The story of the day 25,000 Nebraska fans turned Notre Dame Stadium into a sea of red during the 2000 season is one of the legends of the glory days of Cornhuskers football.
Saturday it’s a reminder of how far Nebraska football has fallen and how long ago it was that it was one of the elite programs in the college game.
Nebraska won two national championships in the 1970s and three more in the 1990s. It won at least nine games for 33 seasons in a row from 1969 through 2001.
Things are very different today. If Ohio State beats the Cornhuskers on Saturday afternoon it will guarantee a fifth straight losing season for them.
And if you need a marker of how long ago the glory days were, the high school recruits in Nebraska’s last two recruiting classes and the one it is assembling for 2022 weren’t alive yet when the Cornhuskers fans took over Notre Dame Stadium on Sept. 9, 2000.
Nebraska and Notre Dame hadn’t played each other in football since the 1973 Orange Bowl and hadn’t played a regular season game since 1948 when they met in 2000.
Notre Dame was coming off a 5-7 season in Bob Davie’s third season as coach. And with $500 or more per ticket coming out of the wallets of Nebraska fans, a lot of Notre Dame fans became sellers.
“Disappointing. Very disappointing,” Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White said.
Nebraska fans might have used those same words a few times this season about the Cornhuskers who are 3-6 overall and 1-5 in the Big Ten going into this afternoon’s game against OSU in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Nebraska fans have usually been regarded as some of the most faithful and most polite in the Big Ten. But there were some in the home crowd who left early during a 28-23 loss to Purdue last Saturday.
Nebraska thought it had found the coach to turn things around when it hired former Cornhuskers quarterback Scott Frost in 2018 after he had led Central Florida to an unbeaten season in his second year there.
But Nebraska will take a 15-26 record for Frost into Saturday afternoon’s game against Ohio State.
The Cornhuskers’ six losses have all been by eight points or fewer. They have thrown a scare into some of the best teams in the Big Ten and the best team in the Big 12 but haven’t quite gotten a big win.
They have lost by three points to Michigan, by three points in overtime to Michigan State, by five points to Purdue, by seven to Minnesota and Oklahoma and by eight to Illinois.
Ohio State (7-1, 5-0 Big Ten) was ranked fifth in the first College Football Playoff standings of the season, which came out Tuesday night. It comes into this game on a six-game winning streak since a 35-28 loss to Oregon.
Last week’s 33-24 win over Penn State was the first close game for the Buckeyes since the loss to Oregon. It was close because (a.) Penn State is pretty good, (b.) Ohio State’s offense left points on the table by scoring only one touchdown in six trips into the red zone, (c.) by having seven, count them, seven pre-snap penalties, and (d.) by having some unexpected struggles on the offensive line that affected the running game.
Despite all that, the Buckeyes still had 466 yards total offense, got 305 yards passing from C.J. Stroud and 152 yards rushing from TreVeyon Henderson. And the 33 points they scored was 10 points more than any other opponent had scored against Penn State.
Nebraska’s hopes of pulling off an upset start with quarterback Adrian Martinez, a four-year starter who has passed for 2,268 yards and 12 touchdowns with 7 interceptions this season.
Martinez has struggled with throwing too many interceptions most of his career (43 TD passes, 27 interceptions). He seemed to have gotten that issue under control this season, but then threw four picks against Purdue last week.
Nebraska has proved several times it is good enough offensively and defensively to stay in almost any game. But it hasn’t proved it can win against almost any opponent. It hasn’t proved it can return to anything approaching the glory days.
That will have to wait for at least another week. Maybe it will have to wait for another season. And maybe for another coach.
The prediction: Ohio State 38, Nebraska 21
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