Nebraska Fans Join at Pub to Cheer--Then Mourn

They cheered intensely Saturday night for their beloved University of Nebraska football team at Vern’s Cornhusker Club and Suds Pub.

Owner Vern Stacy rang his cowbell from the row of seats closest to the television.

Others banged loudly on the tables.

Huntington Beach truck driver John O’Brien crushed a beer glass in his hand.

“Nobody else in the country, it seems, wants Nebraska to win. So that makes us have to cheer all that much harder,” said LeRoy Hulse, a Huntington Beach machinist and a friend of O’Brien’s.

More than 150 Nebraska football fans from throughout Southern California crammed their red-clad bodies into Vern’s to watch the telecast of their team battling for the national collegiate football championship against the Florida State Seminoles in the Orange Bowl.

And when the Cornhuskers lost to the Seminoles in a down-to-the-wire nail-biter, 18-16, their bowl losing streak hit an unlucky seven.

For nine years, a hundred or more ex-Nebraskans have gathered each fall Saturday at Vern’s to watch--some might say worship--their home state team and its gridiron battles. They come from as far north as Fresno and as far south as San Diego.

“See all this red? It’s as close as you can get to being at the game without having to go there,” said Jerry Muncey, a Camarillo insurance agent.

Others came to Vern’s because they hoped that somehow their presence would help the Huskers break their losing streak in holiday bowl games.

“I came here to see the Colorado game and we won. I came here to see the Oklahoma game and we won. So I said I was going to be back here for the Orange Bowl because I sat home for the last six seasons and we’ve lost,” said Jim Eppley, a maintenance mechanic from Hemet.

Marc Fitzpatrick, a Fullerton media manager, said simply, “I’m tired of breaking my own living room furniture.”

The bar itself is a shrine to Huskerdom.

Photographs of Coach Tom Osborne and former Coach Bob Devaney smile down from above the cash register like patron saints. The walls and ceiling are decorated with at least 100 red and white Nebraska souvenirs, including lamps, posters, trash cans and even a toilet seat nailed above the counter. There are old photos players, maps of Nebraska, posters of Nebraska.

“I always wanted to own a sports bar built around a Husker theme,” owner Stacy said, pointing out that California’s Cornhusker fan club has 15,000 members. “People told me I was making a mistake, that I would offend people’s loyalties. But California isn’t like Nebraska--there are so many different loyalties here, it’s easy to find customers. It’s not like if you were in Omaha and tried to open a (USC) Trojan or (UCLA) Bruin bar. You’d go broke.”

Stacy is himself a Nebraska native, coming to California permanently in 1961 and eventually settling in Huntington Beach.

“I’m from Linwood, population 170,” Stacy said proudly. “It’s located between the Platte River and Skyler, which is between the big cities of Fremont and Columbus.”

Translation: He’s from eastern Nebraska.

And like many Cornhusker fans, he never actually attended the University of Nebraska. He went to a small parochial college in the state.

“But that doesn’t matter, because everybody in Nebraska roots for the Cornhuskers because it’s the only thing we have, really,” Stacy said. “There are no other big schools in the state. Even Oklahoma has the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Kansas has Kansas and Kansas State. So there are rivalries in those states. But in Nebraska, our loyalty is to one school.”