Classic to showcase NU

[indianahusker]

those were the days when they let Cris Collinsworth do color for games. Collinsworth is one of the best around. even though, if i remember right, he couldn't stop blowing hot air up Miami's a$$ the whole time.

I watched the 1994 Orange Bowl game against FSU in the US embassy in Nairobi.

At 3 am, with not a soul moving about on the streets except me, the heavily-armed marine guard lifted a steel roll-up gate from the front door, and I watched the game with two marines from Florida, a marine from Alabama, and a Kenyan friend who later attended the 1996 Fiesta bowl with me.

I distinctly recall Bob Trumpy as one of the announcers of that game, and he was very fair to Nebraska, and said with emphasis he saw no clip on the Dixon punt return. I think his announcing mate was Bob Enberg,

Chris Collinsworth - and the guy who does the Notre Dame games - announced the OB the next year (1995), as I recall, and had to finally shut his trap when Tommie Frazier and Cory Schlesinger made him.

Terry Donahue and Jim Nantz did the Fiesta Bowl in 1996, although I had the distinct pleasure of NOT hearing them live, because I was at the party itself in Tempe. Husker fans arrived FIVE HOURS early for that game, and turned the stadium into a home atmosphere. My son gave me that trip, and it was a great present!

But when I heard them later, I especially had to laugh when Donahue was trying to set up the old line about Nebraska not having Florida's speed. That was right, they had Nebraska speed.

I have an email from Danny Wuerffel. I wrote to him when he said, not long ago, that the Gator's game his senior year against FSU for the championship was the biggest clobbering he had ever been part of as a quarterback.

I reminded him he was in a far worse clobbering the year before, and he wrote, "Wow. That's true!" One of the Florida players said before their (2nd) 1997 game against FSU, "At least we aren't playing an NFL team this year" for the championship.

On august 7th, 1998, I had the unhappy circumstance of being once again at the site of the US embassy in Nairobi, only this time it was partly in rubble. The young Marines guarding it had orders not to use their weapons while it was being ransacked by hundreds of looters following a truck bombing, said to have been done under the direction of Usama Bin laden.

I was perhaps the first white civilian on the scene. Hundreds of people were buried beneath the rubble caused by the blast. A blue pickup truck was wedged in the west wall of the embassy, not far from the second floor office of Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, who, thankfully, was in the next building at the time of the attack.

The 1998 Husker season did not seem especially important to me.

Once again, I bow down to the greatness that is a vet.

Thanks for your service and keeping me free! :clap