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Stryker Pregame Perspective: Celebrating a Flash From the Past
Since Nebraska celebrates 100 years of football in Memorial Stadium today, it seemed good to take a few Husker fans with me on a trip down memory lane on a beautiful, breezy Saturday morning before the Big Red hosted Northwestern.
The topic was a bit more subjective than usual, but it was appropriate. I asked fans tailgating in the parking lot just west of Hawks Field at Haymarket Park this question: “What is the Huskers’ biggest/most important home win during the past century?”
As you might imagine, that question sparked a lot of conversation — so much, in fact, that I had to cut down my usual 100 respondents to 50 to have enough time to write and post this column before the game. Those 50 people selected 15 different games.
Not surprisingly, people’s answers tended to align with their best eyewitness memories, so the past 20 years are disproportionately represented, despite it being one of the worst stretches of Husker football in history. Also not surprisingly, the Oklahoma Sooners were the opponent in the most games mentioned.
The winner, with 10 votes, was the 2001 Nebraska-Oklahoma game. People who attended will never forget the roar that went up when Frank Solich’s squad successfully executed the “Black 41 Flash Reverse” pass, in which the ball went from Eric Crouch to Thunder Collins to Mike Stuntz and back to Crouch, who beat the OU secondary and sprinted to the south end zone for the decisive 63-yard scoring play in NU’s 20-10 victory over the No. 2-rated Sooners, likely clinching the Heisman Trophy for Crouch.
Thankfully, with dozens of good answers to choose from, the votes were widespread. In second place, with nine votes, was the 34-27 win over Ohio State on a rainy night in 2011. Behind outstanding performances from Rex Burkhead, Lavonte David and Taylor Martinez, the Huskers put together the largest comeback win in program history, overcome a 21-point second-half deficit.
A solid third-place choice, with seven votes, was the 1978 Huskers’ 17-14 win over Oklahoma, Tom Osborne’s first win over Barry Switzer. It remains the only time the Huskers have defeated the No. 1-rated team in Memorial Stadium. This game won the vote in a similar survey in 2009.
The only other game to garner more than three votes was the 2008 win over Colorado, which featured Alex Henery’s school-record 57-yard field goal followed by a memorable pick-six by Ndamukong Suh.
The next two selections (tied at three votes apiece) were even more recent — the 2013 “Hail Mary/Westerkatch” game against Northwestern (wow, has it already been a decade?) and another game involving Jordan Westerkamp, the 2016 win over Oregon, where Tommy Armstrong bolted 34 yards for the winning TD in the game’s final three minutes.
Also receiving votes were some incredibly memorable wins, including, in reverse chronological order:
• The snowy 9-6 win over Michigan State in 2018, which was probably the most optimistic moment of the entire Scott Frost era, and the only Frost-coached game on this list.
• The 39-38 win over No. 6-rated Michigan State in 2015, when Brandon Reilley caught a game-winning (and controversial) 30-yard TD pass with 17 seconds left. By the way, it was my oldest grandson’s first Husker game, which made it more memorable for me. And Westerkamp scored a touchdown in this one, as well.
• The hot-tempered 41-31 win over Miami in 2014, when Ameer Abdullah ran the ball down the Hurricanes’ throat and Randy Gregory inflicted considerable damage with his pass rush.
• The 1997 NU-OU game, a 69-7 Husker win, and Osborne’s 250th career victory. The man who mentioned this game had a vivid recollection of sitting through rain showers and watching the rainbow appear over the North Stadium.
• The 24-7 win over No. 2-rated Colorado in 1994, a defensive masterpiece (the Buffs never converted a third or fourth down) that was not as close as the score indicates, and was the last time the goal posts were torn down at Memorial Stadium.
• The 52-7 slaughter of Colorado two years earlier, on Halloween 1992. The man who selected this one was an NU band member that day, “the most fun I ever had at the stadium.”
• The 31-24 win over Alabama in 1977, Osborne’s triumph over Bear Bryant.
Two men took a truly historic perspective. One selected the 53-0 win over South Dakota in 1962 “because it was the first game Bob Devaney coached here.” Enough said. And the other went back far beyond his own birth, all the way to the stadium’s first year, a 14-7 win over Notre Dame in 1923, the third game ever played at Memorial Stadium.
