Mike Babcock is in his 47th season covering Nebraska football. Babcock also covered most other Husker sports at some point in his journalism career. Mike earned his undergraduate degree in English from Cal State-Chico and Masters in English (teacher preparation) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Babcock spent seven years teaching English and Introductory Literature at Parkland Community College. Mike wrote sports part-time at the Champaign-Urbana Courier as well as for Lincoln Journal and Star for 17 years for the sports department covering Nebraska as a sports columnist. Babcock then wrote for Huskers Illustrated before Hail Varsity and Hurrdat Sports.
Optimism is the order of the day, similar to spring practice but with the season at hand. Now, as in the spring, the Nebraska football team can be as good as one’s imagination allows. For instance, though the past is that and nothing more, Matt Rhule’s similar rises...
That Nebraska football had set aside its 19-0 loss at Arizona State, at least to some degree, was reflected in a 65-9 win against Colorado State in the third game of the 1996 season at Memorial Stadium. In addition to the 65 points, the Huskers rolled up 628 yards of...
Arizona State took the opening kickoff and drove 80 yards on 10 plays for a touchdown, on a 25-yard pass from Jake Plummer to Keith Poole. As it turned out, that’s all the Sun Devils needed. As Tom Osborne indicated following Nebraska’s 1996 opener two weeks before, a...
Beginning this week, Hail Varsity Historicals will go game-by-game through Tom Osborne’s 1996 season, preceding his third national championship with Nebraska football. After Nebraska opened the 1996 season with a 55-14 victory against Nick Saban’s second Michigan...
Tom Osborne understated top-ranked Nebraska football's performance in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 2, 1996, you might say. He “felt we had a little better defense than they’d seen and a better running game than they’d seen,” Osborne said, referring to the second-ranked...
Oklahoma, under first-(and only)-year head coach Howard Schnellenberger, came to Memorial Stadium to face Nebraska football the day after Thanksgiving 1995 with a 5-4-1 record. The Sooners had lost three of their last four, including a 12-0 loss at home to rival...
Tom Osborne was a little “apprehensive” before Nebraska football's game against Iowa State the previous week, considering a possible emotional letdown after back-to-back victories against top-10 teams. As indicated in the previous Historical, there was no letdown. The...
Following back-to-back victories against top-10 teams and climbing atop the national rankings, Coach Tom Osborne had some concern when Nebraska football played Iowa State in early November 1995. That despite the game being played at sold-out Memorial Stadium and the...
Tommie Frazier played so well, again, against Colorado in 1995, the subject of whether he could win the Heisman Trophy was part of Tom Osborne’s post-game interview. “If statistics are the criteria, obviously, Tommie probably isn’t going to win it. If they look at...