Rocky Mountain highs and lows
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BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
Some Husker fans refer to it as the day Nebraska lost its mojo. Others just call it “the 62-36 game” and follow it with a distant stare. It’s tough for the faithful to articulately express what happened that day six years ago in Boulder.
Just a real … how to put it?
“Shocker,” says Ben Eisenhart, current Husker.
Yes, concurs Barrett Ruud, former Husker. “That was a shocker.”
Of course, some wisdom has been gained since that Husker debacle in 2001. We’ve figured out a few things about these trips to the mountains.
When Nebraska goes to Colorado to play football, a circus comes with it.
You might see a guy run for six touchdowns against the No. 1 team. You might see a 9-3 coach get fired the day after the game. You might see flying bottles, the student section ejected from the stadium, the invention of a catchy slogan.
Today offers just another sampling of the craziness. The Huskers ride into town with many people speculating coach Bill Callahan will be fired by Saturday.
Yes, Nebraskans should now have a healthy understanding about visiting Ralphie’s place. These Nebraska-Colorado games are built on disorder.
If you wish, blame Chris Brown for all this chaos. He’s the Colorado running back who six years ago ran through gaping holes for six touchdowns. Nebraska’s defense had never been torched in such a fashion. The scoreboard read 62-36 as the goal posts fell.
Nebraska players, accustomed to winning on a weekly basis at that point, had trouble understanding what had just happened. Some still can’t make complete sense of it.
Scott Shanle, a linebacker on that team, will grant you Colorado had a talented team that year.
“But the final score didn’t reflect the ability of what our team was,” Shanle says. “I think we could have played them 10 times and beat them nine. The game just snowballed on us. It got out of control.”
A player these days for the Dallas Cowboys, Shanle has some teammates who played at Colorado who still tease him about that game.
“I had one of them say, ‘If we could beat Nebraska and lose every other game, we’d have a happy season.’ I thought he was joking. But I looked at him. He was pretty serious.”
The Huskers entered that game in 2001 atop the national rankings, owning an 11-0 record. Ruud was just a freshman on that team, mostly playing special teams.
“It was a little bit of a wake-up call,” says Ruud, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “Hey, we can’t just show up and be Nebraska and win.”
Some would argue that Nebraska is still groggy from that game. In a stunning turn of events, the Huskers still got a chance to compete for the national championship that year. But Miami whipped them by 23 in the Rose Bowl. The team went 7-7 the next season.
Has Nebraska ever quite gotten over 62-36?
“I think that’s kind of Colorado’s claim to fame is that they ruined Nebraska because of one game,” Eisenhart says. “But you know, college football changes. It’s hard to stay on top that long.”
Two years after that embarrassment, Nebraska came back to Boulder with a coach on the hot seat.
Amid a report Frank Solich would be fired as Nebraska’s coach, the Huskers played inspired against the Buffs and took home a 31-22 win.
“We were kind of playing for Coach Solich,” says former Husker punter Sam Koch. “He was our coach. We all liked him. We wanted him to be on that sideline the next year. … I remember kicking off that last time. I got a touchback. When I came over, Coach told me, ‘Good job. Good job.’ We thought after that, everything was going to be fine.”
A day later Solich was fired by Steve Pederson, who eventually hired Callahan.
Callahan wasn’t doing so hot as Nebraska’s head coach when his team visited Colorado in 2005. The Huskers were 11-10 under his direction going into the game, having just lost a few weeks before to Kansas for the first time in 37 years.
Colorado entered the game a 16-point favorite. Despite what the pundits were saying, Koch remembers Nebraska being full of confidence going into that game.
Receivers coach Ted Gilmore, who had just come over from Colorado, was of particular help.
“He went up and down their whole chart, identified each and every player, whatever their mentality was on that field,” says Koch, currently with the Baltimore Ravens. “We knew what their strengths were, what their weaknesses were. We felt we had the edge on them.”
Nebraska whipped Colorado in every way, a 30-3 win. Angry CU students hurled debris on the field in the fourth quarter. Many were forced to leave the stadium before the game was over.
On the other side, there was pure jubilation. Husker players walked off the field revealing T-shirts that became a rallying cry for the fan base: “Restore The Order.”
Pederson moved from interview to interview, beaming, optimistically speaking about the future of the program and the pursuit of championships.
As Nebraska left Boulder that day, it seemed to many that the Huskers had taken back what was lost four years before. Here seemed a team set to turn the corner.
Eisenhart, the walk-on from Culbertson, was just a sophomore at the time. He figured Nebraska could have something special brewing when he returned to Boulder as a senior.
“Things happen. Things change,” Eisenhart says. “If you would have told me after the Colorado game that I’d be sitting here my senior year at 5-6, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
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