Ken Hambleton: When playing Colorado mattered
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This used to be the week.
The week when Colorado faced Nebraska was big.
The Colorado columnists would start off with stories about how Colorado had mountains and Nebraska had corn.
Bill McCartney would declare Nebraska the “rival of rivals” and Nebraskans would shrug.
Colorado radio stations would have competitions for the best “Nebraska joke” of the week. Denver Post columnist Woody Paige became the most hated person in Nebraska history since Charles Starkweather.
It seems like the games were a season unto themselves.
Colorado finally broke through the string of 18 losses with a victory in 1986 when two “Soup” Campbell punt returns, aided by a series of non-called clips, decided the game. Nebraska beat No. 2 Colorado 7-0 in Lincoln in 1988 when J.J. Flanagan, running alone in the open, fumbled the ball late in the game. Colorado won its national title in 1990 with the help of a fourth-quarter rally to beat Nebraska in Memorial Stadium — a tactic reserved for Oklahoma.
Maybe the most memorable game was the 1991 matchup of No. 9 Nebraska and No. 15 Colorado in the freezer at Folsom Field.
I remember riding Amtrak on Nov. 1, 1991, out of the Lincoln station at 2 a.m.
The Huskers and Buffs finally had become a rivalry. Colorado won three of the previous five games, after losing 18 in a row to Nebraska.
There was a blizzard in Nebraska and snow in Colorado. So rather than fly out with the rest of the staff and the photographers, I took the train.
You know those movies where trains are classy, romantic, full of intrigue? Well, this was a different kind of train ride.
The Zephyr was packed because airports across the Midwest were closing because of the now.
There was one seat left on the train out of Lincoln.
I plopped down next to a guy. He was reading a pamphlet that had some pictures. There was a swastika among the artwork displayed. I asked if the man was interested in history.
He proceeded to tell me about how he was headed to Idaho and a nationwide meeting of the Ayrans White something party. He politely asked if I was interested.
A little less politely, I asked him to shut up, grow up, face reality, and to never speak to me again.
I spent the next 12 hours, trying to sleep with one eye open. You see, the trip took 12 hours because the tracks were frozen. We got all the way to Hastings, a two-hour drive, by 6 a.m. McCook went by at 9.
Finally, I reached Denver and was greeted by one of our photographers at the station. He had slept in. Got up and causally flown to Colorado in an hour.
That brings us to the game that night.
Here was the big rivalry. There were big plays, a noisy crowd and plenty of dramatics in the frozen stadium.
Nebraska appeared to have a chance to tie the game at halftime, but the extra-point kick was blocked and returned by Greg Beikert for a two-point CU conversion. Byron Bennett kicked a second-half field goal. Colorado answered with a Darian Hagan touchdown run. Derek Brown scored with six minutes left in the fourth quarter and it all came down to a 41-yard field-goal attempt by Bennett to win the game.
Snowballs were flying and so was CU safety Greg Thomas. The kick was partially blocked and the final was 19-19.
The game marked the last Nebraska tie. The tiebreaker was brought in a few years later.
In 1995, in Boulder, I interviewed a girl named Rainbow in the Boulder Mall. She said football was for fanatics and was reactionary.
I interviewed CU fans and NU fans, sitting next to one another at the Linger Longer Lounge in Lodgepole before the 2001 game.
The point was Nebraska-Colorado was on the map.
NU won in overtime in 1999. The last-second Josh Brown game-winning field goal in 2000. The blowout NU loss in 2001 that set the stage for Frank Solich getting fired and the big win for Frank Solich, the win to save his job (oops), in 2003. Last year, the CU fans were thrown out of the game.
This year, we can only hope it’s a good game.
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com.
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