Corn on the Mob

The cute little thing is only 7, yet in January she will be attending her sixth bowl game.

She will come here with her family from Omaha, in a Cadillac with “Husker” on the door and “GONU” on the plates.

She has posed on the family holiday cards with a Nebraska football and Nebraska helmet, but she’s too small to lug those things to Pasadena.

Instead, she will show her pride by dressing in a little red vest adorned with a white “N.”

Just another of the thousands of Nebraska fans expected to gather here for the Rose Bowl.

With the possible exception of, she’s a dog.

The souvenir is a plastic bowl-shaped object, perfect for a paperweight or ashtray.

What makes it truly special, though, is the lettering at the bottom that proudly reads, “Go Big Red.”

Just another of the million trinkets owned by Nebraska fans attending the Rose Bowl.

With the possible exception of, it’s a bedpan.

“We’re nutty, all right,” says Bob Billings, a retired Omaha banker, the man with the dog and dish.

We?

“Nebraska football fans.”

All of you?

“You’ll see how many. You’ll see real soon. Nothing big. Maybe, oh, 50,000 of us.”

All of them traveling 1,500 miles during the holidays for a football game?

“I once listened to the second half of a Nebraska game entirely over a telephone that my buddy was holding up to the radio.”

But why?

“Here in Nebraska, football is all we got.”

And now, thanks to a negligent computer that completely ignored the combustible combination of overalls and old-town Pasadena, Nebraska football is all that we’ll see.

From now until the Jan. 3 national title Rose Bowl between Nebraska and Miami.

Arguably the nation’s most fervent fans of any sport--every home game sold out for the last 39 years--squatting in our neighborhoods.

So many fans that it could be the toughest ticket in Rose Bowl history.

Our beaches being stormed by Omaha.

So much red, we’ll be sick of sunsets.

So much corn, we’ll be flossing for weeks.

“People come up to me and say, ‘You’re crazy,”’ said Billings, speaking from a den filled with 32 autographed footballs.

“And I say, ‘Thank you very much.”’

This is the oddest thing about these oddballs.

We big-city folks want to have fun, poke a little straw under their skin.

But they’re so, well, nice.

Nebraska fans may be the only ones in sports who consistently applaud the opposing team as it is leaving their Memorial Stadium field.

That’s easy, of course, when your team is winning 47 consecutive games there. But a couple of years ago, when Texas broke that streak, Nebraska fans even gave running back Ricky Williams a standing ovation.

“We’re poor losers, but we’re not poor sports, and there is a difference,” Billings said.

Nebraska fans are also perhaps the only ones who virtually never boo their own players.

Earlier this year there were scattered jeers during a lackluster victory against Texas Tech. A couple of letters to the editor later, the jeers disappeared for the rest of the season.

“We’re a state that thrives on agriculture, so we’re mostly homebodies,” explained Matt Williams, another nutty fan who runs the bank in tiny Gothenburg. “Nebraska football is our one chance each week to feel good and positive about something we all do together.”

They do it so much, they are also some of the smartest fans in the land.

Having apparently run out of football tests that can fool anybody, the stadium operators there show a scoreboard video each week featuring a physics professor explaining how different parts of the body contribute to touchdowns.

One recent video was about quarterback Eric Crouch’s ankles.

Williams, of course, successfully navigated a caller’s pop quiz about more important stuff.

The name of Crouch’s fiance?

“Nikki.”

The name of the Cornhuskers’ defensive backs coach?

“George Darlington.”

This is a 52-year-old bank president who lives 200 miles from Lincoln.

Yet he has missed only one home game in 10 years.

“I like to get in my seat about 45 minutes before each game, check out the players during warmups, watch them test their injuries, that sort of thing,” he said.

Don’t we all?

This respected business leader, incidentally, said he was standing in a room filled with such souvenirs as a piece of a Memorial Stadium goalpost torn down nine years ago, and a clump of stadium turf.

Outside, in his backyard, a plastic Santa was sitting on a holiday light display fashioned in the shape of a goal post.

Don’t ask.

“It’s OK, everybody in Los Angeles will like us,” Williams said. “We’re all really nice. And we’ll spend a lot of money.”

And if you happen to see a poodle-like animal running around the Rose Bowl wearing red ribbons adorned in footballs and helmets?

“It’s Lady Husker,” Billings said proudly.

Just don’t ask her to run a post pattern.

“That’s about the only thing she’s never learned to do,” he said, sighing. “Play catch.”

Bless her heart. Just like her team.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com