Speech sparked NU in 1922

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

My apologies if this has been posted already

 

Deep Red: Speech sparked NU in 1922

By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star

 

Thursday, Jun 04, 2009 - 12:42:57 pm CDT

 

A great commotion was occurring outside the Husker locker room on that Thanksgiving in 1922. There were reports of counterfeit tickets passing hands and people perched in trees hoping to watch the football collision.

 

Notre Dame was in town to challenge Nebraska — the Notre Dame of Knute Rockne, the Notre Dame of Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. We call them The Four Horsemen, but famed sportswriter Grantland Rice hadn’t yet provided them that nickname in 1922.

 

They were just sophomores then — really good sophomores. Notre Dame had won all of its games except for a tie with Army.

 

Nebraska, no slouch itself with just a 9-6 loss to Syracuse, was going to need a special effort. But before the game began, there were special words delivered to the Nebraska players. Jack Best said them. And from all accounts, it seemed understood by all in the room that Jack Best was dying.

 

Best was born and raised in England. He was once a boxer and even had a special boxing name — Jimmie Grimes. But he’d come to America to tan animal hides as his father had done. He first located in Crete, but soon moved to Lincoln, where he became an athletic trainer at the university in about 1890, just at the birth of Nebraska football.

 

“His salary consists of a negligible amount of money and a stipend of friendship among his protégés, past and present,” according to a 1912 excerpt in The Cornhusker, the school yearbook.

 

In his own words, Best said: “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the boys. I just feel like they are mine.”

 

He became a friend to so many that those around campus tried to raise money to send him on a vacation out west to better his health in 1922. Best never took the trip.

 

But he did want to be there to see them play Notre Dame.

 

In his book, “Stadium Stories: Nebraska Cornhuskers,” longtime Husker writer Mike Babcock offers a great account of what were said to be Best’s moments with the team before that game.

 

Babcock writes of how the 77-year-old Best, “his legs all but useless from the ravages of age,” was bundled in blankets and carried from his office in Grant Hall (which was razed in 1966) to a taxi, which moved him to nearby Nebraska Field. Once there, two players had to lift him from the taxi and transport him to the locker room.

 

There, Best told the team it would be the last time he would be seeing them play and he wanted a win. After he was done speaking, Nebraska coach Fred Dawson (who had a 23-7-2 record in four years at NU), apparently started a chant with Best’s name.

 

Burke Taylor, a student who witnessed the speech, later forwarded the story to an Omaha sportswriter, dramatically describing that “tears streamed down the cheeks of the giants who pounded onto the field a few minutes later.”

 

Whatever emotions were there inside the locker room translated to great success when the game began on Nebraska Field. (This was the last game played at the field. Funds to build Memorial Stadium were in the process of being raised.)

 

Nebraska scored 14 points in the second quarter — a touchdown run by Harold Hartley and a 60-yard touchdown reception by Dave Noble.

 

An attempted Notre Dame comeback was thwarted when Jim Crowley fumbled in the fourth quarter while trying to break free. He was not yet a Horseman, after all.

 

Nebraska won 14-6. Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen would lose just twice in their careers, and both times were to the Huskers. (NU also beat Notre Dame 14-7 in 1923 in Lincoln before losing 34-6 in South Bend the next year.)

 

As for the man who gave the pregame speech? According to accounts from the school yearbook, he smiled during the game “as thousands of Cornhuskers rose and paid him tribute.”

 

Best died less than two months later. Exaggeration or not, it was reported that thousands attended his funeral.

 

 

[knapplc]

BC asked for topics a while back for his Deep Red series, and I suggested this one. I was glad to see he wrote about it, and did such a great job. Sipple, Christopherson, Rosenthal, McKeever and Henrichs are a pretty darned good crew of reporters over at the JournalStar.

 

I just hope they get their site worked out. This new version is a train wreck.

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

I thought it was a great story so kudo's to you for recommending it

[knapplc]

Anyone who knows even a little bit about college football lore knows about the Four Horsemen. Only one team beat the Four Horsemen two times, and that was our very own Huskers.

[Vuren]

Anyone who knows even a little bit about college football lore knows about the Four Horsemen. Only one team beat the Four Horsemen two times, and that was our very own Huskers.

don't bring it up in south bend, it is not a pretty site