11-5-24
BRIEF BOWL HISTORY
Nebraska first played in a bowl game following the 1940 season. Coach “Biff” Jones’ Huskers played Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Nebraska was 8-1, having lost its opening game at perennial power Minnesota, and ranked No. 7, Stanford 9-0 and ranked No. 2.
The Huskers lost 21-13, but fans were so passionate about Nebraska football then and when Bob Devaney arrived, “I had been at Nebraska for five years before I found out the Huskers lost that game to Stanford,” Devaney jokingly wrote in his 1981 autobiography.
According to Lincoln newspaper accounts, Nebraska had been considered for the second Rose Bowl in 1915, but the University Athletic Board showed no interest in a post-season game. According to Lincoln Star sports editor Cy Sherman, Nebraska “spurned” a Sugar Bowl invitation following the 1936 season.
Independent Santa Clara defeated SEC champion LSU at Tulane Stadium.
Nebraska “refrained from giving publicity either to the invitation or the declination,” Sherman wrote, to save “the New Orleans authorities an embarrassment, enabling them to look elsewhere for a contender thus freed of the stigma of being ‘second choice.’”
Santa Clara was that “second choice.”
Fan passion wasn’t the same when Coach Bill Glassford’s Huskers played a second bowl game following the 1954 season, losing to No. 14 Duke, 34-7, in the Orange Bowl.
Nebraska finished the 1954 regular season 6-4, including 4-2 in the Big Seven, good for second place behind Oklahoma, which was on its way to a 47-game winning streak. The conference—Oklahoma State had yet to join—champion played in the Orange Bowl but couldn’tgo back-to-back. So, the Huskers represented (not well) the conference in Miami. Duke was 7-2-1 in the regular season.
The Huskers didn’t make another bowl appearance until Devaney’s first season, the Gotham Bowl, a 36-34 victory against Miami. That bowl was the first of five in a row, including two Orange Bowls, a Sugar Bowl and a Cotton Bowl. The Huskers went 1-3 in those four, all against opponents ranked No. 5 or higher, the win against Auburn, the losses against Arkansas and two against Alabama.
Nebraska opted not to accept a bowl bid after the 1967 season and had no bids to decline in 1968, the second of back-to-back 6-4 seasons.
Nebraska started the 1969 season 2-2, but finished on a six-game winning streak to earn an invitation to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, where the No. 14 Huskers defeated Georgia 45-6. The Sun Bowl was the first of an NCAA-record 35 consecutive bowl appearances.
Five of those bowl games resulted in national championships. All 25 of Tom Osborne’s teams went to bowls as did Frank Solich’s six teams. The streak ended Bill Callahan’s first season, 2004.
Two of Callahan’s teams went to bowls and all seven Bo Pelini-coached teams won at least nine games and went to bowls. Two Mike Riley teams went to bowls in three seasons, bringing Nebraska’s all-time bowl total to 53. Riley’s 2016 team, 9-3 and ranked No. 24 in the regular season, lost to unranked Tennessee, 38-24, in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tennessee. That was the last.
Expectations were the Huskers would get a sixth win and bowl eligibility Saturday, but it didn’t happen. They have three more chances.
Mike Babcock
