How It Was: Remembering Trainwreck
by Mike Babcock, OWH
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After a game at Notre Dame in 1947, a Chicago Sun sports writer described the Cornhuskers in hyperbole common to the time as a “tough and stubborn bunch of roughnecks . . . big, brutal and at times they performed with murder in their hearts.”
And Novak was the toughest of the bunch.
Norris Anderson, sports editor of the Lincoln Star, called his play at linebacker that afternoon “Paul Bunyanesque,” a reference to the giant lumberjack of American folklore.
Novak was no giant, at 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds. But his play was larger than life.
The Huskers lost to a Notre Dame team that would go undefeated and win a second consecutive Associated Press national championship in 1947. The final score was 31-0.
Even so, Novak, a sophomore, was undaunted. According to a Lincoln newspaper account, he told the large crowd that gathered to applaud the team at the train station in Lincoln on its return from South Bend, the Fighting Irish hadn’t been “as tough as I thought they would be.”
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