The straight scoop from
Colonel Mustard
June 30, 2011
Well, we have reached the last day of contentious stay in the shotgun marriage that became the Big 12. I am very excited by the opportunities that joining the Big Ten will offer us. We really had no other choice. Otherwise we would end up like Missouri. They are stuck in a conference they would prefer to leave.
While your humble correspondent is not nostalgic about the Big 12, I will miss playing the Big Eight schools. I have been attending Big Eight games for 50 years, and these games against these teams have great importance to me. We are losing what the late, great play-by-play man Bob Zenner used to call our ancient rivals.
I saw us defeat Oklahoma the day after Kennedy was shot, and I still can see the Sooners’ Billy Sims fumble on the south 10 yard line in ’78. I can see Langston Coleman pulling Missouri QB Gary Lane down in the north end zone for a safety in ’64. The great Richard Berns scoring on the first play against Missouri in ’78 and how cold that game was. Kansas’ Gale Sayers going 99 running south to north down the west sideline against us in ’63. Jim McFarland getting knocked down on an overthrown Jerry Tagge pass for an interference call in ’69. That set up the winning TD to start an unbeaten streak that would last 2½ years. The best football player I have ever seen in my life breaking the ankles of the Iowa State punter on a punt return in ’71. The wild 65-31 win over Oklahoma State in 1970. Our men running over the Vermin in ’92 and naming the score after several seasons of frustration against them. In ’70, smashing a Lynn Dickey-led K-State team that had called that game their bowl game.
Please forgive the mostly old references, but I want to illustrate the length of these series and how important they have been to Nebraska. No one is more excited about our possibilities in the Big Ten than I am. I felt that on the eve of a historic day in Nebraska history, we should pause and remember where came from.
-- The Colonel