KEN HAMBLETON: Huskers and Wolverines have quite a shared past
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Business was brought to a standstill as crowds flocked to O Street to see the bulletin boards posting the latest updates and hear announcers giving the latest news from Ann Arbor, Mich., on the afternoon of Oct. 21, 1905.
A ball was strung on a rope high across O Street, and those who couldn’t get close enough to read the boards or hear the announcements could track the position of the ball as it moved with every play.
But the Huskers, who played mighty Michigan to a scoreless first half, fell 31-0 in the second half and the local “crowds sorrowfully dispersed to their homes and places of business,” the Nebraska State Journal reported.
But the national press praised the “plucky Cornhuskers,” and a thin but strong tie was made between Nebraska and Michigan that will be tested again Wednesday in the Alamo Bowl.
The five previous meetings between Michigan and Nebraska have marked the Husker football tradition almost as deeply as the annual NU-OU showdown.
The most significant victory in Bob Devaney’s career at Nebraska, and one of the most memorable games in NU history, was the Huskers’ 25-13 upset at Ann Arbor in 1962.
The victory ended the doubts about the new Husker coach and opened the eyes of the nation to the possibility that Nebraska was going to become a power.
The Nebraska-Michigan ties were formed in 1895 when Charles Thomas, a Michigan grad, took over for Frank Crawford as the Nebraska football coach.
The 1905 NU-MU game marked the first time famous Michigan coach Fielding Yost faced his former team. Yost coached at Nebraska in 1898. NU’s victory against Kansas that year sparked a celebration that led to a fire behind the mechanical arts building.
But Yost left for Kansas, then Stanford and eventually Michigan. His departure from NU was marked by reports he often used players who enrolled the week before a big game.
Yost got his comeuppance in 1911 when the Cornhuskers, under first-year coach Jumbo Stiehm, battled the Wolverines to a 6-6 tie in NU’s first homecoming game. Stiehm’s teams went undefeated in 1913, 1914 and 1915.
And reports said that one NU touchdown was called back because an official, Ted Stuart, who also was covering the game for a Denver newspaper, blew his whistle after the final play of the third quarter started, but maintained he blew the whistle before the play started. Instant replay was not available for some reason ... TV hadn’t been invented yet.
The local papers called the tie with Michigan, “unmatched in football history.” The State Journal reported, “The Nebraskans played like demons from the moment the referee’s whistle blew for the kick-off until the final call of time stopped them from walking over the battered men of Yost for another counter.” It was “Team work, magnificent team work. The kind that makes men who rarely attend football games stand up and shout in admiration was the all-engrossing feature of Nebraska’s play.”
Another report said the game was so close and tough on Michigan and Yost that “the consumption of stogies began.” It should be noted that Nebraska Gov. Chester Hardy Aldrich kicked the ball into Nebraska territory to open the game, somewhat like throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.
Yost got his revenge in 1917 when the Wolverines shut out Nebraska 20-0 on a rainy day in Ann Arbor. Earlier in the season, NU beat Nebraska Wesleyan 100-0.
In 1919, Henry Schulte, a Michigan grad, became the Cornhusker coach for two seasons. He also took over as track coach and led that team to 15 conference titles through 1938. The recently demolished Schulte Fieldhouse was named in his honor.
The Nebraska-Michigan ties cooled until 1956, when a 29-year-old former Oklahoma assistant, Pete Elliott, was named to lead the Huskers. The former All-America quarterback who led Michigan to a national title in 1948 left for Illinois after a year at the Husker helm.
Six dismal Husker football years later, Devaney took a 10-point underdog to his home state and stunned the Wolverines behind the quarterbacking of Dennis Claridge.
Devaney, a former Michigan high school coach and former Michigan State assistant, said before the game, “I hope they don’t play that Michigan victory song too often.”
The Darin’ Dandys of Devaney, as then-Lincoln Star sports editor Don Bryant called them, turned in seven plays that “ranked in the reeeeeeaaaaaaally big category from the standpoint of odds and success.” Bill “Thunder” Thornton, Jim Huge, Larry Donovan, Dave Theisen, Bob Brown, Dick Callahan, Lloyd Voss and Dwain Carlson were the stars of the game for NU.
“We’ve got a very good football team,” Devaney said.
That led to the last time the Huskers and Wolverines met, Jan. 1, 1986, in the Fiesta Bowl.
Michigan fell behind 14-3 by halftime, but two fumbles and a blocked punt led to a 27-23 Wolverines’ victory.
The game marked the comeback attempt by young quarterback Steve Taylor, who filled in for McCathorn Clayton late in the game.
Michigan and Nebraska rarely were mentioned in the same sentence again until 1997, when the coaches’ poll listened to NU quarterback Scott Frost’s pleas for the respect of outgoing coach Tom Osborne and voted the Huskers No. 1, while the Associated Press writers stubbornly stuck with Michigan, despite a wimpy victory against Washington State in the Rose Bowl.
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or at khambleton@journalstar.com.
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