Canadian writer bleeds Husker red

[Blackshirt]

Wow. A pretty cool article.

 

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There is no place like Nebraska

 

David Larkins - Varsity News

Local Sports

BRANDONSUN

Wednesday, October 07 2004

 

Last weekend, nearly a full 21 years after the defining moment of my college football fandom, I was en route to the Cornhusker State for what amounted to my sporting pilgrimage to Mecca.

 

I was seven years old when I first remember being a Nebraska Cornhusker fan. I know my initiation started before that, mostly due to my father's interest in the Big Red, but my first vivid memory is the 1983 national championship game.

 

 

I remember lying in bed, still wide awake, while the rest of the game went on downstairs and my mom came up to tell me the news.

 

 

"They scored a touchdown but decided to go for two and didn't get it."

 

 

So Miami won the national championship game 31-30 and the Cornhuskers and I would have to wait 10 more years before winning a national title. Instead of taking a tie (there was no overtime in the early '80s college game), head coach Tom Osborne made the now infamous call for two and quarterback Turner Gill's pass fell incomplete. All these years later, I say unequivocally it was the right call to make.

 

 

For each of the last 265 games, more than 77,000 people have piled into Lincoln's Memorial Stadium, a remarkable NCAA-record sellout string that can only serve to emphasize the utter intensity this state has for its football.

 

 

In fact, it's not just football. A tailgating family, when finding out we had come from Canada for the game, thanked us (representatives of the country) for sending their way two of our finest - national volleyball team member Sarah Pavan and national soccer team member Brittany Timko. Both players are among the NCAA's finest and their accomplishments don't go unnoticed even in diehard football country.

 

 

The Sea of Red that Nebraska fans produce every game day is a sight to behold but what is more overwhelming is walking through the city and seeing the entire town clad in scarlet. A Kansas fan, donning the blue of KU, walked into a restaurant and stood out more than a fur coat at a PETA rally.

 

 

And this sea stretches further than the confines of Lincoln.

 

 

"Is everybody wearing red back in Omaha right now?" I asked the couple sitting next to me who had made the 45-minute drive from Nebraska's largest city.

 

 

"Oh, absolutely," the wife replied. "Everybody in the state is."

 

 

That is the brilliance and beauty of Cornhuskers football that we in Canada never really have the privilege to experience. An entire state stops what it's doing, bands together and unifies under one rallying cry: Go Big Red.

 

 

Not yearly, not monthly, but every weekend.

 

 

That the Cornhuskers beat Kansas 14-8 on Oct. 2 was almost moot to my experience, as blasphemous as that is for the superfan to suggest.

 

 

"Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed, the glory" is the inscription that lines the renovated west-side facade of Memorial Stadium and those words are a large part of Husker lore. The words ring especially true.

 

 

Saturday's win made the beers taste better that night, made the long drive home a little shorter and rendered the weekend that much more of a success. Still, years from now, I am less likely to remember the score than I am to remember the waving hands in unison of the thousands in the student section, the resounding bellows that punctuate the Nebraska fight song, "There is No Place Like Nebraska", and the anticipation of the Tunnel Walk, eclipsed only by the intense pitch of the cheers and fiery emotion of the fans when the team finally storms into the stadium.

 

 

In Canada, we're missing out. Olympic gold medals in hockey did to this country one time out of a year what the people of Nebraska do every single week.

 

 

I met a season-ticket family that drives eight hours every second week to see Husker games. I heard stories of season tickets being handed down through generations of families and I watched Memorial Stadium turn into the state's third largest city.

 

 

All of which is why another inscription at the stadium doesn't seem like hyperbole:

 

 

Through these gates pass the greatest fans in college football.

 

 

For one day, I was a part of that.

 

 

The greatest fans put on the greatest show and with 77,000 other "family members" all doing the same, I happily bled bright scarlet red.

 

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