When did you start to follow college football? For me, late 1968. You?
When did you start to follow college football?
- Thread starter saturdaysarebetter
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The first games I really remember were the 1970 season. I was 5 years old and my dad was a huge fan. I remember Rodgers and Glover the most. Rich was my favorite player. But to say I was really following the games and knew what exactly was going on was probably about 5 years later. Thats when I really got big into HUSKER football.
1969, my Dad was a HUGE fan !! Anything Dad was into, was good enough for me. I was 11.
Damn, we're all around the same age and started watching around the same time. I was 5 years old in 1969 when my dad was stationed at Offutt for a second time. We lived in Omaha from 69 to 73 and our entire family has been hooked on Cornhusker football ever since! We have been back in New Mexico since 1977 and still get together for the big games!
It was the Bob Father’s first year at Nebraska, 1962. That fall we got a tractor radio for our International Super M tractor. As a young grade school boy the only football that I was aware of was our local HS football team. That tractor radio changed my world, my life when I started listening to Lyle Bremser, KFAB radio. I didn’t mind scooping $h1t into the manure spreader (we called it the turd hearse) and hauling it out to the field while listening to Lyle. Just a life tip, never spread manure in the field while going with the wind, you ALWAYS spread going into the wind, just thought I’d mention that. Hauling bales, hauling grain, hauling feed that fall, that radio was my umbilical cord. My best memory was when we beat Michigan at Ann Arbor. At that time the Big House had a capacity of 60,000 seats.
While surrounded by cows, I just couldn’t wrap my head around having 60,000 people in one place at the same time. It all started with a tractor radio.
While surrounded by cows, I just couldn’t wrap my head around having 60,000 people in one place at the same time. It all started with a tractor radio.
Great story RR. You epitomize what it is to be a true Husker fan!
Wow - also the 1969 season - but the end of it - the Sun Bowl against Georgia. My uncle who is only 4 years older bet Georgia would beat Nebraska. I didn’t know anything about football, though I was 10 by the end of that season. We moved to Minnesota the next year, and watched from afar (except the Minnesota game) as Nebraska won their first natty. After that, I was hooked for life.
Like RR, I have early memories of listening to Lyell Bremser call Husker Football on KFAB on my Grandpa's lap on his tractor. But my true fandom didn't start until I'd earned my Life merit badge at 14 which allowed me to join the older boys from my Fairbury Boy Scout troop as a Husker Football usher.
My first game was in 1969 against USC. I remember my first look at Memorial Stadium and being impressed by how huge it was. It dwarfed the Fairbury stands where our high school and Juco teams played football.
Being the low kid on the totem pole, I was stationed at the bottom of the steps leading up into West Stadium (the south end entrance.) I had to stand there and watch fans (many were visiting SoCal fans) until the game kicked off at 1 PM. Once the game started, I was allowed to go up and find a seat anywhere on the stadium steps (that's not allowed now--shocked it was even allowed back then.)
Anyhow, when my wristwatch finally showed 1 pm, I hurried up the steps into the stadium, What I saw when I got to the top of the ramp stopped me short. I must have stood at the entrance dumbstruck.
That cold gray stadium I'd seen for the first time two hours earlier when they'd let us in was now jam-packed with fans dressed in red and white. The Huskers and the Trojans were lining up for the kick-off. The band was playing and the place was rippling with excitement. Never before in my life had I seen anything so magical, so overwhelmingly beautiful, or as exciting.
It was love at first sight.
My first game was in 1969 against USC. I remember my first look at Memorial Stadium and being impressed by how huge it was. It dwarfed the Fairbury stands where our high school and Juco teams played football.
Being the low kid on the totem pole, I was stationed at the bottom of the steps leading up into West Stadium (the south end entrance.) I had to stand there and watch fans (many were visiting SoCal fans) until the game kicked off at 1 PM. Once the game started, I was allowed to go up and find a seat anywhere on the stadium steps (that's not allowed now--shocked it was even allowed back then.)
Anyhow, when my wristwatch finally showed 1 pm, I hurried up the steps into the stadium, What I saw when I got to the top of the ramp stopped me short. I must have stood at the entrance dumbstruck.
That cold gray stadium I'd seen for the first time two hours earlier when they'd let us in was now jam-packed with fans dressed in red and white. The Huskers and the Trojans were lining up for the kick-off. The band was playing and the place was rippling with excitement. Never before in my life had I seen anything so magical, so overwhelmingly beautiful, or as exciting.
It was love at first sight.
I grew up with 3 older brothers and a neighbor, whose father was just an insane Husker. Neighbor's father was memorialized in SI, when he died, as the Cornhuskers greatest fan, and the bouquet NU Athletics sent when this man died was absolutely incredible. Anyway, growing up in that atmosphere, it was a given that I would develop the same love for the Huskers. Kind of was put on the back burner when Jethro Bodine and I were married. Hub was an incredible fan so that brought my love for the Huskers back out. We got together Fall of '80 and our Saturday's always revolved around either watching The Game on TV, if televised. Otherwise, we tried very hard to pick up a radio station carrying the Huskers game. Living either in Platte City, MO or Leavenworth, KS, it wasn't always easy. When we couldn't pick it up, we had to make do with hoping the scores would show up in the ticker running across the bottom of the screen.
I'm always amazed at the passion displayed by NU fans. Never saw anything even vaguely resembling it from our KU, KSU or MU fans when we lived in MO and KS. They all disliked the Huskers because they got beat so mercilessly every year but one their seasons tanked, they were off to basketball. All seemed kinda the epitome of fair weather fans, something I'd never witnessed before. I think that's the biggest difference. We may get royally p*ssed and call for the coach's head on a silver platter but the enthusiasm and love doesn't die. Though, I admit NIL $$$'s and the TP are making it a bit difficult these days but we're still here cheering for the Mighty Men of Corn!
GO BIG RED!!!
I'm always amazed at the passion displayed by NU fans. Never saw anything even vaguely resembling it from our KU, KSU or MU fans when we lived in MO and KS. They all disliked the Huskers because they got beat so mercilessly every year but one their seasons tanked, they were off to basketball. All seemed kinda the epitome of fair weather fans, something I'd never witnessed before. I think that's the biggest difference. We may get royally p*ssed and call for the coach's head on a silver platter but the enthusiasm and love doesn't die. Though, I admit NIL $$$'s and the TP are making it a bit difficult these days but we're still here cheering for the Mighty Men of Corn!
GO BIG RED!!!
When my dad held a poker game the night Jerry Tagge leaned over the goal line to win us our first NC.
My dad was a pretty devoted Nebraska fan - we would listen to games on the radio each week - and of course TV games when they occured. My first memory from an actual game is Tony Davis challenging the entire UCLA team to a fight - 1973. We kicked their rears 40-13.
I became a true fan when my coach took us to Lincoln for a ball game, SEC i seem to remember, and we sat in the bleachers in the end zone...October 1963, the place was electric.
I was five years old and had just visited my father's native Nebraska for the first time that summer. The team went undefeated that fall and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl to play Alabama. We lost and they tell me I cried about it, but I don't remember. The next year we lost to Alabama again by a wider margin in the Sugar Bowl. I found my USA puzzle where each piece was in the shape of a state. I located the Alabama piece and threw it in the trash can. Mom found it there. Dad had a talk with me about sportsmanship.
In the immediate years after that, Nebraska lost every televised game I watched. Oklahoma 21-14 and 47-0. I never saw them win until the 1969 Sun Bowl, which was a 45-6 rout. The next year, I followed the team game-by-game, trudging to the paper box each Sunday morning to collect the Detroit News. No sports cable news back then, so I'd dump the paper on the living room floor and find the Nebraska score. My loyalty was rewarded with a national championship, and then another the next year.
What made all of this even sweeter was that like me, Coach Devaney was from Michigan and even coached high school ball in a place called Keego Harbor, only maybe 3 miles from our house.
In the immediate years after that, Nebraska lost every televised game I watched. Oklahoma 21-14 and 47-0. I never saw them win until the 1969 Sun Bowl, which was a 45-6 rout. The next year, I followed the team game-by-game, trudging to the paper box each Sunday morning to collect the Detroit News. No sports cable news back then, so I'd dump the paper on the living room floor and find the Nebraska score. My loyalty was rewarded with a national championship, and then another the next year.
What made all of this even sweeter was that like me, Coach Devaney was from Michigan and even coached high school ball in a place called Keego Harbor, only maybe 3 miles from our house.
'69. Had just moved to LNK from Indy. Riding bikes home from a Little Chiefs practice (Team 2). My buddies shouted "That's Joe Orduna!". He was in someone's backyard, talking to other "adults".
I waz clueless, but my 'mates rolled up to talk w/ him. Sooo...me, too. He signed my glove (Nokona Bob Lemon model (puffery!); "Praise God, John 3:16 Joe Orduna")*.
Asked me if I was Cornhusker. Said I was.
Click, BOOM!
*I had that f___er for a long, long time. re-inked that sig multi times GBR
I waz clueless, but my 'mates rolled up to talk w/ him. Sooo...me, too. He signed my glove (Nokona Bob Lemon model (puffery!); "Praise God, John 3:16 Joe Orduna")*.
Asked me if I was Cornhusker. Said I was.
Click, BOOM!
*I had that f___er for a long, long time. re-inked that sig multi times GBR
Doc, in addition to Fairbury, we have another thing in common: one of my Dad's many odd jobs to earn his way through the University of Nebraska in the 1940s was to serve as a stadium usher. He claimed he once seated the governor of Kansas (Alf Landon, who lost in a landslide to Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election).
Dad saw Nebraska lose a lot of football games in landslides too -- once the 1941 Rose Bowl was in the books, the remainder of the 1940s were rough sledding for Husker football.
For me, pre-Bobfather, Billy Jennings 1959. Jerry Bush in basketball as well.
