In honor of Nebraska's 300th-consecutive sellout, easily an NCAA record, we're asking the experienced Husker fans among to remember: Where were you in 1962, when the sellout streak began?

Were you cheering on the Huskers in the knothole section? Listening to the games in between farm chores? Waking up on Sunday morning to read the paper cover to cover? Taking your own sons and daughters to the game?

And if you weren't born during or before 1962...that's OK, too! Give us a memory from your parents, grandparents, or someone else who remembers the time.

And if you can't find that...just give us your favorite memory from any of the 300 sellouts you might have attended.

We want to hear from you, Husker fans. And we've got a great prize as an incentive.

Simply place a comment in the comment field of this blog by Friday afternoon and you're entered to win a chance at the Devaney Era DVD from the The Cornhusker Collection. Relive all of Devaney's greatest moments as a Husker coach. At the end of the week, we'll randomly select a winner from the comment field to receive this $30.00 DVD for FREE!

Have at it, Husker fans!

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As Lyle Sittler stood there with his former teammates at Nebraska’s football practice Friday morning, the conversation invariably turned to an old NU coach, Bob Devaney, and the current one, Bo Pelini.

Sittler was the starting center on Devaney’s first three teams, 1962-1964, and was on hand for the unveiling of the throwback jerseys NU will wear for its 300th consecutive sellout. But first he watched the Huskers work out, and, of course, kept an eye on Pelini, the second-year head coach trying to pull a Devaney, if you will, and turn around a struggling program.

“They’re very much the same, in the little things,” Sittler said.

Then Sittler described what I’d consider a very big thing – Pelini, pulling a player aside, coaching him briefly, and that player responding with a passionate hit. The key, Sittler said, is that “No. 46” – linebacker Eric Martin - wasn’t from Nebraska. He’s from Mission Viejo, Calif.

Devaney could do that, too, Sittler said. He pointed to 1962 starting quarterback Dennis Claridge, from Minnesota, and native Texan Willie Paschall.

“Die-hard Nebraska people (now),” Sittler said. “That kind of atmosphere is identifying itself with Nebraska once again.”

Paschall was more to the point: “Coach Pelini is like the reincarnation of Coach Devaney. He keeps the guys focused. He cares about them. He knows when to get them loose, and he knows when to keep them to the grindstone.”

Can NU just take that line and use it on the recruiting trail?

I didn’t know Bob Devaney. Never interviewed him. Heard stories, almost all of them involving Devaney’s later years, his fondness for a good joke. Watched his picks show as a kid. He seemed to favor UCLA quite a bit, as I recall. He laughed a lot on the show.

But the man who coached for Devaney, Tom Osborne, sees similarities in Pelini. And in the 1962 players, in their brief time around Pelini see the same. They see the humor. They see a guy who trusts his coaching staff. They see the gameday fire. They see a guy with clear expectations. And I think they see a guy who’s getting the players to buy in, to believe, to make plays.

I say “I think” because, of course, the results remain to be seen. Pelini built a strong 9-4 foundation in year one But what Devaney did was nothing short of amazing.

He took over a team that went 15-34-1 under Bill Jennings - losing five straight to Missouri by a combined score of 92-13 – and finished 47-8 in his first five seasons at NU. Five straight bowls, after the Huskers had played in two in their entire history. Played for the national title, essentially, in 1965. Chew on that for a second. And he did it, essentially, by working his players less, not more. He threw in the option, and a pass every now and then. Claridge called the plays.

Pelini could squeeze every ounce out of these Huskers and not achieve that by 2012. May not achieve Devaney’s 101-20-2 career record. It took Tom Osborne until the last five years of his career – you know, that 60-3 stretch – to surpass Devaney’s .829 winning percentage.

And yet you sense Pelini expects that kind of excellence of himself and the team. We’ve heard the line already around fall camp quite frequently – “You don’t come to Nebraska to win nine games.”

Back in 1962, nine wins suited the Huskers just fine. But Devaney’s success upped the ante. Then Osborne’s last five seasons shot it into the stratosphere. Just imagine if the Huskers had closed the deal in 1965, 1983 and 1993. Pelini would probably have to part the Platte River.

“That’s part of the deal here,” Pelini said. “You have to live up to the tradition every day.”

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At the time, Dennis Claridge didn’t even consider one of the most amazing streaks in college football history had started, or that it would be going strong 47 years later.

“We were more interested in winning some games,” said Nebraska’s starting quarterback in 1962.

After a number of difficult seasons under head coach Bill Jennings, who essentially declared the NU job a lost cause, you couldn’t blame Claridge for wanting, simply, to right the ship under first-year head coach Bob Devaney.

But modest intentions often produce extraordinary results. So it is with NU’s consecutive sellout streak, which began with a 16-7 loss on Homecoming - Nov. 3, 1962 – to Missouri, and continues, nearly 300 games later, today.

No. 300 is Sept. 26 vs. Louisiana-Lafayette, but Nebraska’s athletic department brought Claridge and three other players from the 1962 team – Willie Paschall, Lyle Sittler and Dwain Carlson – down for the unveiling of the throwback jerseys to be worn during the game, and a brief meeting with current head coach Bo Pelini.

The jerseys are red with scripted numbers. Plain, but classy. They’re part of an auction where any Husker fan can place a bid. The helmets have black numbers on them. NU athletic director Tom Osborne – a graduate assistant on the 1962 team – recalled the team equipment manager, Mike Corgan, liked a simple look.

“Mike was kind of a straightforward, no-nonsense guy,” Osborne said. “So there won’t be a lot of flourish with the uniforms…wasn’t always the players who were thrilled, but we won a lot of games in those uniforms.”

Oh, Ndamukong Suh and Roy Helu, Jr., - the players who modeled the throwbacks, seemed to like them just fine. And there was certainly nothing wrong with the helmets, which add a little black back into the Husker look.

That 1962 squad finished 9-2, beat Miami (Fla.) in the Gotham Bowl, and witnessed the first handful of sellout crowds in the streak. Memorial Stadium held a little more than 31,000 at the time. Only small bleachers in the end zones. And a knothole section for kids, where they’d squeeze in for a quarter, or for free, if they got there early enough.

“They’d ask for your chin straps, tape, anything that was on a football player,” Paschall said. “These kids today, they aren’t any different. It was just a lot of enthusiasm.”

The team fans saw was a marked improvement over the previous decade, when the Huskers repeatedly ran into stronger – and arguably happier – programs in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Jennings conducted notoriously long practices that stretched into night, and scrimmaged often. His teams were overworked and beaten up by Saturday.

Devaney, fresh off a successful stint at Wyoming reversed course. He kept his practices short. He didn’t scrimmage much. And, so long as he got the effort he demanded, he kept the mood light.

“Devaney somehow was able to get that focus, join us together so we could really play like we were capable of playing,” said Claridge, now an orthodontist in Lincoln. “Just going from loser to winner, that’s the big thing for me.”

That and the Gotham Bowl, played in front of 6,000 fans on a frozen field. Devaney likened it to a back-alley fight when no one was watching. It was a fight NU won, 36-34. The first bowl victory in program history.

“That turnaround was really significant,” Osborne said. “It meant for awhile that Bob Devaney could do no wrong, because he was the guy who turned it around.”

Many Husker fans are familiar with what came after that season. Devaney’s magnificent 10-year run - with only two 6-4 hiccups in 1967 and 1968 – that climaxed with two national titles in 1970 and 1971, and a Heisman Trophy for Johnny Rodgers in 1972. Then Tom Osborne, his 25 years and three national crowns, the Frank Solich era, the controversial firing, Bill Callahan’s forgettable four seasons, and now Pelini.

There was a moment in 2007. Right after a 45-14 loss to Oklahoma State, that miserable first-half effort in front of the 1997 national championship team. When fans streamed out at halftime more out of disgust than a Runza. For just that few minutes, you thought “they’ve had it. This streak could end.”

It didn’t.

“After going through that 2007 season and the seats still being sold out? That speaks volumes right there,” Suh said.

The joint holds well over 80,000 now, with the end zone sections flaring out and over the original sideline structure. The skyboxes have been put in. The video screens.

“But even though the stadium has gotten larger,” Paschall said, “that enthusiasm has not changed. It’s all family. It’s just like a big family. The more you can get there to pump the team up, the better.”

Fans have changed a little, said Sittler, a center on the 1962 team. They’re a little tougher on the kids than they should be. Sittler gets to the first couple home games “before harvest time” and he doesn’t like the negativity. Not long ago, he sat in front of a guy berating a Husker.

“I asked him, ‘Do you have a grandson?’” Sittler said. “He said, ‘Yes.’ I said ‘Maybe that’s your grandson down there.’”

The guy didn’t talk for the rest of the game, Sittler said.

“There’s TV influence,” Sittler said. “Too much professional influence on TV. You end up belittling an 18-year-old kid. Nebraska is a better fan than what we’re showing today.”

But the current Nebraska fan, added Sittler, is still better than any other.

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