Pregame Retrospective: Are the Huskers Ready for the Spotlight?

Today’s Nebraska-Indiana game marks seven years since ‘GameDay’ came to Lincoln, and that one didn't go well for the Big Red.

I.M. Hipp, possibly Nebraska's most famous walk-on of all time, holds a prominent place in NU-Indiana series history. | Nebraska Athletics

Almost half a century ago, the Nebraska-Indiana football series shone a spotlight on perhaps the Cornhuskers’ most famous walk-on of all time, and in doing so, provided a backdrop for coach-turned-broadcaster Lee Corso to poke fun at himself. Otherwise — at least from a Nebraska perspective — it has not been a noteworthy rivalry. It will ratchet up the intensity today, however. The Huskers and Hoosiers are about to meet for the first time with both teams coming into the game undefeated.

Indiana holds the edge, winning 11 games, losing nine and tying three, largely by dominatinig the series during the the worst stretch of Nebraska football of all time, from 1941 through the 1950s. (There was one tie in 1950, the year Grand Island phenom Bobby Reynolds ran wild).

In 1976, NU thrashed Indiana 45-13 in Bloomington, and the next year, in Lincoln, sophomore walk-on Isaiah Moses Hipp broke the Huskers’ single-game rushing record when he ran for 254 yards in a 31-13 win. Although coach Tom Osborne always called him Isaiah, everyone else referred to him as I.M. Hipp throughout the rest of his career. Over the years, whenever Corso was interviewed by Nebraska media, he always joked about how badly Osborne’s teams whipped his during the 1970s.

Things have changed. For decades considered one of college football’s worst programs, Indiana now carries a 21-game winning streak as it comes to Lincoln as defending national champion. Nebraska has not defeated a rated team for a decade.

Husker fans whoop it up Saturday morning ahead of the 11 a.m. CDT kickoff. | Nebraska Athletics via X

Today’s clash is FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff feature game. Are the Huskers ready for the spotlight this time?

The last two times they had this level of scrutiny, they showed the world they definitely were not.

When ESPN College GameDay came to Lincoln on Sept. 28, 2019, the Cornhusker football program was flush with fool’s gold. The prevous year, Scott Frost and his Huskers lost their first six games after Frost’s return to Lincoln, then appeared to turn things around, winning four of their last six. Early in the 2019 season, Husker Nation was optimistic that better things lay ahead, and despite an overtime loss in Boulder, Colorado, the opportunity to host GameDay seemed a positive sign.

That day, I surveyed 100 Nebraska fans deployed near Memorial Stadium to watch Gabrielle Union throw the bones, as she discussed the Husker program with Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, and Corso. My question: “When will ESPN GameDay return to Lincoln?”

A majority of the fans thought GameDay would return within two years, and almost three-quarters of them thought it would happen within three.

Justin Fields and Ohio State shredded the Huskers in 2019. | USA TODAY Sports

That night, NU collapsed under an Ohio State onslaught as the Buckeyes dismantled Frost’s Cornhuskers, 48-7.

It was the first time GameDay had come to Lincoln since 2007, when Nebraska hosted Southern Cal. That turned into another debacle; the Trojans beat Bill Callahan’s Huskers in a game that was not as close as the 49-31 score indicated.

With Big Noon (the FOX equivalant of GameDay) in town, it ends a seven-year drought of Saturday morning scrutiny for the Big Red. How will they handle it this time around? This is the most important football game played in Memorial Stadium in quite a while.

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