blowout at Oklahoma, the Huskers wrapped up their regular season with the program’s first ever game at Hawaii. The 1955 Cornhusker yearbook claims the 1954 Huskers logged more travel miles than any other college football team that season.

In the Orange Bowl, the country* got to watch No. 14 Duke dismantle Nebraska 34-7. Future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen was a backup on the Duke squad. Nebraska’s lone touchdown came after a third quarter Duke punt took a horrible bounce and rolled to the Blue Devil 35-yard line, giving the Huskers a short field.

*The Orange Bowl was Nebraska’s second-ever nationally televised game. It was their first nationally televised loss.

Maybe the Huskers had jet lag. Maybe 6-4 Nebraska didn’t deserve to be in one of the seven bowl games. Maybe the motivational methods of “Baby-Faced Assassin” were failing to reach players who had come back from war in Korea. Who’s to say?

In 1954 – when substitution rules were much different than they are today – Glassford utilized a “two-team system”. The starters would play the first and third quarters. The backups would play the second and fourth.

LaVerne Torczon was a sophomore center in 1954 and likely played on the second team. Torczon played six-man football in Platte Center, Neb. (near Columbus) and walked on to the Nebraska team.

Torczon (pronounced TORE-sun) gained the nickname “Tarzan” from his teammates. In 1955, he was an All-Big Seven pick as a center. In the 1956 season, Torczon moved to guard and again earned all-conference honors. He was a team captain in 1956 and was elected to the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1987.

This is not the only “Greatest ____ by the Numbers” list that LaVerne Torczon appears on. After Nebraska, he was an All-AFL player with the Buffalo Bills. He is still considered the greatest Bill to ever wear #87.

Torczon died in 2015. After the funeral, Jim Murphy – a co-captain and friend from the 1956 team – sang “The Cornhusker” over Torczon’s casket. As captains, they would lead the team in the singing of that song (commonly referred to as “Come A Runnin’ Boys”) before games.

As for Glassford, he resigned after the 1955 season and went into the insurance business. In a 2015 interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Glassford said “I had enough. I was burnt out.” Despite a rocky career, Glassford remained a big Nebraska fan and donor for the rest of his life. Glassford lived to be 102, passing away in 2016.

***

Kurt Glathar played guard and center at Nebraska, earning varsity letters in 1981 and 1982. I don’t think he ever started, but considering he backed up legendary players like Dave Rimington and Dean Steinkuhler, there’s no shame in coming off the bench.

I have zero recollection of Kurt Glathar as a football player. But he made a big impression as the assistant principal of my junior/senior high school.

Our school did not have many discipline problems to begin with, but when you know there’s a 6’2″, 260-pound former Cornhusker offensive lineman waiting for you in the office… well, you think twice about getting too far out of line. I can remember a few times where a teacher shut down some bad behaviors by simply asking a student if they would like to go have a chat with Mr. Glathar.

Mr. Glathar didn’t talk a lot about his football days, but if you ever visited his office*, he had team pictures from his two Orange Bowl appearances hanging prominently on the walls. According to an old Huskers Illustrated article I found, the 1982 Orange Bowl trip to Miami served as his honeymoon with his wife. Occasionally, he would wear a Big Eight championship ring around the halls for a little extra impact.

*Thankfully, my trips there were few, far between, and rarely for anything serious.

Mr. Glathar – I’m not sure if I can bring myself to refer to him as anything other than the formal, definitely not “Kurt” – was a two-year letterman on the offensive line, backing up guards Tom Carlstrom and Dean Steinkuhler.

After leaving Gretna, he went on to become the principal at Lincoln Northeast High for 14 years, and serving in other administration roles within Lincoln Public Schools.

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