Husker_Power
Starter
Enthusiasm for NU goes beyond borders
LJS
It wasn't what you'd characterize as ideal. It was the middle of the night and the Chinese booze on hand tasted like sour milk.
No matter. Tim Pendrell was ecstatic. He may have been 12 time zones away from the action and his Internet connection may have made trying to watch a football game an exercise in frustration, but so what.
The Huskers stood on the brink of beating Texas.
It was 2006 and he was in Beijing taking part in a UNL study-abroad program. Pendrell was living in the Shao Yuan dorms at Peking University, mostly surrounded by Russian, Kazakhstani, Korean and Japanese students. He was away from home but not far removed from following the Huskers. Never.
And as the Nebraska-Texas game wandered into the fourth quarter, a wonderful thing happened: His Internet connection started working, the video of the game coming through as though he were sitting in Lincoln.
Pendrell opened his dorm room and invited the Kazakhstani party from across the hall to come watch. Nebraska took a 20-19 lead and Pendrell explained they were witnessing Nebraska's return to prominence.
"They all got very into the game and shared my excitement," Pendrell writes. "We were all shouting, 'Husker jia you, Husker jia you, Husker jia you,' which is Chinese for 'go team.' It literally means 'add oil.' "
His Kazakhstani friends seemed impressed by the noise of the crowd and the snow falling on Memorial Stadium. Life was good.
"And then Terrence Nunn fumbled the first down," Pendrell remembers. "Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Nooooooo!"
Texas kicked a field goal. Bu Shi!!! A thousand times Bu Shi!!!
Pendrell is back in America, attending grad school at New York University. But he joins a great collection of Husker fans with a story to tell about following Nebraska football while in a land far away.
Dean Lindgren, a 1976 graduate now of Ankara, Turkey, stays up into the wee hours of the morning to listen to Husker games. Games that start at 6 p.m. here start at 2 a.m. there.
It was about 2 a.m. in Turkey when Alex Henery kicked a 57-yard field goal to beat Colorado. Lindgren's son and daughter were at the game and gave him a call, holding the phone up so he could hear the crowd's roar.
"Sometimes I take a nap at halftime but run the risk of missing some of the third quarter," Lindgren writes. "I'm pretty committed to hanging in there for the whole game though."
So is 1st Sgt. Gary Williams, who follows the Huskers from Iraq.
He watched last year's 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech in the middle of the desert on an outdoor movie screen. Heartbreak in the sand. But at least he was watching. Sometimes he is not so lucky.
Williams has to track most games through the play-by-play on the Internet at 2 or 3 in the morning. The Burwell native is sent DVDs of the games he misses from the athletic department. It is a real treasure to him when he gets to see a game as it happens, like he did for the Colorado and Gator Bowl wins.
"Both great for a Husker's soul while deployed," he writes.
Curtis Huttenmaier knows how Williams feels. After graduating from Beatrice High School in 2003, Huttenmaier joined the Marines. He served two tours in Iraq as a machinegunner and squad leader in an infantry battalion.
Since he couldn't watch or listen to the games, he waited for his dad to send newspaper clippings of Husker news by mail.
"I enjoyed that so much and it was really able to keep up the morale of myself and others when we would chat about football," Huttenmaier writes. "I have a standard red hat with a white 'N' on the front that I took with me on both tours and wore as much as I could. I would have worn it more than my helmet if there hadn't been snipers to worry about."
You can find Husker fans in the places you'd never expect — like the Papal Audience in Vatican City.
While on a tour of Italy last year, Husker fan Tom Meyerhoeffer saw a man in a crowd of thousands wearing a Husker hat. He pushed through the crowd to ask if the man was from Nebraska.
No, the man said. Bonn, Germany. Turned out there was a Husker-themed bar in Bonn, Germany.
Then there's Daniel Jackman. He grew up in Grant and still remembers well when his dad took him to see Nebraska play Bear Bryant's Alabama in 1977.
Big Husker fan, big enough that he plans his weekends around listening to Husker games even though he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. The time difference between here and there is 12 hours.
"Two years ago, my wife sometimes found me asleep in my office listening to the Internet radio on Huskers.com," writes Jackman.
He went to bed at about 6 a.m. last year after staying up all night to follow the Gator Bowl.
The games may often start in the wee hours, but Jackman usually grills a couple of Johnsonville Polish Sausages — "no Fairbury dogs over here," he writes —and grabs a big bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos (red bag) and one of his Husker hats.
Small world, indeed. No one knows better than Jackman.
It's Warsaw, Poland, where Jackman met his wife. Of all things, she was from Lincoln.
Their first discussion was about Valentino's Pizza and the Huskers.
"And the funny thing, when I first met her parents, I found that her parents and my parents sat right next to each other in the stadium," Jackman writes. "Talk about meant to be."
LJS
It wasn't what you'd characterize as ideal. It was the middle of the night and the Chinese booze on hand tasted like sour milk.
No matter. Tim Pendrell was ecstatic. He may have been 12 time zones away from the action and his Internet connection may have made trying to watch a football game an exercise in frustration, but so what.
The Huskers stood on the brink of beating Texas.
It was 2006 and he was in Beijing taking part in a UNL study-abroad program. Pendrell was living in the Shao Yuan dorms at Peking University, mostly surrounded by Russian, Kazakhstani, Korean and Japanese students. He was away from home but not far removed from following the Huskers. Never.
And as the Nebraska-Texas game wandered into the fourth quarter, a wonderful thing happened: His Internet connection started working, the video of the game coming through as though he were sitting in Lincoln.
Pendrell opened his dorm room and invited the Kazakhstani party from across the hall to come watch. Nebraska took a 20-19 lead and Pendrell explained they were witnessing Nebraska's return to prominence.
"They all got very into the game and shared my excitement," Pendrell writes. "We were all shouting, 'Husker jia you, Husker jia you, Husker jia you,' which is Chinese for 'go team.' It literally means 'add oil.' "
His Kazakhstani friends seemed impressed by the noise of the crowd and the snow falling on Memorial Stadium. Life was good.
"And then Terrence Nunn fumbled the first down," Pendrell remembers. "Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Nooooooo!"
Texas kicked a field goal. Bu Shi!!! A thousand times Bu Shi!!!
Pendrell is back in America, attending grad school at New York University. But he joins a great collection of Husker fans with a story to tell about following Nebraska football while in a land far away.
Dean Lindgren, a 1976 graduate now of Ankara, Turkey, stays up into the wee hours of the morning to listen to Husker games. Games that start at 6 p.m. here start at 2 a.m. there.
It was about 2 a.m. in Turkey when Alex Henery kicked a 57-yard field goal to beat Colorado. Lindgren's son and daughter were at the game and gave him a call, holding the phone up so he could hear the crowd's roar.
"Sometimes I take a nap at halftime but run the risk of missing some of the third quarter," Lindgren writes. "I'm pretty committed to hanging in there for the whole game though."
So is 1st Sgt. Gary Williams, who follows the Huskers from Iraq.
He watched last year's 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech in the middle of the desert on an outdoor movie screen. Heartbreak in the sand. But at least he was watching. Sometimes he is not so lucky.
Williams has to track most games through the play-by-play on the Internet at 2 or 3 in the morning. The Burwell native is sent DVDs of the games he misses from the athletic department. It is a real treasure to him when he gets to see a game as it happens, like he did for the Colorado and Gator Bowl wins.
"Both great for a Husker's soul while deployed," he writes.
Curtis Huttenmaier knows how Williams feels. After graduating from Beatrice High School in 2003, Huttenmaier joined the Marines. He served two tours in Iraq as a machinegunner and squad leader in an infantry battalion.
Since he couldn't watch or listen to the games, he waited for his dad to send newspaper clippings of Husker news by mail.
"I enjoyed that so much and it was really able to keep up the morale of myself and others when we would chat about football," Huttenmaier writes. "I have a standard red hat with a white 'N' on the front that I took with me on both tours and wore as much as I could. I would have worn it more than my helmet if there hadn't been snipers to worry about."
You can find Husker fans in the places you'd never expect — like the Papal Audience in Vatican City.
While on a tour of Italy last year, Husker fan Tom Meyerhoeffer saw a man in a crowd of thousands wearing a Husker hat. He pushed through the crowd to ask if the man was from Nebraska.
No, the man said. Bonn, Germany. Turned out there was a Husker-themed bar in Bonn, Germany.
Then there's Daniel Jackman. He grew up in Grant and still remembers well when his dad took him to see Nebraska play Bear Bryant's Alabama in 1977.
Big Husker fan, big enough that he plans his weekends around listening to Husker games even though he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. The time difference between here and there is 12 hours.
"Two years ago, my wife sometimes found me asleep in my office listening to the Internet radio on Huskers.com," writes Jackman.
He went to bed at about 6 a.m. last year after staying up all night to follow the Gator Bowl.
The games may often start in the wee hours, but Jackman usually grills a couple of Johnsonville Polish Sausages — "no Fairbury dogs over here," he writes —and grabs a big bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos (red bag) and one of his Husker hats.
Small world, indeed. No one knows better than Jackman.
It's Warsaw, Poland, where Jackman met his wife. Of all things, she was from Lincoln.
Their first discussion was about Valentino's Pizza and the Huskers.
"And the funny thing, when I first met her parents, I found that her parents and my parents sat right next to each other in the stadium," Jackman writes. "Talk about meant to be."
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