We are stretching the hippocampus of a brain to come up with the first awareness of Nebraska football. It was the mid-1950s and there was a station out of Yankton, S.D., with a potent signal that would provide my father Richard with his daily dose of Paul Harvey's news.
If you happened onto that station on a Saturday afternoon in the fall, you would hear the Nebraska Cornhuskers football game. And what a 10- to 15-year-old kid recalls all these decades later is the suffering of the Huskers' announcing tandem as the woeful seasons stacked up.
Of course, most of our Saturdays were dedicated to listening to the Gophers on AM 830 out of the Twin Cities, but if the kickoff times didn't match, the Cornhuskers were the main alternative in the area surrounding Fulda, Minn.
The eavesdropping out of Yankton started in 1956 (roughly). Pete Elliott was the coach for one season and Bill Jennings for five. The Cornhuskers record was 19-40-1 overall and 11-27 in the Big Seven and Big Eight.
The Gophers and Nebraska had played periodically starting in 1900. Minnesota led the series 29-6-2 when we moved to Prior Lake in the summer of 1962.
The relocation left behind Cornhuskers broadcasts as the distant second option to the Gophers for Saturday afternoon football. And this occurred at the moment that, after years of sadness, the Nebraska radio booth had to become a very joyous place.
Bob Devaney arrived from Wyoming and immediately went 9-2, which included a 36-34 victory over Miami in the second of the two Gotham Bowls to be played in New York City on Dec. 15, 1962.
This led to the greatest sign I've ever seen at a college football game, which was also the greatest college football game I've ever covered, as well as the greatest college football team I've ever watched lose a game.
