House of history: Schulte Field House full of NUsports memories
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BY KEN HAMBLETON
"Where the Big Red Begins." (Sign at the entry way to Schulte Field House)
It's not Daktronics, that's for sure. It's just a plain, big football game clock, hiding on the south face of Schulte Field House.
Fifteen minutes marked around the 15-foot dial, and two hands to mark the seconds and minutes of game time.
"The problem was, you really couldn't tell the time when a touchdown was scored, so we had Dick Becker, the sports editor of the Lincoln Journal, determine the time," said Don Bryant, former sports editor of the Lincoln Star and longtime sports information director at Nebraska.
Nebraska and opponent scores were written on metal signs and hung on the field house by kids in the end zone as the score changed.
The clock face is still on the front of Schulte Field House. The hands are gone, and since 1969 - when the north expansion of the stadium was completed - the clock has been hard to see.
For at least a couple more weeks, the famous large "UN" tiles - the only place where Nebraska is not referred to as NU on campus - will adorn the northwest corner of the building, facing Avery Avenue.
Destruction of the 58-year-old building is scheduled to begin this week.
Schulte, named for Nebraska track coaching great Henry "Pa" Schulte, was there for the beginning of Bob Devaney's dynasty and Tom Osborne's legend and for the start of Nebraska's famous weight program. All Nebraska football players were fitted for uniforms in Schulte since 1946.
The field house that served as practice grounds for Nebraska football, baseball, softball and soccer will be demolished to make way for the new $50 million Tom and Nancy Osborne Athletic Complex.
"Schulte Field House served its purpose," said former Nebraska offensive line coach Milt Tenopir. "We used that for all our football camps in the summer - and the air didn't move much in there - and we used it every day for the offensive line work during the season and the spring."
Sometimes, football players would have to yank the baseball hitting nets and the batting cages out of the way to practice blocking on the 50-by-35-yard field. Softball players had to move tackling and blocking dummies to practice.
Pitchers for softball and baseball used the newer wing for indoor practice on a field of 25-by-45 yards, surrounded by high concrete walls, because the lighting was much better than the darkened original Schulte Field House.
"We had this building in use about 18 hours a day with all the different sports using the indoor fields, racquetball and handball courts and the freshman football lockers," said Butch Hug, Nebraska director of events.
Nebraska opponents used the Schulte Field House lockers since 1981.
Former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer, as all other NUopposing coaches, used a tiny room for a postgame press conference.
After a key goal-line stand to beat Nebraska, Switzer jumped on a table and started talking, "Men, what you've just seen -" Crash, as the table collapsed. He jumped on a chair and said, "Men, this was the greatest -" Crash, as the chair collapsed.
Former Nebraska assistant coach and then Missouri head football coach Warren Powers once sprinted out of the Schulte Field House locker rooms to challenge a fan to a fist fight.
After a 1984 pounding by Nebraska, Wyoming quarterback Dave Gosnell addressed the press in Schulte Field House. His back covered in bruises and with bandages on his head after he was sacked nine times by Nebraska, Gosnell said, "Now I know what Yasser Arafat felt like when he left Lebanon."
There was plenty of competition on the racquetball courts between Nebraska football great Tom Novak, former athletic director and coach Bob Devaney, former Lincoln Police Chief Joe Carroll and Bill Shepard, the 50-year-plus Memorial Stadium and NUathletic department maintenance man.
"Shep could take them all on, then go back to work in his shop in the basement of Schulte," Tenopir said. "Those games were pretty famous."
Jim Ross, whose NU freshman football teams were housed in Schulte, said some state senators used to play at noon and others worked out in the weight room.
"It was a pretty busy place," he said. "We had freshmen and all the guys who wanted to move up to varsity and the varsity locker rooms in the south end.
"Everybody started in the north end and dreamed of getting to the south end."
Before 1981, all Nebraska football players lockered in the north end. Visitors used the cramped, stifling quarters in southeast corner of Memorial Stadium.
Former Alabama coaching great Bear Bryant almost passed out from the heat in the old visitors locker rooms. Former UCLAcoach Pepper Rodgers slammed a sandwich into the wall after a loss in 1969, and former Utah State defensive great Rulon Jones fired his helmet, smashing it, into the door of the locker room.
The building, funded with proceeds from the 1941 Rose Bowl and built in 1946, was the prize of the times. The indoor practice fields were dirt until the first AstroTurf was installed in 1971.
"The dust was pretty bad at times," said former longtime NU athletic trainer George Sullivan. "But when I came here, my freshman year, most of the building was completed, and we all thought it was great."
Sullivan and Paul Schneider ran the athletic training room in Schulte Field House until it was finally moved to the south end of the stadium in 1981.
"We taped a lot of ankles and worked on a lot of muscles in that building," Sullivan said. "We got a lot of people ready for the indoor track meets over in the mushroom gardens (the indoor track under the Memorial Stadium east stands that is connected to Schulte by a tunnel)."
Former Husker defensive back Joe Blahak said he remembered the training room and even found his original locker from his playing days from 1968-72.
"Oh, the memories of this place are almost too much," Blahak said. "I remember when Warren Powers was talking to us defensive backs, and I was asleep. All of a sudden I had chalk and an eraser fired my way. And this was the week before the Game of the Century with Oklahoma in 1971."
Blahak was touring with officials from Land Construction on Monday. Land will begin the demolition of the field house this week.
"I think the stories we can't tell about this place are even better than the stories we can tell," he said.
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@;journalstar.com.
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