The history of Nebraska Cornhuskers football covers the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's football program from its inception in 1890 until the present day. Nebraska competes in the Big Ten Conference as part of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and plays its home games at Memorial Stadium, where it has sold out every game since 1962.
Nebraska is among the most storied programs in college football history and has the eighth-most all-time victories among FBS teams. NU has won forty-six conference championships and five national championships (1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, 1997), along with seven unclaimed national titles. Its 1971 and 1995 teams are considered among the best ever. Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier, and Eric Crouch join twenty-four other Cornhuskers in the College Football Hall of Fame.
The program's first extended period of success came early in the twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1916, Nebraska had five undefeated seasons and a stretch of thirty-four games without a loss. The Cornhuskers won twenty-four conference championships prior to World War II but struggled through the postwar years until Bob Devaney was hired in 1962. Devaney built Nebraska into a national power, winning two national championships and eight conference titles in eleven seasons as head coach. Offensive coordinator Tom Osborne was named Devaney's successor in 1973 and over the next twenty-five years established himself as one of the best coaches in college football history with his trademark I formation offense and revolutionary strength, conditioning, and nutrition programs. Following Osborne's retirement in 1997, Nebraska cycled through five head coaches before hiring Matt Rhule in 2023.
The early years Program origins (1890–1899) Nebraska's football history unofficially began in 1889 when a group of civil engineering students chopped down enough trees to create a small field at the corner of 10th and R Streets in Lincoln. A team was formally organized in 1890 under the direction of Dr. Langdon Frothingham, a newly hired veterinary pathologist from Harvard University. Frothingham was asked to oversee the program because he was familiar with the rules of the game and had brought a football with him from the East Coast. Nebraska's first game was a 10–0 Thanksgiving Day victory over the Omaha YMCA on November 27, 1890 with several hundred fans in attendance. Frothingham broke his leg during a practice prior to the season's only other game, an 18–0 win over Doane in February 1891, and left the university shortly after.
Prior to their 1891 meeting in Omaha, Iowa sent assistant Theron Lyman to Lincoln to prepare Nebraska – which played without a coach in 1891 and 1892 – to face the more experienced Hawkeyes. Nebraska credits Lyman as its head coach for the game, though he likely did not attend Iowa's 22–0 win. In December 1891, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri formed the Western Interstate University Football Association, one of college football's first conferences. Nebraska – by then playing under the colors scarlet and cream as the "Bugeaters," but also referred to as the "Rattlesnake Boys" and "Red Stockings" – appointed attorney J. S. Williams its temporary coach in the middle of 1892. His only game was a 1–0 forfeit victory over Missouri after the Tigers refused to play against African-American George Flippin. Flippin, NU's first black athlete and the fifth at a predominantly white university, later joked "I was so good I beat the University of Missouri all by myself."
University supporters became upset by the "cheap-John plan of amateur coaches" and the school hired Frank Crawford as its first official head coach in 1893. Crawford became a vocal critic of Flippin and vetoed the election of his star player as team captain, stating "it takes a man with brains to be a captain; all there is to Flippin is brute force." During Crawford's second season, the first documented use of "Cornhuskers" as a football term appeared in school newspaper The Hesperian Student ("We have met the corn huskers and they are ours!"), though it was used as a derisive reference to Iowa and not as an athletic nickname. Nebraska won its first conference championship in 1894, after which Crawford departed for Texas. Assistant Charles Thomas was promoted and led the Bugeaters to a second WIUFA title the following season, which included a long-distance road trip to Butte, Montana.
Nebraska was coached by a pair of future College Football Hall of Famers to close the nineteenth century – though both are better known for their tenures elsewhere, Edward N. Robinson and Fielding Yost led NU from 1896 to 1898. The Nebraska Legislature moved to ban the sport of football after the 1897 death of a Doane player, but the idea was dismissed after significant debate between fans and politicians. Later that year, Nebraska defeated Kansas 10–5 to clinch the WIUFA title in a game that ended due to darkness after a lengthy argument over an NU touchdown. Nebraska was on the losing end of the same situation in 1898 – a title-deciding game against Iowa was called early with the Hawkeyes leading 6–5 despite the team arriving to Lincoln hours late.
Alonzo Edwin Branch took over in 1899, the program's only losing season prior to World War I.
Emergence as a Midwest power (1900–1905)
The University of Nebraska's football program did not have a nickname during its first decade, though many were used unofficially. The most popular was Bugeaters, a reference to Nebraska's meager food supply during an 1870s drought; many Nebraskans appreciated the rugged characterization despite its negative connotations. Sportswriter and state native Cy Sherman hated the Bugeaters moniker and began using "Cornhuskers," which had appeared previously but wasn't applied to Nebraska until Sherman did so in 1899. It caught on quickly and was officially adopted in 1900. Nebraska hired former Princeton star Walter C. Booth the same year and he soon raised a Midwest football power. In Booth's debut season, the Cornhuskers held their first seven opponents scoreless before falling to Minnesota in the first-ever meeting between the teams.
Booth's 1902 team, the best in Nebraska's young football history, finished 9–0 while outscoring opponents 164–0. The Cornhuskers' title hopes were dashed when Fielding Yost's 11–0 Michigan team was voted national champion following a season-ending 23–6 win over Minnesota (Nebraska defeated the Gophers 6–0). Nebraska applied to join the Big Nine Conference (now the Big Ten) after the season, believing Michigan's membership elevated its title chances, but the application was denied on account of Lincoln's distance from other schools in the conference. Booth's teams were led by halfback John Bender, who starred for five seasons and retired as college football's all-time scoring leader. Bender captained NU to another undefeated season in 1903. Having won twenty-two consecutive games, most in dominant fashion, it was written that Booth could "weep with Alexander the Great because there are no more teams to conquer," given Nebraska's difficulty finding competitive and willing opposition in the Midwest.
Colorado defeated Nebraska 6–0 in October 1904, ending a twenty-four-game win streak that was a program record until 1995. Booth left Nebraska following the 1905 season over a contract dispute (his $2,000 salary was higher than any other university faculty member) and returned with a newly earned law degree to the East Coast, where he lived the rest of his life away from football.
A new landscape (1906–1910) Months after Booth's departure and still without a head coach, Nebraska faced Doane in an exhibition to familiarize its team with college football's significant offseason rule changes. These safety-based updates were mandated by President Theodore Roosevelt and included the legalization of the forward pass, the banning of the flying wedge, the creation of a neutral zone, and an increase in yards to gain a first down from five to ten. NU professor and chairman of the athletic board James T. Lees was a member of the committee that drafted the new rules, which were initially unpopular but proved instrumental in improving player safety.
Nebraska hired former Michigan tackle and assistant coach William C. Cole in 1907, the same year it formed the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (later the Big Eight) along with seven other Midwest universities. NU's 16–6 win over Kansas in its lone conference game was enough to claim the first MVIAA championship. Cole resigned after a second title in 1910 when the MVIAA passed legislation requiring coaches to be full-time faculty members, feeling he could not manage his farm in Missoula, Montana while living year-round in Lincoln. NU beat Haskell 119–0 in his final game, the largest margin of victory in program history.
During the third year of Cole's four-year tenure, the university opened Nebraska Field, its first venue designed to host football. The driving force behind the new stadium was Earl Eager, one of Nebraska's first graduate managers of athletics (a part-time precursor to the modern athletic director). Eager was a former halfback who played his entire collegiate career at Antelope Field, which had little permanent seating and was described as "either as hard as pavement or a sea of mud." Eager's cause was assisted by the university's expansion, which necessitated the construction of academic buildings on Antelope Field. Eager himself prepared much of the land for the stadium at the northeast corner of North 10th and T Streets. Nebraska and Iowa tied 6–6 on October 23, 1909 in the first game at Nebraska Field.
The Stiehm Rollers (1911–1915)
Following Cole's departure, Nebraska hired Ewald O. Stiehm from Ripon College as the first full-time coach in school history. The twenty-four-year-old Stiehm – nicknamed "Jumbo" because of his large feet, a term he despised – was given an annual salary of $2,000 to serve as head football coach and director of athletics, the same as Booth's salary five years earlier but less than the $3,000 his predecessor earned for a less-demanding role. Stiehm's tenure began with a 117–0 victory over Kearney–Normal, the only game ever played between Nebraska and what is now Nebraska–Kearney. The fiery Stiehm was subject to such frequent outbursts that the school established a women and children's sitting section at Nebraska Field far from the home sideline.
Nebraska's 1911 season included high-profile meetings with Minnesota (a 21–3 Golden Gophers win) and Michigan (a 6–6 draw). Stiehm was particularly enamored with the Minnesota shift, a precursor to modern pre-snap motion, and had an assistant document the technique during the teams' 1912 meeting. Stiehm implemented the shift the following week, the first game of a school-record thirty-four-game unbeaten stretch. This included a 7–0 victory over Minnesota in 1913 which prompted Golden Gophers coach Henry L. Williams to discontinue the annual series between the schools. Stiehm assembled smaller-than-usual rosters with players that relied on quickness and misdirection, a departure from Nebraska's reputation as an "unusually rough" program (it's unclear if this reputation was deserved). His "Stiehm Rollers" lost just twice during his five-year tenure.
Prior to a 1913 trip to Lincoln, Kansas State head coach Guy Lowman threatened a boycott due to the presence of lineman Clinton Ross, a black player, on Nebraska's roster. Though KSU faced NU and Ross each of the previous two seasons without complaint, it joined the MVIAA in 1913 and Lowman claimed a gentlemen's agreement throughout the conference disallowed black athletes. Nebraska denied such an agreement existed and the game was played as scheduled. Ross was NU's last black player until 1952 despite Stiehm and university chancellor Samuel Avery outwardly favoring integration in collegiate athletics.