The Start of it All

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

The Start of it All

 

The Start of It All

Players from 1962 recall the beginning of sellout streak, Devaney era

by Samuel McKewon

 

At the time, Dennis Claridge didn’t even consider that 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,” defensive tackle Ndamukong 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.