Video Gems: "A Decade of Dominance" & Nebraska Football's Decline
The 2024 college football season marks the 30th anniversary of Nebraska football’s run of three national championships in four seasons. It’s a stretch of supremacy that only Alabama in 2009, 2011 and 2012 replicated since, and that exceeded the standards of Oklahoma, USC and Miami dynasties preceding it.
Nebraska’s 1995 team highlighted in the above documentary was the best of the bunch, and one of the very best college football teams ever. The Cornhuskers destoryed all comers, beating every team it faced by at least 14 points — including a trio of top 10-ranked opponents by 24 (No. 8 Kansas State, 49-25); 23 (No. 7 Colorado on the road, 44-21) and 38 with a drubbing of No. 2 Florida in the de facto National Championship Game.
Their first of the three titles in 1994 came with somewhat more resistance, most notably a 24-17 showdown against third-ranked Miami in the Orange Bowl. I remember this game especially vividly; I have noted in the past on this newsletter that the 1993 season was when I really fell in love with college football, thanks in part to following Charlie Ward’s run to the Heisman Trophy and national title with Florida State1. The latter culminated in a classic showdown with Nebraska that ended in an 18-16 Seminoles victory.
Of course, for those unaware, that also means Nebraska came a field goal away from completing college football’s only three-peat since Minnesota in the 1930s and claiming an incredible four national championships in five seasons.
Anyway, given the significance of the 1993 season’s Orange Bowl, an elementary school-aged Kyle was especially interested in following year’s installment. Nebraska’s two-touchdown rally in the fourth quarter, completed on a pair of late-game Cory Schlesinger end-zone runs, capped a fitting rebound for the Huskers after the previous year’s heartbreak.
Because assorted work projects2 have delayed updates to The Press Break in recent weeks, please accept this bonus documentary in today’s installment of Video Gems as a mea culpa:
I have Nebraska football on my mind this day specifically — July 24, 2024 — because current Huskers coach Matt Rhule addressed reporters at Big Ten media day in Indianapolis, and it struck me as such an, “…Oh, yeah. Nebraska is in the Big Ten, too,” moment.
Amid the buzz over the Big Ten’s expansion, first with USC and UCLA announced in 2022 then Oregon and Washington following suit last August, there were no shortage of words spent on the forthcoming marquee matchups. USC visits the Big House for the first time since the ‘50! Ohio State goes to Autzen Stadium, with Chip Kelly on the Buckeyes staff, no less! Washington will go to Happy Valley for the first time ever!
Nebraska, meanwhile, has felt like as much of an afterthought in the Big Ten’s Manifest Destiny as generational also-rans Illinois and Indiana, or its early 2010s realignment peers Rutgers and Maryland.
Perhaps some of that can be attributed to Nebraska having faced all four of the Pac-12 imports in the post-dynasty era. But in those matchups is reflected the downfall of Nebraska football. The Cornhuskers are 4-7 against the quartet in the 21st Century, with two of those wins coming against Washington in the 2010 regular season, three months before the Huskies won a rematch in the Holiday Bowl; and a 35-32 nail-biter over the worst Oregon team since the early 1990s (2016).
Now, the Nebraska decline has been documented ad nauseum for almost 20 years — from my perspective, coincidentally beginning with one of those matchups against a former Pac-12 member.
Despite a year-to-year slide that began with the last championship “contending”3 team sputtering to end 2001, there remained a general optimism heading into Bill Callahan’s fourth year at the helm that Nebraska was poised to come roaring back.
His move away from the option to what was then considered a more modern offense saw gradual improvement in 2005 and 2006, and the Cornhuskers were ranked No. 14 before USC visited Lincoln.
The ensuing 49-31 Trojans win, which was significantly more lopsided than the final score indicates — Nebraska scored twice in the final five minutes to almost halve a 32-point deficit — deflated the Cornhuskers for the remainder of the campaign.
While Ndamukong Suh’s Heisman-worthy performance in 2009 and Nebraska’s contention for the Big 12 title that season provided an initial spark to the Bo Pelini era, the Huskers have never recaptured the energy of generations past.
And I don’t mean that in the obvious sense of competing for national championships or even winning conference championships. I mean it in the sense that Nebraska football has utterly lacked juice for essentially the entire 21st Century.
Whereas other faded dynasties like Miami remain in the zeitgeist because of their cultural impact, or USC teases a return to past glory every few years, Nebraska as a cornerstone of college football is more a relic of elder Millennial (and earlier) nostalgia.
Explaining the concept of the Cornhuskers as indominable worldbeaters to the uninitiated, on the other hand, seems akin to sharing with my son memories of blowing into Sega Genesis catridges or going to the local libray to access two or three pages of the internet in an hour.
But hey, at least to that end, Nebraska was pretty much unstoppable on College Football USA ‘96 for the Sega Genesis.
If you’ve never read despite my plugging it at every opportunity, please check out my feature on the 1993 Notre Dame-Florida State “Game of the Century” I produced for AwfulAnnouncing.com last November. It’s my favorite article that I wrote in 2023, and a special one personally for what that game and season meant to building my college football fandom.
I am humbly asking for your support with a purchase of the 2024-25 Lindy’s Sports College Basketball Preview, on newsstands this fall!
I use quotations here because it’s technically correct to refer to the runner-up participant of the BCS Championship Game as in contention, but I also believe any objective observer recognized Nebraska was less deserving to be Miami’s sacrifical lamb that season than either Oregon or Colorado.