Dave Feit’s Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 78 – Dennis Carlson

Bob Devaney’s recruiting strategy for his national championship teams, and appreciation for the offensive line.
Counting down the greatest Nebraska football players by jersey number.
Counting down the greatest Nebraska football players by jersey number. / HuskerMax
In this story:

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 78: Dennis Carlson, Offensive Tackle, 1963 – 1965

Honorable Mention: Ron McDole, Tom Punt, Tim Rother

Also worn by: Al Austin, Tom Carlstrom, Mike Erickson, Steve Hoins, Marcel Jones, Kory Mikos, Richard Moore, Brock Pasteur, Givens Price, T.J. Slansky, Mike Zierke

Dave’s Fave: Marcel Jones, Offensive Lineman, 2007 – 2011


At #84, we talked about how Bob Devaney was a pioneer in the recruitment of black players. Now, let’s dig into where he found those players (black or white) and how Devaney was able to get them to Lincoln.

Around the time Devaney was hired at Big Eight school Nebraska, the Big Ten’s bylaws were putting its teams at a competitive disadvantage. A 1966 Sports Illustrated article discussed some of the reasons behind the Big Ten’s lack of success in nonconference games in recent years: 

  • Scholarship limits. Big Ten schools could sign only 30 scholarship recruits per year. In the Big Eight, the yearly limit was 45.
  • Redshirting. In this era, freshmen were ineligible (and often competed on separate freshman teams). But at Nebraska and other schools, players might redshirt in their second year – giving them more physical maturity and experience. Then, as now, redshirting benefited linemen the most. The Big Ten allowed redshirt seasons only in cases of season-ending injury.
  • Entrance requirements. Overall, it was harder to get into the average Big Ten school than the average Big Eight school. But, as the SI article noted: “as is true in all conferences that take their athletics seriously, the Big Ten will get that borderline case into school if he can borderline it from goal line to goal line in 9.6 seconds.”

The Big Ten / Rust Belt region that had been providing Ohio State, Michigan, Minnesota and other teams with an abundance of talented players for decades was still full of talented players, but those players now had fewer local options. Simply put, the Big Ten footprint was open for business. 

Bob Devaney as a Michigan State assistant coach.
Bob Devaney as a Michigan State assistant coach. / Michigan State Athletics

Many other teams tried to capitalize on the talent surplus in the Big Ten region. Bob Devaney had advantages most of them did not. He knew the area well, having spent 14 years as a Michigan high school coach and four as an assistant at Michigan State. His dynamic persona made him an excellent recruiter, able to connect with just about anyone. And, as previously discussed, talent mattered more than skin color. Sadly, this was not the case at every school in the 1960s.

Devaney’s recruiting strategy began to crystalize: Get the best players in Nebraska, pluck as much talent out of Big Ten Country as he could and look everywhere else to fill out the roster. 

Remember the “Magnificent Eight” – the eight black players on the 1964 team? Jim Brown and Preston Love were from Omaha. Four of them were from the Big Ten / Rust Belt region. Freeman White was from Detroit. Harry Wilson, Ted Vactor and Tony Jeter all grew up around 160 miles east of the Ohio State campus.  Willie Paschall was from Texas. And Langston Coleman was from Washington, D.C.*

*As a fan of walk-ons, I must pause to recognize Langston Coleman. He has been described as “Nebraska’s first walk-on.”  

Ted Sorensen, a Lincoln native and Nebraska alumnus, was working in D.C. as speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy. Coleman’s mother worked for Sorensen, and young Langston spent some time in his home. Coleman learned about Nebraska from Sorensen and decided he wanted to go to school in Lincoln – even if meant hitchhiking from Washington, D.C.

The story goes that when Coleman arrived in Lincoln, Devaney looked him up and down, turned to the coaches and said “Hell, if he hitchhiked all the way from Washington, we better find something for him to do.” He was on the team.

Dennis Carlson
Dennis Carlson / Nebraska Athletics

Dennis Carlson was another gem found in Big Ten country. From Minneapolis, Carlson played sparingly in his first season (1963, the last where rules dictated that players play both offense and defense). In 1964, the first year of offense/defense platoons, Carlson earned a starting job at right tackle and started to blossom. In 1965, Carlson earned All-Big Eight honors and helped lead the Cornhuskers to a perfect 10-0 record and Orange Bowl berth.

Carlson was elected to the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 2009.

The culmination of Devaney’s recruiting strategy was the 1970 national championship team. The 1970 roster lists 85 players from 17 different states. 

  • 31 players (36.5% of the roster) were Nebraskans, with seven from Omaha.  
  • 27 players (31.8%) were from six of the seven states that comprised the Big Ten at the time (Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin).  
  • 10 players were from Michigan, Devaney’s old stomping grounds.
  • 7 players were from the Pennsylvania rust belt.
  • 3 players, including quarterback Jerry Tagge, were from Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

Add it all up and over 76% of Nebraska’s first championship team was in-state or from the Big Ten / Rust Belt.

***

In 1966, when two-platoon football was still relatively new, the NCAA implemented uniform numbering recommendations for players. Notable to our purposes here is the requirement that offensive linemen – centers, guards and tackles – must wear a number between 50 and 79.* 

*The current NCAA rule book “strongly recommends” using uniform numbers to distinguish between positions (50 – 59 for centers, 60 – 69 for guards and 70 – 79 for tackles), but that is not as common as it once was.

Defensive players – such as the two honored at 79 – have always had more numerical flexibility. While defensive linemen and linebackers often wear numbers in the 50 – 79 range, they can wear any number between 0 and 99 – especially in the current era where a single-digit number is often considered a status symbol.

I tell you that to tell you this:

We’re about to get deep in the trenches with the unsung heroes of the game, the offensive linemen. This is a good thing! Nebraska has produced a ton of amazing offensive linemen, and I’m looking forward to sharing many of them with you.

By now, I’m guessing you understand what we’re hoping to accomplish here: Discuss the things that make Nebraska football great, tell stories, celebrate amazing players and reminisce about the good old days.

Since you’ve made it to this point, I feel we can be honest with each other: There were a few numbers – 78 included – where it took some time to figure out who to list as my personal favorite.

Don’t take that as a slight to any of the Huskers to wear #78 in the last 40 or so years (the timeline for the majority of the “Dave’s Fave” picks). 

If anything, it should be seen as a compliment to the longtime starters (guys like Mike Erickson, Tim Rother and the delightfully named Tom Punt). My high school line coach used to remind us that the only way fans notice an offensive lineman is if he screws up. Therefore, not having vivid memories of a lineman’s on-field play is a good thing – even if it makes it hard for me to share personal memories of their careers.

Nebraska offensive lineman Marcel Jones in action against Texas A&M in 2010.
Nebraska offensive lineman Marcel Jones in action against Texas A&M in 2010. / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

As for my favorite #78, I’m going with Marcel Jones. An absolute mountain of a man (6-feet-7, 320 pounds), he was part of a large haul of recruiting talent from a region Nebraska had not minded very often: Arizona.*

*Prior to 2007, Nebraska had just 12 letterwinners from Arizona. The other Arizona natives in the 2007 recruiting class: Prince Amukamara, Javorio Burkes, Eric Hagg, Armando Murrillo and William Yancy.

It is always interesting when a coaching staff plucks a group of recruits from a state or region. Sometimes – like with the Arizona players – you end up with a pretty high “hit” rate. Other efforts – such as NU’s four players from Edna Karr High School in New Orleans, or the “Calibraska” movement during the Mike Riley era – pan out at a lower percentage.

As a Husker, Marcel Jones played in 40 games, starting 21 despite battling multiple injuries. He earned honorable mention All-Big Ten honors as a senior. He was in the NFL for five years. 


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Dave Feit
DAVE FEIT

Dave Feit began writing for HuskerMax in 2011. Follow him on Twitter (@feitcanwrite) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/FeitCanWrite)