SOUTHEASTHUSKER

tomorrow!!!!!

2 days!!!

3

It's more than the game, really, that first game of every new season at Memorial Stadium. As you get older, it almost seems like a holiday. I think it may mean even more to out-of-staters, as they feel disconnected during the 8 months that divides Christmas and life beginning anew once again. At least for those who don't live in or get to Lincoln much, it means everything. There are only 7-8 of these per year, so they are scarce, and special. And the first one each year seems the most special. It's more than simply going back home. It's a sense of renewal, of reinvigoration, of reconnecting to things in life which drive you and make you wait for this week like a child waits for Christmas. It's family. It's your roots being watered again after withering up over the long summer in far away places. It's about flying or driving in, rolling past or descending slowly over the yellowing cornfields, gazing out the window in wonderment how a part of the country some view as dull excites and thrills you so much. You catch yourself looking at your watch impatiently, until you get close enough to cross into Nebraska's borders again. For those, like me, who come into Omaha, you marvel at the growing downtown Omaha skyline, and you start to feel at home again. You land, and wait anxiously to deplane and upon the first burst of light in the terminal as you leave the walkway, you instinctively look at the faces, as if you'll see someone you know, even though no one is there waiting for you. You take the familiar walk to your car, notice how many people are wearing Nebraska shirts, a sight you haven't seen since Christmas. You drive down past Carter Lake, a drive you've made 300 times before-at first, as a teen to go to the drag races out on the old, distant, dark lanes ending out beyond Dodge Park when nothing else was there in the 70s and 80s, and now, the other way, down a nicely manicured road, and as you do. Not only do you see the Woodmen Tower and other familiar trappings of a city you've known for decades, but also the freshly scrubbed and developing metropolis as you drive past Gallup, Qwest, the new ballpark, the new Union Pacific Headquarters and the First National Bank. A downtown that seemed old and small to you as a teenager now looks nicely grown up since you left for good 25 years ago. It makes you proud. You note whatever big show is next coming to the Qwest as you drive by the electronic billboard. You think of the Old Civic Auditorium just up the road, the old barn where you took in your first NBA game, watching Tiny Archibald work his magic with Scottie Wedman, and Sudden Sam Lacey grabbing rebounds, and where you saw your first concert, on Crosby Stills Nash and Young's last tour together. Your mind drifts to watching Baron Von Raschke vs Mad Dog Vachon wrestling for the Heavyweight Championship, when your mom and dad let you ride the bus to go downtown alone for the first time. The graduations there, metro holiday basketball, and now, you wonder if it will be the next timepiece of your generation to permanently leave your boyhood landscape. As you drive up Dodge Street, something yanks you back to the present. Past the old Ready Mix Plant, past UNO and Memorial Park, and now, you're almost there, in your old neighborhood. You get to 72nd and Dodge, which to you is still the Center of the Universe, as it was for you growing up, even though today it is no longer. Then the familiar drive past the old family house, by Crossroads and down where Peony Park and the Goodrich Ice Cream store used to be. You think of family and friends you'll see at some point during the visit, and of family and friends you won't see and who you'll miss. You wish you could talk to them about the excitement of the new season, your new wife and just life. But now, you can now only see and talk to them in your heart. You remember years before, when you shared with them the eager sense of anticipation of a new season, and feel that special pre-fall ever-so-slight cool in the air at night as September unfolds before you in typical Midwestern sturdy beauty. Sadness comes and goes as you remember how long it has been since you last shared such feelings and emotions with them. But, you feel grounded. You're home. And friends and family who still remain are there to rekindle the fall fire again. When Saturday morning finally arrives, you wake from a restless sleep, because you've never been able to sleep the night before the first game. Your step is light, your senses sharp, your emotions bubbling up and a sense of renewal, because it's time for a new year, a new season. At least that's the way it is for Nebraskans--for Cornhuskers. You hurry to the car, even though the game is hours away. Then, the drive. You get into your car at 9 am even though the game isn't until evening, because you need to be in Lincoln. You're as anxious as ever to get there and feel the city and campus on game day again. It's 45 minutes, but seems like an instant. You savor the drive, and it seems to get shorter every year and pass too quickly. Heading down I-80, past Sapp Brothers, weaving through whatever construction they've put in your path this year. You notice how many homes and neighborhoods have sprung up along the early part of the journey, and think back when your buddies in high school needed only to head out to 144th street to find privacy and a place to unwind. The rural country side and landscape now mixes with the signs of Omaha's maturity, but it still calms you with enough serenity to make you almost involuntarily exhale deeply. Soon, you cross the Platte River in what seems like no time, signifying that you're half way there. Time to turn on KFAB, just because that's what you do and have done for decades before. If it's too early, then you try the Zone--anything for a Husker Pre-Game show or some football talk. Then, you hit the familiar "Waverly Curve" where I-80 kisses Highway 6, and you know you're in the home stretch. You finally approach Exit 401, and that's when your pulse starts to quicken. You can feel it again, the adrenaline. Your mind races with all the times you've made this drive before, and what you saw when you did.... Tearing down goalposts after conquering the Sooner Jinx in 78, Mike Rozier slashing bowlegged through what seemed like statues in 83. Johnnie Mitchell making fingertip catches on a day in 91 when you couldn't feel your hands. All those years of Sooner Magic. The tunnel walk conquering Ralphie and Evil in 1994. Tommie Frazier and LP making you realize that, during all those years when you said "damn it--maybe some year..."-well, that year finally happened with them. You remember crazy Halloween nights of celebration, and dark, cold days of sadness in late November. You remember jumping up and down hugging strangers as Henery's kick kept going, and going and going over the goalposts, and you remember last year shedding a tear or two of relief and joy when FINALLY Nebraska burst back to the national scene when a walkon made his 3rd interception of the night. You conjure images of your favorite Blackshirts' strewing wreckage strewn across the astroturf. Rich Glover, George Andrews, Derrie Nelson, Mike Croel and the Peter brothers. You will never forget Eric Crouch bringing you to tears hauling in the pass against OU on a day you thought you might never see again in 2001, and it makes you sad for what happened to Frank Solich. For that day, he was King. Tom Osborne and Bo Pelini, home, where they should be--where they should always have been, have dispersed to the winds the stench of the years before their return to make coming back home on Labor Day weekend once again the most special day of the year for you. All those things race through your mind as you watch your speed carefully, the anticipatory shorter breaths as you head down the highway, until--LOOK--there it is, to your left, that huge, gray, sturdy, impenetrable, beautiful facade, with the huge N, telling you that, indeed, you are home again. In decades past, you'd park in yards or alleys for 5 bucks. Now, you park in parking garages and see the same folks, every year, who welcome you back and take your money. You get out and start walking, almost trotting anxiously, because you want to be on the street feeling the energy that accompanies Cornhusker game day. You want to see older folks wearing the red hats, and silly overalls, and other things that you swear you'll never wear, but knowingly laugh to yourself because you're thinking in the back of your mind, yes, someday you probably will wear those things too. You see the kids running to keep up with dad, and wonder if that's how you looked that first, magical day that he took you to a Cornhusker football game. You briefly wish that could be you again, if only for a moment. The traffic cops, the lines at Barry's, the crowds at Embassy Suites and the breakfast at the old Holiday Inn. The people window shopping or just sight seeing. The smell. The feel. The noise. You see and feel it as it is today, and you can close your eyes, and remember it clearly as it was in 1972 too, when your dad led you to the stadium across the railroad tracks, or in 1978, when you took your first drive down to a game by yourself, or in 1983 at P.O. Pears after another 5 TD win. And finally, the best part of all, after sharing your favorite beverage with a few friends or with a hundred strangers who today, are your family....the walk. You feel an inexorable need to get to the stadium. It's like a giant magnet you can no longer avoid an hour before game time, drawing you from whatever establishment or tailgate at which you've spent the day. You have to see it. Feel it. Breathe it. The walk is what you feel in your blood, making you yearn to go back again from Dallas, Kansas City, the west coast or other places of domicile, because they are not truly home. Home is 10th Street, the traffic cops, the mass of red-clad people moving en masse, with a single-minded energy and purpose. It is what you think about on the plane. It is what you've missed and waited for all winter, spring and through the dead of summer. And now, an hour before the game, it's here. It is time. You try to see and sense almost everything during the walk--the kids hawking programs, the guys selling tickets, old friends running into one another again---but you cannot. You walk further down10th St, and you see the party tent on your right with the same van and satellite dish you've seen for 30 years, in the same spot. Somehow, the people look the same as always even though you know most are newer generations of fans, taking over for those no longer able to go. You hear music, car horns and radios blaring the fight song, reminding you that there, indeed, IS No Place Like Nebraska, and you absorb every GO HUSKERS and GO BIG RED. Your heart skips a beat, or two. You catch yourself smiling and your pace quickening. You get closer until, just ahead on your right, there it is. Memorial Stadium. You allow yourself a brief moment, a deep breath, a tingle, even as people fly past you. You've waited 8 months for this--you must absorb it, slowly immersing yourself in it as your senses explode with eager anticipation. As you find your gate to get inside the stadium 45 minutes before the game, as you walk up the stairs and tunnel and get closer, you can see the sun and sky and hear some of the pregame on the field. When you finally get to the top of the ramp, it hits you---THERE IT IS. You take a long pause and experience what seems like a transfusion of life force. You stare, stoicly, and see everything almost as if for the first time again. The field. The N. The gleaming skyboxes. The colors. The players warming up. You swell with emotion and pride, yet strangely try to hide it, because that's what Nebraskans do. And when you're finally seated with your Runza or Vals, and the Pride of All Nebraska finally bursts onto the field, you let it go...8 months of frustration, waiting, longing, boredom, and you drain---everything--as you soak in Hail Varsity, March Grandioso and There is No Place Like Nebraska like the desert soaks up a cloudburst. At that very moment, nothing else in the world matters except your love affair with all that's good and right about a fall Saturday in Nebraska.

4 DAYS, 21 hours

4 days!!!

1 week!!!

8 days!!!

I tailgate in the Journal Stat parking lot, look me up sometime!!!

9 days!!! 9.bmp

oh, what might have been...

I would like to buy your tickets..423 3789 sold, thanks husker1971

2 side by side in section 33 row 80's, asking $110 for the pair.

15 days!!!

try this http://lincoln.ne.gov/asp/eventprk/default.asp

18 days!!! 18.bmp

I have 2 in section 40 row 63 at $150 per seat and 2 in section 39 row 90 and pay $250 per. I heard that it took a minimum of $300 to get seats this year.

3 weeks!!!!

22 days!!!

23 days!!! The best city rec official!!!

25 days

26 days!!!

27 days

4 weeks!