Yes, 300 consecutive sellouts is an impressive thing.

“They’ve sold out every game since my mom was born,” Nebraska center Jacob Hickman said.

It’s the state’s trademark, for better or worse, one that’s soothed a family farm crisis in the 1980s, water battles on the Republican River, brain drain and bright flight, immigration raids, 9/11, the meth nightmare, Whiteclay, West Nile, Lawrence Phillips, the firing of Frank Solich, Bill Callahan, Steve Pederson, the rising tide of troubling violence in Omaha and a political culture that, even in this populist land, is getting more toxic by the day.

"Even with a certain degree of excellence on the field," athletic director Tom Osborne said, "it’s still kind of unthinkable that people come through all kinds of weather, and ups and downs, to be here every week…there’s no question that whatever success we’ve had here is due in large part to their faithfulness and loyalty and their devotion to the football program."

Through every bit of that pain, we’ve sought glory and community in Memorial Stadium, a handful of times in the fall. And rarely has it failed us.

Will the time come when we fail it?

Maybe. You hope not. The college football fan base, even at Nebraska, is changing for worse. And, yes, I put the responsibility on the fans themselves, not ESPN, not “the times,” not “the world we live in.” For, after all, it’s we who live in that world. The world doesn’t make us. We make it.

Nebraska fans are still among the best and most gracious in America, but we worry too much about what ESPN says, or whether we’re keeping up with Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and USC. We only think Pederson planted that seed in our brains. Truth is, he got it from somewhere, some of NU’s boosters, quite frankly, and the assorted cognoscenti out there who equate their own business acumen with understanding an enduring human culture. Winning made Nebraskans restless. And the way Nebraska won, too. Then again, a lot of Americans were restless in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was a strange time, triumphant and tragic, private and public, with the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, the 2000 election and 9/11 as its centerpieces.

Do we worry too much about winning? Yeah, we do. It’s probably always been that way to some extent – I’m not one to carelessly look back on mythic “golden days” – but the influx of money and attention into college athletics has turned every weekend into a pressure cooker, a do-or-die, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately atmosphere where heroes and villains change outfits on a weekly basis.

That’s a nice line for TV ratings, but, to be a little crass: Who gives a rip about TV ratings? Or ESPN? Or Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Miami, Missouri, Ohio State or Michigan. Or maybe the better question is: Why do we give a rip about those things? Did it ever define the culture here? Do you walk down Stadium Drive before a game, feeling the warm embrace of TV waves emanating around you? Do we feel lonely or something, hoping for the affirmation of a celebrity like Kirk Herbstreit, who, after years of loathing the Huskers, openly scoffing at their history, suddenly is in their corner because his former teammate is the head coach?

A 24-hour news cycle – which, again, didn’t simply “come into being,” but arose with our tacit assent – peppers us with questions, thoughts and shivs in logic. The daily media assault on NU’s program is…interesting, to say the least. I can’t say I’m not a part of it, but the sheer number of stories and angles being churned out of fall camp and practice – there is no stone left unturned. If there is, trust us – some fan on the Internet is all over it.

“There’s so much more expectation, there’s so much more criticism of these kids,” said Dennis Claridge, NU’s quarterback in 1962, when the sellout streak began. “You’ve got to remember their age. It’s a big step up. They were all stars in high school and now you come here, they’re aware from home, they’re competing for a position against great players, there’s enough stress on them already.”

What have we allowed the Web to make us? Creatures without a moment of reflection. Like Bo Pelini after the Virginia Tech game, we wear whatever raw emotion is within us. Whatever frustration in our life – it comes out on the Internet. The online fights I see between Husker fans! What are they about? Anger, really. Personal anger. It just gets projected onto the football team. It’s easier to type rage than it is handwrite or speak it. Rage seems simpler in courier and arial fonts, although some among us are becomingly alarmingly casual with loose tongues.

I hear them, sometimes, at games. Where are they learning it? Their parents. TV. Radio. From people paid to piss them off, to deliver a black/white version of the world that sells ads. Some of whom don’t appreciate the game of football –its meaning, its culture - for a half-second. Getting suckered into that is an active choice, when you take it to the football stadium.

If this seems like a sour column in light of NU’s achievement, think of it, instead, as sobering. Older generations of fans brought us to this point by staying committed and positive. Even in some tough years. Most of them weren’t “lean,” exactly, but the Huskers have endured their share of tough, ugly losses. Each home game, they’d come back, hopeful. And the fans next to them rarely let them down.

One of the things I enjoy doing most in this job is our 50 Husker Fans, 50 States series, where we talk to fans who get to Memorial Stadium once a year, at best, and maybe only a couple times in their lifetime. And it’s the (extra)ordinary stories they tell that truly reveal the magic of our shared culture. It’s really nothing more than bonding over a football team. But that bond – that’s the stuff of life. It lasts longer than a TV show.

Petty things, like who stands to cheer and who doesn’t, or whether the students have good enough seats, need to be set aside on game day. Memorial Stadium was never about being vicious, a Temple of Doom from the Indiana Jones movies. Rather, the place is a warm spirit the color of its sea of fans. Remember that.

“When you’ve been other places as I have,” Pelini said, “and you’ve been around the country, the visiting people who come into this stadium and the respect that people walk out of here with our fan base, it something that really touches people that come in here. It’s something to be proud of.

“Opposing teams, opposing coaches say ‘Wow, it’s different here than anywhere else.’”

Said Osborne: "It’s a place where you feel comfortable bringing your children, your grandparents, whoever. You don’t have to be nasty, you don’t have to be ugly, to be good. Sometimes that gets lost in our culture today."

Don't let it get lost here.

Husker fans should give themselves a nice pat on the back for 300 sellouts. And a gentle talking-to for 300 more.

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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.

Buy Your 300th Consecutive Sellout T-Shirt Today!

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"We didn't want people back home saying we'd just come to New York to have a good time. So we came back that second half and improved a heck of a lot. You're darn right we're going to have that good time tonight." -Dennis Claridge


This bowl victory was the beginning of a successful coaching career for Head Coach Bob Devaney. Cornhusker Quarterback made this comment after this first bowl victory in Nebraska football history where the Cornhuskers defeated Miami, Fla., in the 1962 Gotham Bowl 36-34. Nebraska had lost their earlier bowl appearances in the 1941 Rose Bowl and the 1955 Orange Bowl.

The Gotham Bowl was played in New York City in 1962 in freezing conditions. The game was won on a two point conversion by Dennis Claridge and a defensive play that ended Miami's attempt to win the game with an interception by Nebraska defender Bob Brown.

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