Dave Feit’s Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 77 – Toniu Fonoti

A quiet star of the 2001 team, and a story of a Nebraska walk-on who died on 9/11.

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 77: Toniu Fonoti, Offensive Guard, 1999 – 2001

Honorable Mention: Walt Barnes, Lance Lundberg, Dick Rupert

Also worn by: Seung Hoon Choi, Rich Costanzo, Seppo Evwaraye, Terry Eyman, Gunnar Gottula, Ed Husmann, Monte Kiffin, David Knevel, Carl Nicks, Adam Treu, Gale Williams

Dave’s Fave: Paul Eckna, Offensive Tackle, 1993


Early morning, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2001.

It was the day of one of the most anticipated home games in years. Notre Dame was coming to Lincoln for the first time since 1948. The game would be a top-20 matchup (the Fighting Irish were #17, Nebraska was ranked fifth).

Even though the game would not kick off until 7 p.m., a record 15,808 Husker fans were already inside Memorial Stadium. Why? ESPN’s “College GameDay” was broadcasting live from the north end zone. Near the end of the show, eight members of the U.S. Army Parachute Team dropped into the stadium. One of them delivered a special package to analyst Lee Corso – an oversized red cowboy hat – signifying that he would predict Nebraska to win the game. The crowd went nuts.

Corso’s prediction was accurate. The Huskers cruised to a 27-10 victory on a beautiful, late-summer night. It was – start to finish – as close to a perfect day as one could ask for.

Three days later, the world turned upside. 

Four commercial airplanes were hijacked by terrorists. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center. One into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a Pennsylvania field after the passengers overtook the hijackers. All told, nearly 3,000 people died on the day that would forever be known as 9/11.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, everything stopped. It didn’t feel right to have a football or baseball game while the country was in mourning. Slowly, the nation started to pull itself back up. 

Nebraska’s next football game – against Rice University – was rescheduled from Saturday, Sept. 15 to Thursday, Sept. 20. As it worked out, the Rice game was the first college football game to be played after the attacks. The pregame Tunnel Walk featured representatives from the Nebraska State Patrol, Lincoln Fire Department and Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department. It is still talked about as one of the most memorable moments in the 100+ year history of Memorial Stadium.

Toniu Fonoti / Nebraska Football Media Guide

The game itself was a 48-3 blowout. The offensive line – anchored by Toniu Fonoti – gave quarterback Eric Crouch the time and space to do whatever he wanted. Crouch threw for 165 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 97 yards and two more scores. He and the other starters did not play in the fourth quarter.

Fonoti – a 340-pound guard from Hawaii – was dominant throughout the 2001 season. Big, quick and strong, he owns the school record for pancake blocks in a game (32 against Texas Tech – 41% of all offensive plays), a season (201) and a career (379). He earned All-Big 12 and first team All-America honors. Fonoti was a finalist for the Outland Trophy (won by Miami’s Bryant McKinnie). 

Toniu Fonoti declared for the NFL Draft after his junior season. Had he come back for his senior year in 2002, he could have ranked amongst the best offensive linemen in Nebraska history.

***

We’ve talked a lot about the people and things that made Nebraska great, and that will definitely continue as we move forward. 

But I would be remiss if we didn’t spend a little bit of time talking about why things haven’t been so great in the last 25+ years. Sadly, there are a lot of reasons for this. Some we’ll discuss, and others you likely already know.

Here is – in my opinion – a very big reason Nebraska has struggled for so long:

Toniu Fonoti is the last Nebraska offensive lineman to earn first-team All-America honors. 

He did it in 2001.

Toniu Fonoti / Nebraska Athletics

Part of that is recruiting. Part of that is development. A big, big part is legendary offensive line coach Milt Tenopir retiring. Part of it is the mishmash of schemes the various head coaches and offensive coordinators have wanted to run. Part is just bad luck through injuries and other things largely out of Nebraska’s control.

No matter how you explain it, the lack of a dominating offensive lineman – even a first team all-conference guy* – has been very noticeable.

*Nebraska has had three offensive linemen earn first-team all-conference recognition since Fonoti left early for the NFL after the 2001 season:  

2003: Richie Incognito (Big 12)
2010: Ricky Henry (Big 12)
2012: Spencer Long (Big Ten)

That’s it.  

For comparison, Nebraska had 64 all-conference offensive linemen in the 29 years between 1973 and 2001, with at least one per year.  

While I understand the odds of being an all-conference selection in an eight-team league are better than they are in a 12-, 14- or 18-team conference, the fact remains that Nebraska’s offensive lines have not been great in the 21st century. They have often lacked a dominating force you could run behind on third-and-three.

Skill players are fun and exciting, but until Nebraska starts consistently winning at the line of scrimmage (on both sides of the ball), the Huskers' road back to prominence will remain long and rocky.

***

At a school like Nebraska, there are dozens of wonderful walk-on stories. Tales of perseverance, overcoming the odds, hard work and dedication. I love these types of stories.

But for every walk-on who worked his way onto the field, there are several more where – for a variety of reasons – it just didn’t pan out. For most of these players, their names and stories just vanish into the ether. 

I’d like to share the story of one such player, who was very dear to me: Paul Eckna.

Paul was one of the first people I met as a student at the University of Nebraska. He was my next-door neighbor in the Abel dorm in 1993, our freshman year.

Paul had come from Garden City, New York, with hopes of walking on to the Nebraska football team (he never talked about it, but apparently, he was quite the player at his Long Island high school). Paul was probably 6-foot-3 and a muscular 275 pounds – he looked every bit of his preferred nickname, “Moose.” 

Paul Eckna / Eckna family

The only thing larger than Moose’s physical appearance was his personality. He had a huge smile and a laugh that filled a room. In Nebraska, where people speak rather plainly, his “New Yawk” accent stuck out. However, his friendliness, kindness and warmth were as Midwestern as they come. Moose would go out of his way to help a friend and always made sure everybody – even the geeky kid next door – felt welcome in his presence.

I know Moose worked with the football team for a while in 1993, but I don’t know the story behind why he stopped. Honestly, I never thought – or cared – to ask. To the guys on our floor, we didn’t see him as a football player. He was just Moose – a great guy you wanted to be around.

We lost track of each other after moving out of the dorms. I’m pretty sure the last time I saw him was on a home-game Saturday, down in the North Bottoms neighborhood. Moose was dressed up in a skintight Batman costume. My former roommate – who was maybe 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds – was dressed as Robin. I do not think it was Halloween – or even October. They were doing it because it was funny. It worked. The mental image of those two always makes me smile. 

Paul graduated from UNL and started a career back home as a trader with Cantor Fitzgerald. One Tuesday morning in September, Paul was hard at work in his office near the top of the World Trade Center’s north tower.  At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower, five or ten floors below the Cantor Fitzgerald offices. Robert Paul Eckna was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died on 9/11. He was just 28 years old.

Moose’s dream of walking on at Nebraska didn’t pan out. But his football legacy lives on. His high school team – the Garden City Trojans – assigns his old number to a player who demonstrates Moose’s numerous positive attributes, such as team spirit. 

His number? 

77

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