Posted on 09/16/2021 8:50:44 AM PDT by FryingPan101
They'll play a game Saturday morning in which the home team is a 22-point favorite. The game was deemed so non-competitive that the visiting team tried to cancel it a scant six months ago.
Forget about the label once affixed to the most notable game in this rivalry's history: Game of the Century. Nebraska-Oklahoma is not even the game of the day headed into Week 3 of the 2021 college football season.
The rivalry is a shell of its former self, the threads of history yanked apart by time and conference realignment. A rivalry that used to measure itself against any Iron Bowl or Ten-Year War you can name has dimmed, but it is not … quite … gone.
Look into the 70-year-old eyes of Johnny Rodgers. Saturday marks the 50th anniversary the Game of the Century, which ended with No. 1 Nebraska on top of No. 2 Oklahoma, 35-31, on Thanksgiving Day 1971.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbssports.com ...
I moved to Nebraska in 1981, completely naïve to the status and success of the Huskers. My husband moved here in 2008, from CT, and had worked at UCONN when both their men’s and women’s teams won NCAA basketball. It took him quite a long time to understand about NU football.
So sorry you will watch without your husband.
Hoping NU is not completely humiliated, but sort of expect it.
You are right about Frost.
Interesting. I have an MBA Finance, but spent most of my career in Human Resources - Compensation. I had a hard time talking with HR types. They hated sports anologies - I asked if adding more old white guys to NBA or NLF teams would make them better. It would increase the diversity of the team, and diversity is our strength, right? They hated me
I suspect Oklahoma will be more like Auburn in the SEC.
A good program where occasionally everything falls the right way and has a great year. Then next year lose 4-5 games. But always, they play tough and upset someone that should beat them.
Texas seems like Tennessee to me. They have everything. Great fans support, huge stadium packed every week, great facilities, lots of money, a great tradition and name. They should be winning big year in and year out. Yet, they can’t seem to get their act together. Whatever magic ingredient that separates winners from losers, they’ve lost it and don’t know how to find it.
Depending on how the SEC divides teams up into quads or divisions, think about being put in the SEC West....every year you would have Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Arkansas, and Texas A&M on your schedule, throw in a sometimes competitive Miss State and Ole Miss and that is quite a schedule...
Thanksgiving was in September in 1971?
It was a great game. It was a Big 8 year with #1 Nebraska #2 Oklahoma #3 Colorado.
GBR
So true. The move to the big 10 killed their recruiting. The Big10 area recruits don't want to go to Nebraska, and the move cut off the best players from Texas and ant south.
So sad. Nebraska fans were the class of college football. I loved talking with them.
They sure spanked Bear and the Tide in that Orange Bowl.
Maybe the greatest CFB team of all-time.
They gave up 31 to Oklahoma, but outside of that they only allowed Kansas State, and Oklahoma State to score in double-figures.
Most fan’s these day’s don’t appreciate tradition, and College Football epitomizes tradition.
OU program is over 100 years old. My folks moved here from Ohio in the late 40’s and were Big 10 fanatics.
That’s quite a story. It explains a great deal.
I had such high hopes for Scott Frost since his team experience often consisted of that kind of hands on experience on the sidelines….and he did so well as the offensive coach for the Oregon Ducks. They were better for him being there. He was tough and disciplined. I expected the same high quality at NU. I think he was hounded by the press and made to fend off offering excuses. He was never gonna give excuses. The media wanted him to make a national champion in the first year.
Things happened. No excuses.
Nothing can take away the love Nebraskans have for the Cornhuskers.
Wonderful. That’s so convenient! 💥 Awesome.
I have the original 8-track. LOL. My husband subscribed to the service. It’s awful. He watched them all a dozen times.
I loved the SEC scheduling last year, when there were no out of conference games. But yea, that made the schedules for some teams killers.
I suspect the schedules will get tougher. If for no other reason than TV. Nobody wants to watch any SEC team play Memphis or Appalachian State. If I have the choice of these two games:
• Auburn vs GA State
• Alabama vs Florida
Even if I’m an Auburn fan, I’m watching the Alabama game.
They’ll even out the schedule so it will be fair for everyone, but going to a 9 or 10 game conference schedule will make a difficult schedule for everyone.
Other than Vandy, there isn’t a team anymore that’s a complete pushover anymore in the SEC. Even Kentucky’s program has gotten pretty decent.
It would be more entertaining if they had a bunch of Indians run onto the field and fire flying arrows at the wagon!
I hope the fans shout, “F**k Joe Biden,” clap clap....clap clap clap!
A small wager on the underdog with the point spread could result in a nice little payout, or a “so what?” loss.
I am a lifelong Husker fan and an NU alum. I grew up 40 miles south of Lincoln. Two of my friends were former starters in the ‘80s. One of them was an All American who played in the NFL and Canada for 6 years. The other was a Blackshirt for 3 years.
We have hashed over what happened to the program since Frank was fired in ‘03. There are a lot of things those guys know as former players that I am not privy to but the gist is that the culture of toughness, player accountability and consistency were destroyed by Callahan and former AD Steve Pederson and just never fully recovered. Poor coaching hires (Callahan,Riley) sure didn’t help. As for Frost, we will see. That one is puzzling. Great coaching pedigree and he comes here and seems to be regressing.
For a guy whose favorite team was the winnigest team in college football from 1962-2003, this is personally hard to take. GBR (see my tag line)
If the SEC and college football in general goes to a real playoff format that removes polls and selection committees from deciding who gets in then I’m all for tougher schedules
Basically I’m for 4 major conferences of 16 teams each, all conferences have a championship game which is the first round of the playoffs lose and go home, win and advance, records of the teams advancing is immaterial
Too many big buck donors love the program and think they can fix it, only to keep messing it up by telling the new coach what to do.
Texas needs a hard nosed coach like Saban to tell them to kiss off.
A while back, when I was bored, I worked out a proposed structure for College Football:
Divide all 130 Division I teams into 11 Divisions.
The key is each division is divided into two tiers, the “Power” tier, and a “Secondary” Tier consisting of the smaller programs. All the Power Tier teams in the division play the other Power Tier teams in their division.
One Secondary Tier team competes in the Power Tier in a given season, depending on if they win a playoff game, against the Secondary Tier team that had the best record against the other Secondary Tier teams in that season.
I organized the 130 Division I programs into 11 separate divisions. You can see for the most part they are organized geographically, and traditional rivalries are still preserved.
With the 11 Divisions, the playoffs would work as follows.
11 Division Winners get a First-Round Bye.
The 11 Second-Place finishers are seeded 1 through 11. The 10th and 11th seeds play each other, to play in the First-Round against the 1 seed. So the winners of the 5 First-Round Games join the 11 Division winners in the Round of 16. Teams are seeded according to Ranking, and those games are hosted by the higher seeded team. So you still have incentive to be as highly ranked as possible. So even if you win your division, if you are ranked low, you still have to travel to play a team that finished 2nd in their division.
Starting with the Round of 8, games will be played at neutral sites.
The fun part was going through all the 130 Division I teams and figuring out where to put them.
West 1 Division
Power Tier
Washington
Washington State
Oregon
Oregon State
Cal
Stanford
Boise State
Secondary Tier
Hawaii
San Diego State
Fresno State
Nevada
UNLV
San Jose State
West 2 Division
Power Tier
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona State
Utah
BYU
Colorado
Secondary Tier
Air Force
Wyoming
Colorado State
New Mexico
New Mexico State
Utah State
UTEP
——
Central 1 Division
Power Tier (The Big 8 is Back!)
Nebraska
Kansas
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Missouri
Secondary Tier
Tulsa
North Texas
Arkansas State
SMU
Central 2 Division
Power Tier (The Southwest Conference is Back!)
Texas
Texas A&M
Arkansas
Baylor
TCU
Texas Tech
Secondary Tier
Houston
Rice
UTSA
Texas State
——
Southeastern 1 Division
Power Tier
Florida
Georgia
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Kentucky
South Carolina
Secondary Tier
Georgia State
Georgia Southern
Memphis
South Alabama
Southern Mississippi
Southeastern 2 Division
Power Tier (I struggled to find the 6th team to put here)
Alabama
Auburn
LSU
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Secondary Tier
Tulane
Louisiana
Louisiana-Monroe
Louisiana Tech
UAB
Troy
——
Atlantic 1 Division
Power Tier
Florida State
Miami
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Duke
Wake Forest
Secondary Tier
East Carolina
Coastal Carolina
Charlotte
Florida Atlantic
Florida International
South Florida
UCF
Atlantic 2 Division
Power Tier
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Maryland
Louisville
Clemson
Georgia Tech
West Virginia
Secondary Tier
Western Kentucky
Middle Tennessee State
Old Dominion
Navy
Liberty
Marshall
Appalachian State
Atlantic 3 Division
Power Tier
Syracuse
Rutgers
Boston College
Notre Dame
Penn State
Pitt
Secondary Tier
Buffalo
Temple
Connecticut
Army
Massachusetts
——
Midwest 1 Division
Power Tier
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Indiana
Purdue
Cincinnati
Secondary Tier
Kent State
Miami (OH)
Ohio
Akron
Bowling Green
Toledo
Midwest 2 Division
Power Tier
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Minnesota
Iowa
Iowa State
Illinois
Secondary Tier
Western Michigan
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Northern Illinois
Ball State
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