Huskers Get in Practice for Rest of the Sooners

Out here where the heartbeat of America can be checked without a stethoscope, where the speed limit on the highway from Omaha to Lincoln is 65 again, and where the roadside signs read “Boys Town” and “Gerald R. Ford Birthplace” and “Strategic Air Command Museum,” a boy does not have to be an All-American to be an All-American boy.

All he has to do is play football--and, as far as Nebraskans are concerned, there are three kinds of college football players in this world of ours. There are Nebraska football players, who are some kind of wonderful. There are football players from other parts of the country, who are worthy rivals and necessary evils. And then there are Oklahoma football players, who are the most necessary evils of all.

Were it not for the yearly ritual that is the Nebraska-Oklahoma game, life would hardly be worth living for some of the dear hearts and gentle people of the heartland. All the thumpings of Missouri and Kansas in the world would not be satisfying unless the rumble with Oklahoma could go on as scheduled, if for no better reason than to allow Nebraska’s motorists to affix their favorite stickers to their bumpers, the ones that go: “If I Owned Oklahoma and Hell, I’d Live in Hell and Rent Out Oklahoma.”

It is a vicious and nasty rivalry, full of everything that makes college football fun. The folks from Nebraska spend 358 days a year waiting for those seven dates when their beloved Cornhuskers will be playing a game of football at home, inside the crusty old bowl that was filled Saturday for the 150th straight time.

Carved into the stadium walls are inscriptions like: “Courage, Generosity, Fairness, Honor. These Are the True Awards of Manly Sport.” And: “Not the Victory but the Action. Not the Goal but the Game. In the Deed, the Glory.” Such are the credos by which Nebraskans propose to live--and do, ordinarily, except for one wacky Saturday in November, when Oklahoma’s Sooners occupy the same premises, trod the same ground, soil the soil. On this one day, glory is in victory, and not in any darned deed.

To hate an Oklahoman is to be a good American. This is the Nebraska attitude. Examine some of the T-shirts sold in shops across the street from the Cornhuskers’ stadium, like this one here, featuring the Oklahoma University Entrance Exam for Prospective Athletes.

“Write Your Name Here,” it begins--and a blank line is provided.

“Write Your Mama’s Name Here,” it continues--and another blank line is provided.

“Write Your Daddy’s Name Here,” comes next--and is followed by five blank lines.

More aptitude problems follow. There is a photo quiz, for example, called: “Which One is Different?” In three of the photographs are identical butterflies; in the fourth is a duck. Then there is a connect-the-dots test--with one dot. And so on. An Oklahoma player is considered uncivilized here, and is not welcome. He is the enemy. He is the plague. He is to be scorned and pitied, and should be shot a dirty look on sight.

That goes for former Oklahoma players, too. Which brings us to a young snuff-dipper out of Henryetta, Okla., name of Troy Aikman, who attempted Saturday to sneak into Lincoln in a clever disguise. He was wearing a UCLA uniform and calling signals for that team. Nebraskans, alas, can sniff out an Okie like a hound can find a raccoon.

The principal purpose of Saturday’s football game for the Cornhuskers was to beat Aikman’s team. That they did, 42-33, in a contest between schools ranked No. 2 and No. 3 in the national polls. Nebraska wanted to beat UCLA every bit as badly as Oklahoma did a year ago, when the Sooners went out and really husked UCLA’s corn.

Just as essential, though, was assuring the masses that anything a Sooner can do--even an ex-Sooner--a Cornhusker can do better. So, if the high-falutin’ University of California at Los Angeles wanted to try to put one over on the hicks from Nebraska by using some quarterback who only a year ago was getting his transcripts transferred from dumb old Oklahoma, well, OK. So be it. Nebraska simply would get even by springing upon UCLA a certain Steve Taylor, quarterback extraordinaire, who happens to be a 100%, born-and-raised, toast-of-the-coast Californian.

Taylor threw five touchdown passes against UCLA, breaking a school record, and needed only 10 completed passes to do it. He looked superb. He looked like a guy who belonged at a school that passes the ball a lot more often, instead of at Nebraska, where the forward pass is still considered a passing fad.

“I’m pretty much happy with my passing game,” Taylor said later. “If you want to be national champions, you have to be able to do those things.”

Just in case anybody missed the message--the message being that Nebraska has itself a quarterback, and maybe even a Heisman Trophy contender--Taylor’s teammates were happy to state his case. Defensive end Broderick Thomas, for one, said: “Steve is just as good as (Florida’s) Kerwin Bell or any other quarterback out there. He’s just at a running school, that’s all.” To which cornerback Charles Fryar added: “I think Steve’s the greatest quarterback in the NCAA right now.”

Could be, could be. The 6-foot, 195-pound Nebraska junior, who lived 16 years in Fresno before moving to San Diego, very possibly can outplay the best quarterbacks in the land, a select group that includes Bell, and probably Chris Chandler from Washington, and undoubtedly those bombers from San Diego State and San Jose State. Taylor can run, can throw, and can play hurt, as he did Saturday with a banged-up left shoulder. He’s a good one.

A late-date Heisman candidate?

“People might say that,” the Cornhusker quarterback acknowledged. “If they do, that’s OK with me. I don’t know if Nebraska’s ever had a Heisman candidate who was a quarterback.”

How Taylor happened to come here to play is interesting unto itself. He came here not because Nebraska guaranteed him that he would play at quarterback, but that he would stay at quarterback. California schools never made him that guarantee, according to to Taylor, who said: “They wanted me as a quarterback-athlete.”

A what?

“The athlete at quarterback who can play other positions,” Taylor explained. “The utility guy. The guy they can play wherever they need one at the time.”

The recruit from San Diego’s Lincoln High did not care to turn into a flanker or free safety overnight. He remembered how another Lincoln grad, Marcus Allen, went from being a star high school quarterback to being a defensive back until somebody finally found him a niche as a running back. Taylor didn’t care to play rushing roulette.

Nebraska was only too happy to throw him right back into a California school’s face. For good measure, after each of of Taylor’s five touchdown passes, the extra point was kicked by sophomore Chris Drennan, a little left-footer from Cypress, Calif., whose style is not unlike that of Garo Yepremian, the little left-footer from the real Cypress.

Drennan was particularly happy afterward because “too many Californians picture Nebraska people in tractors and overalls and cornfields, and can’t get those stereotypes out of their minds,” and also because Bob Drennan, his Oklahoma-bred father, happened to be in the grandstand for the game, acquainting himself with this painful new task of rooting for Nebraska.

A Nebraskan cannot support an Oklahoman, you see, in any way, shape or form. An Oklahoman must be mocked. An Oklahoman is someone from someplace Worse Than Hell. Any Oklahoman who tries to tell you that Jamelle Holieway, the Sooner quarterback, is better than Steve Taylor, the Cornhusker quarterback, probably wouldn’t know the difference between a butterfly and a duck.

So, you get your shots in, when and where you can.

“I’m really happy for myself that I didn’t take UCLA lightly,” Nebraska’s Taylor said. “A lot of people said they might be overrated. But they’re not.”

They’re not?

“They’re just as good as Oklahoma was last year,” Taylor said.

Such a manly sport, this football.