THE BATTLE FOR NO. 1 : For Nebraska, This Rivalry Is Too One-Sided

It’s a peculiar rivalry in that, for one team, it’s barely a rivalry at all.

Oklahoma, in things football and financial, mostly competes with Texas. The final accounting each autumn is regarded so important by the constituency of the neighboring states, in fact, that no fewer than three books have been written about that famous football series in the last few years.

No books have been written about this rivalry. Not that Oklahoma-Nebraska is just another game. Every year--40 of the last 42 anyway--the winner gains or shares a conference championship.

Many years, the winner gains the national championship, as well. As in 1971, when the teams were last ranked Nos. 1 and 2--the first Game of the Century, as it is still called here--Saturday’s game between the two top-ranked teams is also expected to be preliminary to a Jan. 1 national championship game in the Orange Bowl.

Still, it is clear that this game means more to Nebraska than to Oklahoma, and maybe always has.

Nebraska, so remote that it has no real geographical antagonists, has made this one the game over the years and has invested it with all kinds of sociological importance. If you know that Nebraska has lost the game the last three years, and 11 of the last 15 under Coach Tom Osborne, you may be able to understand the level of desperation that has developed here.

Stories:

--A Chicago man was transferred to Kuwait but refused to go unless he could be furloughed for the Nebraska-Oklahoma game.

--A woman gave birth this week and inquired of the athletic department whether the new-born would need his own ticket.

--A man who says he’s dying of lung cancer wrote to the Omaha World-Herald to describe his initial emptiness. “One of my first thoughts was that I might not be around for the ’86 ‘Husker season,” he wrote. “I was very thankful to live through the year.”

Conditions at Norman, Okla., where the school president once vowed to “build a university of which the football team can be proud” and where the current president said at a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. convention, “Football is important because it increases attendance at the university museums on Saturdays,” are outrageous, of course. But compared with those here, the undertaking of football in Oklahoma seems a relatively nonchalant enterprise.

The players here, who normally copy the button-down reserve of Dr. Osborne, can be heard making wild statements these days, responding to the pressing hysteria of the event.

For instance, the Sooners have prominent on their bulletin board the comments of Nebraska quarterback Steve Taylor. Asked about Oklahoma, he said, “The flat-out truth is, Oklahoma can’t play with us. They are not good enough. Let me tell you, it might not even be close, and I mean that.”

Asked to compare himself to injured Oklahoma quarterback Jamelle Holieway, the normally soft-spoken Taylor seems to have lost it. “I don’t think there’s any comparison,” he barked. “I’m faster. I’m quicker. I throw better.”

Wednesday, Taylor told the press that Dr. Tom had since sat him down and asked him to kindly refrain from such inflammatory remarks. Still, he admitted making the comments and further bristled, “I don’t like being No. 2 to anyone.”

The same day, I-back Keith (End Zone) Jones, yet more soft-spoken than Taylor, was asked to comment on the Oklahoma defense.

“My impression of the OU defense, with all due respect, is that every team they played has moved the ball on them,” he said.

Oklahoma opponents average 7.5 points a game, apparently moving the ball back and forth just short of the end zones.

Defensive end Broderick Thomas has been enriching the lexicon ever since he got here. Before last year’s Sugar Bowl game, Thomas decided that LSU needed to be hit and that he was “bringing the wood.” He’s the guy who tabbed the Nebraska season the 1987 Hellraising Tour.

Anyway, when someone asked him for a useful comparison, he despaired.

“There is no comparison,” he said. “And I’m being honest.”

Thomas, who advocates speaking out whenever possible--”I don’t sit around with rocks in my jaw”--also said that the Nebraska scout team “is giving us a better picture than we might see Saturday.”

This kind of talk is considered remarkable for Nebraska players. Nobody can recall the like of it. But understand that this generation of players has yet to beat an Oklahoma team, and the frustration has become palpable.

Taylor said: “Broderick and I were talking about why we came to Nebraska, and the answer is to beat Oklahoma four years. That hasn’t happened, of course.”

Failure to do so, all agree, has been nothing short of embarrassing.

“My heart still hurts,” Thomas said.

The players not only believe that they’re failing themselves, their school and their town, but their poor coach as well. Dr. Tom has a record of 146-32-2 at Nebraska to Barry Switzer’s 147-25-4 at Oklahoma. Yet going 4-11 in this particular game, and thus failing to advance Nebraska’s cause nationally, leaves the impression that Osborne cannot win the big one.

There is some thought, completely unfounded, that Osborne has become unhinged by his inability to routinely best Oklahoma.

“Sometimes, because we’ve never won a national championship since I’ve been head coach, people feel like I’m Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick, and that I’m obsessed,” he said. “It isn’t that way with me. I feel the most important thing is to play well.”

Osborne, who was an assistant in 1971, remembers the letdown after Nebraska had beaten Alabama for the national championship.

“Everyone was sitting there in a stupor,” he said. “I thought, ‘Hey, this isn’t that big a deal. So what?’ The pursuit is always more important than the winning of it.”

Still, many observers note, and in a way even Osborne agrees, that Nebraska has been largely shaped by the need to beat Oklahoma.

“We’ve made a lot of changes to try to be as good (as) or better than they are. If we didn’t have Oklahoma in the league, we wouldn’t be as good.”

The team might have evolved specifically to survive and outlast the Sooners. Once, Nebraska could tilt the earth with its heft. Players looked like farm machinery, recruited right out of the cornfields. But now, in an apparent effort to cope specifically with Oklahoma’s infuriating option offense, Nebraska has begun to emphasize speed, in both the defensive and offensive backfields.

In the pursuit of Oklahoma, the two schools have become college football’s 1 and 1-A. The Big Eight is no bastion of parity--not as long as Kansas and Kansas State are permitted to play--but these two are always somewhere near the top nationally. Not even the Big Ten can boast of such an important tandem.

This will be the 12th time since 1971 that the teams will go into their game ranked in the top 10. It’s the fourth straight year that they’ve been in the top six. Although the loser, even if by a close score, will likely drop further than it should in the polls, it is interesting to note that these teams have been Nos. 1 and 2 all season, the only change occurring this week when Nebraska replaced the injury-torn Sooners at the top.

The final rankings seldom include 1 and 1-A, however. They don’t have to. College football has the Nebraska-Oklahoma game to resolve that. And if Oklahoma is not sufficiently excited about it, Nebraska is.

“This game,” explained Steve Taylor, “is all about who’s the best.”

NO. 1 vs. NO. 2

Meetings between the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams in the Associated Press’ college football poll. The No. 1 team has won 14 times, with two games ending in ties. In the case of Jan. 1 Bowl games, the year indicates the regular season.

Year Score Bowl Game or During Season 1986 No. 2 Penn State 14, No. 1 Miami, Fla. 10 Fiesta Bowl 1986 No. 2 Miami, Fla. 28, No. 1 Oklahoma 16 During Season 1985 No. 1 Iowa 12, No. 2 Michigan 10 During Season 1982 No. 2 Penn State 27, No. 1 Georgia 23 Sugar Bowl 1981 No. 1 USC 28, No. 2 Oklahoma 24 During Season 1978 No. 2 Alabama 14, No. 1 Penn State 7 Sugar Bowl 1971 No. 1 Nebraska 38, No. 2 Alabama 6 Orange Bowl 1971 No. 1 Nebraska 35, No. 2 Oklahoma 31 During Season 1969 No. 1 Texas 15, No. 2 Arkansas 14 During Season 1968 No. 1 Ohio State 27, No. 2 USC 16 Rose Bowl 1968 No. 1 Purdue 37, No. 2 Notre Dame 22 During Season 1966 No. 1 Notre Dame 10, No. 2 Michigan State 10 During Season 1963 No. 1 Texas 28, No. 2 Navy 6 Cotton Bowl 1963 No. 2 Texas 28, No. 1 Oklahoma 7 During Season 1962 No. 1 USC 42, No. 2 Wisconsin 37 Rose Bowl 1946 No. 1 Army 0, No. 2 Notre Dame 0 During Season 1945 No. 1 Army 32, No. 2 Navy 13 During Season 1945 No. 1 Army 48, No. 2 Notre Dame 0 During Season 1944 No. 1 Army 23, No. 2 Navy 7 During Season 1943 No. 1 Notre Dame 35, No. 2 Michigan 12 During Season 1943 No. 1 Notre Dame 14, No. 2 Iowa Pre-Flight 13 During Season