Facing the Titans, Football Power May Want to Take a Hike

They’re two perennial college juggernauts who begin each season with their sights trained on the upper echelons of national rankings. Anything less is a cause for soul-searching. Every so often, just for added fun, one wins a national title. They’ve won eight between them, four in the 1990s.

They are models of consistency. Their programs are the envy of schools around the country, and blue-chip prep recruits want to play for them. Each sends a steady supply of players to the pro ranks. Their home games pack the stands.

Cal State Fullerton and Nebraska. Two vaunted athletic teams, each rightly full of themselves, and finally meeting head-to-head as each goes after another national title.

Today, Titans versus Huskers.

But why, oh, why does it have to be in baseball?

Why couldn’t it be in football? True, Cal State Fullerton doesn’t play football, so how about a neutral sport like pingpong or darts? Tennis, anyone?

What am I, you ask, some kind of Husker alum? OK, I don’t deny it (Class of ‘71). Long before that, as a Nebraska stripling, I rejoiced in Husker triumphs and mourned the losses.

But that was football.

As for baseball . . . well, I think I remember them having a team.

This year, however, the Huskers played better than most other baseball teams in the country. For the first time in their history, they made the eight-team field in the College World Series.

And because the world series is held every year in my hometown of Omaha, guess which city on the banks of the Missouri River is going slightly bonkers today?

But after all these years of waiting, whom do we get to play? None other than my homeys from Fullerton, merely the nation’s top-ranked team and the No. 1 seed in the whole dadgum tournament.

While the Huskers are making their first appearance, the Titans will be making their 11th.

Wouldn’t it have been more sporting to let us try someone a little easier in the first game?

Is Chapman in the tournament?

This is not to say the Huskers will be intimidated. The university has played plenty of teams that have won games 28-0. However, those were all football opponents--not baseball teams like the Titans who beat Pacific by that score in April.

Like me, hundreds of other Orange Countians will have divided loyalties when the Huskers and Cal State play. We’d like our local lads to do well, but Southern California is a mecca for transplanted Nebraskans, and a Nebraska-themed sports bar once existed in the shadow of the Cal State campus.

To get a gauge on the Huskers, I phoned old pal Mike Kelly in Omaha, a Cincinnati native who’s lived in Omaha for 30 years and is a former sports editor at the Omaha World-Herald.

“Everybody’s going ga-ga over the Huskers being in the World Series, which a lot of people thought they’d never live to see,” Kelly says. “All the stores are selling Husker stuff like crazy, like it’s football season.”

This is no Cinderella team, he says. They’ve considered themselves title contenders all season long and had the nation’s No. 1 ranking for a while.

For now, baseball is No. 1 in Big Red country, and everybody expects Rosenblatt Stadium to sound like it’s never sounded before.

“I haven’t heard football talk or even seen any football stories lately,” Kelly says. “The names of players that two or three months ago most Nebraskans couldn’t have said now roll off the lips pretty easily.”

Visiting football teams know what to expect from Memorial Stadium in Lincoln on football Saturdays. They come in, see 75,000 people dressed in red and they get crunched by the Huskers.

But today?

Little red lambs being led to the slaughter? Can the Huskers keep the mighty Titans from running up the score?

“Everybody’s excited, and the they think they can win the thing,” Kelly says.

If not, football season starts in August.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.