How Many National Championship Games Has NU Lost?
- Thread starter jmfb
- Start date
Count 'Bility
Banned
I dont think so. Tom Osborne discusses the sickness situation in one of his books (faith in the game?). He says flat out we lost that game because most of the team was sick. It was a flu bug or somethin that just ran rampant throughout the team during the whole week and many defensive starters had it on gameday. Also the late season boot to Terrell Farley caused a shakeup on D as Minter was brought up to play OLB in a glorified nickel package and putting an inexperienced player at safety (Mike Brown?)
RedRedJarvisRedwine
All-American
Duh
CheeseHusker
All-Conference
'65 and '81 count in my opinion, since I think we probably win the title if we win those games.
So, '65, '81, '83, '93, '01. That's five. Call us 5-5 in de facto national title games, which isn't bad.
We really should have won that Clemson game. They started calling penalties on Dave Rimington just as we took control of the game. They didn't call penalties on Dave Rimington the whole year.
So, '65, '81, '83, '93, '01. That's five. Call us 5-5 in de facto national title games, which isn't bad.
We really should have won that Clemson game. They started calling penalties on Dave Rimington just as we took control of the game. They didn't call penalties on Dave Rimington the whole year.
huskered17
All-Conference
Cotton Bowl 1964 against Arkansas, we win that we win NC. Teams in front of us lost. GBR!!!
beanman
Banned
Sounds like if we would have been healthy we probably would have rolled their a$$.
Count 'Bility
Banned
Yes. We scored 27 points with 1 rb and first year starter Scott Frost as qb (Green out with foot injury, Benning out with injury. DeAngelo Evans was the only healthy, capable back for the game). Had the defense been fully healthy with Terrell Farley at LB as usual, I doubt Texas even gets to 10 points in that game. If you watch games and highlights from the '96 season and then watch that game, you can clearly see there was a swag missing from that game. Texas's offense did whatever they wanted.
VA Husker Fan
All-Conference
Not all of them. We were 6th going in. #3 Texas beat #1 Alabama. #5 Michigan won the Rose Bowl over #8 Oregon. Maybe we would've jump Michigan, but almost certainly not Texas.
B.B. Hemingway
All-American
For simple questions like this, where no opinion is necessary, or requested; I like to use Google, and/or Wikipedia....
VA Husker Fan
All-Conference
It's not as simple as that before the BCS pitted the #1 and #2 teams. 1970 was a very improbable championship for us because so many teams above us had to lose, and we still had to be ranked ahead of other teams that won their bowl game, like Notre Dame who beat the #1 team. Similarly, we may have been voted #1 after the '81 season, but maybe not. I really doubt there is a google or wikipedia source you can find that says we did (or didn't) platy for the championship that year.
huskered17
All-Conference
Ark beat Texas that year, that gave us a leg up on the NC. We would have jumped Mich, at least that was what I heard on sports shows, back then. GBR!!!
VA Husker Fan
All-Conference
Texas lost in mid-October, by a point, while we lost our last game by 10 to 6-4-1 Oklahoma. It's always tough to overcome an end of season loss in the eyes of voters. Texas beat OU by 21, so that pretty well negates the Arkansas common comparison. We didn't play a ranked team other than the bowls, and the rest of the Big 8 was weak, 7-14-1 out of conference. I just don't see any way we move from 6 to 1 by beating #2 while Texas only goes from 3 to 2 by beating #1. But I was only 3 then so I don't know what the thinking was back then.
I'm also using Wikipedia for info, which can be dangerous. Other sources say that Texas was #5 in the final (pre-bowl) polls, and Notre Dame (turned down a bowl game) was #3, and Michigan was #4. So who knows? In any case, only 2 of the 5 teams ranked ahead of us lost, so I'm still very doubtful.
Count 'Bility
Banned
All these lost championship opportunities, we shoulda sent Devaney and Osborne kickin rocks down the road years ago.
AR Husker Fan
Team HuskerBoard
Actuallly, no. The NCAA, prior to the BCS, lists national championships based on the wire services polls - meaning, the AP and UPI. In 1964, except for a few odd-ball polls (like the Football Writers Association of America, the poll that awarded Arkansas a national championship for the 1964 season), the final polls (AP and UPI, in particular, since the NCAA only counts those, again) came out after the regular season and before the bowl season. Bowl performance played no basis in determining the final rankings.