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10-0 Cornhuskers vs rival 9-0 Sooners
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00:00Welcome to ESPN Classics, Battle Lines. I'm Rich Ossie.
00:10On Thanksgiving Day 1971, with America sorely in need of a diversion,
00:15the football teams from Nebraska and Oklahoma played a game for the ages.
00:19The Vietnam War spilled from television sets and campuses boiled with unrest.
00:24But for one afternoon, the country was spellbound. An estimated 80 million watched and listened,
00:30some of them from rice patties a half a world away,
00:33as the Cornhuskers and Sooners went after each other with a desperate ferocity.
00:43We were in the midst of Vietnam and some of our friends were involved.
00:48That game, that sport at that time was a stabilizing factor in a lot of people's lives.
00:54It served a purpose for a lot of people to put some of the frustrations, the concerns, the politics,
01:01everything aside for that one day and just say,
01:04here's two great teams meeting on the football field.
01:08The two teams looked across the calendar at each other
01:11and seemed to sense what was to come in three months.
01:14From the very first week, we knew Oklahoma was going to be the team to beat
01:20and that the national championship game would be played at Oklahoma when we got there.
01:24Nebraska was right number one in the country, we were right in two,
01:27but both teams were on a collision course.
01:30Others had been on this same course before, most notably Army and Notre Dame in 1946,
01:36and the Irish again against Michigan State in 1966.
01:41Each had been hailed as the game of the century.
01:44In 1971, that drumbeat echoed again.
01:47We were blowing everybody out, and Oklahoma was blowing everybody out,
01:51and about halfway through the season, it was hard to take a lot of the teams serious anymore.
01:56I really didn't think in 1971 that anyone, any place, anywhere, could stop us, bring them all on.
02:04I don't think we ever thought that we could lose.
02:07There was just a tremendous amount of confidence.
02:10By early October, you could tell, hey, nobody's going to stop these two until they play each other.
02:15So you had really five, six weeks of talking about it and analyzing it and predicting it.
02:21We started off preparing for that game at the beginning of the season.
02:25The coaches always say, don't look past one game to get to the next game, but, you know, they don't believe that themselves.
02:32Anybody that says, well, I took them game by game, give me a break.
02:35I'd like to tell you we did, but we didn't.
02:38All year long, you know, when we weren't playing, we were watching Oklahoma play.
02:42After every game, they had Nebraska, and they had Oklahoma, and who they played, and how many points were scored,
02:48and, you know, the Nebraska beat their opponent by more than Oklahoma beating their opponent.
02:53We were rated one and two in the country, and by wide margin, it wasn't any question about being one and two.
03:01In the week leading up to the game of the century, the media hyperventilated.
03:05First of all, you've got to remember, that was an era when there was only one game show in the week.
03:09In 1971, ABC was the only game in town.
03:12You either watched our game that day, or you read the funny papers.
03:17We were up in the dorm watching Monday Night Football, and here comes Howard Cosell, hyping the game.
03:22And, of course, that's enough to put shivers up your spine for a bunch of 20-year-old kids.
03:27There was just intense national interest in the doggone thing.
03:30An average credential request for a week's game at Oklahoma would probably be 50 or 60.
03:37But for the Nebraska game, it was just overwhelming. I got 500 requests.
03:41Stratid reporter before. I looked at that thing and I'm like, oh my god, I want to be playing that thing.
03:59That's when I started getting nervous.
04:01They disconnected our phones.
04:04Too many calls, too much
04:06distraction from the media.
04:10Just focus on the game.
04:13In the dorms, because they were saying, you know, you're going to be getting calls from all over the place.
04:17I don't know how many people know this, but Nebraska took its own food to Norman.
04:24They were worried about somebody poisoning the food, so George Sullivan, our head trader,
04:27decided they would fly all the food down for our pregame meals and that, just to be on the safe side.
04:32My partner, Paul Schneider, is like, boy, this must be a pretty important game
04:37if we're going to bring our own food down here to feed our players.
04:42All the hoopla, all the rankings, number one versus number two, Thanksgiving Day,
04:47I mean, what could be more American football than that?
04:50You'd see on television from Monday through Friday was that game coming at you,
04:56and you saw that all year long because they'd keep flashing up Thanksgiving, Oklahoma, Nebraska.
05:01Well, every week, everyone would see what Oklahoma and Nebraska was accomplishing.
05:05So everybody said, boy, that's going to be something.
05:09The 1971 Nebraska-Oklahoma game would pit two teams at the pinnacle of the college football landscape.
05:16For the Huskers, they had been taken to the top by Bob Devaney,
05:19a fired-up, florid-faced coach with a confidence that was contagious.
05:23I went to Nebraska when Bob started in 1962.
05:27I was a graduate assistant.
05:29Bob felt he could win.
05:30He believed in the players.
05:32It was a whole new environment in Nebraska once he got there.
05:35Bob Devaney understood the people of Nebraska,
05:38understood how to talk to them, how to walk with them.
05:41Nobody captivated the state more than old Bob did.
05:45He could be friends with a farmer, a shoe clerk, a lawyer.
05:50In the 60s, when Coach Bob Devaney came to Nebraska, really instilled a lot of pride.
05:56Coach Devaney was the kind of guy that would get you so psyched up
05:59that you'd rather slide bare booty on a razor blade than to disappoint him.
06:04The team had a certain little swagger like Bob did.
06:07Bob didn't ever figure anybody could beat us.
06:09The season that cemented Nebraska and Devaney's status turned out to be 1970.
06:15The Huskers went undefeated but still needed help from two schools to reach number one.
06:20During that season, we were number three.
06:22And on New Year's Day, Texas got beat by Notre Dame,
06:25and then Ohio State got beat in the afternoon out in the Rose Bowl by Stanford.
06:30And then all of a sudden, we walked on the field in the Orange Bowl.
06:32We're playing for the national team.
06:33Nebraska beat LSU in the Orange Bowl, earning Devaney his first national title,
06:48and it made the Huskers hungry for more.
06:50The 70 team was a good team, but in 71, it was a little different mentality.
06:54It was kind of like, we're the best, and nobody's going to beat us.
06:58When you're 21 years old, you feel you're invincible.
07:00We just had a good team.
07:01We had a lot of speed, and we had the best player in the nation, Johnny Rogers.
07:05We weren't there just to win football games.
07:07We were there trying to make an impression,
07:09because now we've got to test the national championships,
07:12and we really weren't going to go back to being just a Big 8 champs
07:15or just being just another football team.
07:17What would really mark that 1971 team as something special
07:22was the fact of just the leadership on the team.
07:25We knew every week that it was really a privilege to go out and play football
07:30for the University of Nebraska.
07:31Nebraska scored virtually at will, but it was the marauding defense,
07:36ranked number one in the country, that ran like a steel spine through the entire team.
07:41We were the black shirts.
07:43We were the toughest guys on the team.
07:45Nobody could run us over.
07:46We could stop just about anybody.
07:48I give a lot of credit to the scout teams.
07:50Our scout team was better in almost every position than most every team we played,
07:56and so if we could whip those guys, you can handle anybody on Saturday.
08:00We knew that we were pretty tough.
08:01Some of our scrimmages against the first-team offense and the first-team defense
08:05were pretty much wars, so we just had a real sense that we had something special going.
08:11Nebraska barely broke a sweat in its first seven games,
08:14winning them all by an aggregate score of 277 to 40.
08:18Opponent number eight was supposed to offer some resistance.
08:22With Colorado, it would be a really good test.
08:24We blew Colorado away, and they were a good football team, so I knew we were destined.
08:29While Nebraska rushed towards what it considered the inevitable,
08:33Oklahoma tried to rekindle an old flame.
08:36Oklahoma had a winning tradition.
08:38The bar was kind of high from an expectation standpoint
08:41of what they expected from you as an athlete to continue that tradition.
08:46During the coaching tenure of Bud Wilkinson, Oklahoma football gained mythical status.
08:51In the 1950s, Wilkinson's team stitched together a 47-game winning streak
08:56and earned three national championships.
08:59His success established a tradition and a standard that every Oklahoma coach has to try to meet.
09:06Barry Switzer put it best.
09:08He said, Bud Wilkinson created the monster, and everyone who followed him has defeated.
09:12Bud spoiled him with all the great winning that he had.
09:16When I arrived, they had a downturn.
09:18We came in in 1966 to change that.
09:21In 1967, which was my first year as head coach at Oklahoma,
09:25nobody really expected a lot from us,
09:28and yet we had a great season and went on to win the conference championship.
09:33The Sooners played credibly enough the next two seasons, but with limited success.
09:36After losing the third game of the 1970 season to Oregon State,
09:41the Oklahoma coaching staff scrapped its offense and started over.
09:46It started when we were desperate, and we were fixing it fire.
09:49We were trying to run an offense that relied very heavily on passing,
09:54and we found out we weren't capable of passing the ball as good as we needed to to make that work.
10:00Greg Pruitt, Jack Mildred, Joe Wiley, here's three of the greatest players that can play in college.
10:05But we struggled.
10:06Pat James was our defensive coordinator, and Pat sat in the press box with me,
10:10and he said, hey, guys, we can't win running that crap you've got on the field there.
10:14And I said, Pat, I know that.
10:16So he took me into the film room, and we were getting ready to play Texas.
10:19And this is back when Texas was hanging half a hundred and everybody in the wishbone.
10:24And I said, you know, we need to be doing this.
10:26Getting ready to play Texas and showing them this is the offense we're going to run
10:30and showing Texas film, and they probably were crazy.
10:42I remember thinking, oh, no, we can't be changing offenses.
10:47I know that everybody kind of had their doubts, but Switzer, he's going to make you believe in anything,
10:53and that's just the way he approached it.
10:55It was one of the most Texas who founded this baby.
10:58Those guys, you know, I don't know if they had a smirk on their face,
11:01you couldn't really see through their helmets, but we didn't surprise them.
11:03We weren't very successful.
11:05We went down there and got beat, beat bad.
11:09Headlines, you know, OU runs the bone, Texas shows them how.
11:13We got creamed, but even that game, you could tell that there were moments that, hey, this might work.
11:21Regardless of what our fans felt like, all they look at is the score.
11:24They couldn't see what we had accomplished out there.
11:26The important things to me, ball control, with a team that hadn't been able to make a first down in a previous game.
11:32The 70s season was a step-by-step process, and we played Colorado up there,
11:37and the second game in the wishbone, and we started to open a few eyes.
11:41Whatever doubts there may have been about the wishbone, I think they were answered,
11:45because we certainly shouldn't have been on the football field with Colorado.
11:48The big game in 1970 was the Nebraska game, and Nebraska was unbeaten.
11:53A success.
11:54This was the offense that gave us the best chance to play at the very top level,
11:58and it took huge courage for a coach to switch an offense at a university like OU in the middle of a season.
12:03Great credit to Barry and to Galen Hall, amongst others, for going through that process and teaching us.
12:09In 1971, the Oklahoma wishbone swallowed up ground in great gulps.
12:15Our offense roaring up and down the field every week.
12:19It was a track meet.
12:20I'd never seen anything like it in college football.
12:23I'd never seen anything like it.
12:24I don't think our players thought anyone could stop them.
12:28We beat Southern Cal, and we didn't complete a pass.
12:30Can you imagine?
12:31Nearly 500 yards rushing.
12:33I remember John McKay at the game making some comment about the wishbone being a rinky-dink offense.
12:38Well, if that's the case, then give me that rinky-dink any time, any place, anywhere, because he couldn't stop it.
12:44Texas was next.
12:46What do you say?
12:47We don't like Texas.
12:48They don't like us.
12:50They've got their wishbone.
12:51We unveiled ours.
12:53Texas thought they knew how to defend the wishbone, and that was a game where I'm not sure they ever stopped us.
12:59Oklahoma hung 48 points on Texas and avenged the 32-point humiliation of the previous year with a 21-point stomping.
13:08I remember the headline, Our Wishbone is the Greatest.
13:11Not only were we good against Texas offensively, but we had a great defensive day.
13:17Texas had just kicked our ass for so many years, and we just went down there and just did a number on them, and that really gave us a whole lot of confidence.
13:25Colorado went down like wheat before a combine, and that gave Oklahoma consecutive wins over three ranked opponents.
13:32We just ran like roller skating in the Buffalo Herd, and we just took it to them, and they couldn't stop us.
13:37No one could stop Nebraska either.
13:39The Huskers were number one in the polls, but they could hear the onrushing Sooners.
13:44The 1970 game, when we played Oklahoma, you could see this young quarterback, Mildred, their running back, Pruitt, and we were in for a battle.
13:53They almost beat us.
13:54So I knew right then, I'm looking at our team, I'm looking at their team, the Southmore's juniors, and I said, wow, this is going to be a heck of a game next year.
14:02Oklahoma was no stranger to an intense rivalry, but the 1971 game with Nebraska, the 51st in their series, approached border war status.
14:14The Texas-Oklahoma game is one of the great classics of college football, but the OU-Nebraska game, without question, was the most important game,
14:23because more national championships have come out of that game than any other national rivalry.
14:28Texas was a war. It was vicious, and it still is to some extent.
14:33Nebraska was somebody that we honored. Nebraska people were good in every respect.
14:39One of the things that's always struck me about the Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry is that there's not that hard edge,
14:44there's not that bitterness that I would associate with other well-known rivalries.
14:49I have to believe they respect us. We certainly respected them. It would be crazy not to, a team of that talent.
14:55We had a great respect for Nebraska. It was two great teams going to meet on the playing field to determine who was the best in the country.
15:03Each team had its own personality, and each was distinctive and dominant.
15:08Nebraska is a culture built on Scandinavian immigrants.
15:14They're strong, persevering teamwork. Barn raisers. They're the Cornhuskers.
15:19Their football team reflects their culture, power football, consistency.
15:26Oklahoma, on the other hand, is a melting pot culture based on the individual spirit, recklessness, renegade, maverick.
15:35And this is all reflected in our football program.
15:38Nebraska had a composed scheme, very few wrinkles.
15:42Our offense was explosive.
15:44We had an explosive personality at quarterback.
15:48They were in it for the big plays with Pruitt running through the outside and Mildon running up.
15:53And our offense was used to just grinding it out.
15:55We were just a bunch of farm kids or small-town kids, and we just played football the way they played it in the old days.
16:02They were always very flashy. They maybe represented cockiness. It was self-confidence.
16:06We were always the workman-like type people.
16:11In the papers, you know, they kind of made them look like a little cockier than we were, because basically they'd been there.
16:16Oklahoma had always been a great program.
16:17Nebraska being a good program also, but Oklahoma always seemed to be better.
16:21Maybe Nebraska feared our confidence, because we had players that believed they could play with anybody.
16:25Pruitt had the hello-goodbye shirt.
16:27Hello on the front and goodbye on the back.
16:28I mean, we laughed at that stuff.
16:30We were cocky. We were confident.
16:32We thought we had the best team in the country, as I'm sure they thought they had the best team in the country.
16:37We had our swagger, too.
16:38They had their Greg Pruitt. We had our Johnny Rogers.
16:41Cockiness is when you talk mess, and you can't back it up.
16:44Oklahoma and Nebraska can talk mess, and they both can back it up.
16:48This is like a heavyweight championship fight.
16:51You know, I don't believe you can beat me, and you don't believe I can beat you.
16:55So let's go find out.
16:57On November 25th, 19...
16:58The mutual respect between these two teams, the pros of that era could have taken a note from those guys.
17:07In the 70s and late 60s, you knew who the enemy was.
17:12They didn't fraternize before the game. They didn't fraternize after the game.
17:21Because a lot of times, they had just ended up fighting for 60 minutes.
17:25The two contending teams threw footballs and then fists at each other, but Dallas proved the tougher team.
17:30I yearned for those days.
17:31When it was just a war before the game started, I like that.
17:35Because I think it set the tempo for the fans that this is not going to be a friendly match.
17:40How about that guy taking a swing, man?
17:43I'd fight a man, but I want to play in the second half.
17:45I hated the coaches. I hated the ball boys. I hated the cheerleaders. I hated everybody.
17:52That's the guy I want on my team. A guy that hates his opponent.
17:57I want to just let them know that they've been hit.
17:59And when they get up, they don't have to look to see who hit them.
18:02What is this friendship stuff for? Can't you save that for the tunnel?
18:06Or maybe...
18:07We weren't a team.
18:09You see how the pros acted, the professionals acted, compared to the guys who were college-age kids?
18:21The professionals could take a note.
18:24That showed a lot of emotions before games.
18:27And I guess that was kind of the character of Bob Devaney.
18:30But this one time, he said,
18:33We can beat these guys.
18:37You just make up your mind.
18:38We can beat these guys.
18:41And you could just feel something swelling up in you at that time.
18:44And we took that on to the field.
18:46We had a distinguished university professor give the prayer, and it was total silence.
18:52At the conclusion of the prayer, you hear some fans stand up and say,
18:55Let's kick Nebraska's butt.
18:57But from the start, Oklahoma would find out that kicking Nebraska's butt would not be an easy ordeal.
19:03As Nebraska's Rich Glover and Oklahoma's Tom Bruhaney knocked heads on the Sooners' first play from scrimmage.
19:10I remember Rich hitting me with a forearm shiver and shook me, I guess, kind of like a real Nebraska farmer would shut corn.
19:17If I had a great game against this guy, because he was the number one center in the country, the top lineman,
19:22that I could be the number one nose guard in the country.
19:25To give us to Crosswhite, he got a couple.
19:27He was hit by Glover.
19:29He made the play, so that didn't get the game off to a very good start for me.
19:32But Glover's hit was just the start.
19:34After three plays, Oklahoma's poking wishbone had gouged out only five yards against the Blackshirts.
19:41The Sooners were surprised they had to punt.
19:43It was suddenly shocking to punt.
19:45I don't think we punted eight or nine times all season.
19:48Whenever they play back the Nebraska point of view, the playback always starts with,
19:55and the Oklahoma punter, Joe Wiley, is back to punt.
19:59Joe Wiley in the kick.
20:00Here's Wiley's kick.
20:02It's high.
20:03And awaiting that punt was the explosive Johnny Rogers, who was still a year away from winning the Heisman Trophy.
20:09He took it to the house.
20:09I did not know that Greg was going to be right down on top of me as soon as I got the ball.
20:15Johnny and I became real good friends.
20:16A lot of people didn't know that.
20:17We talked every week about what we were going to do in games.
20:21Of course, he said he was going to run one back down our throats.
20:25Not going to happen.
20:25I'm on that coverage team.
20:27When I caught the ball, he grabbed me.
20:29I wanted to get him so I could tell him how I smashed him in front of the nation.
20:34And he made a move.
20:35He actually dictated which way I was actually going to go from there because I pulled off and I fell to my right.
20:43Actually, we had the punt return going left.
20:45I grabbed him and kind of made him miss three guys.
20:48Couldn't hold it.
20:49Greg used to wear that shirt that said hello and then goodbye all the time.
20:52That's the first thing I could think of what actually happened with hello and goodbye.
20:56Gets away.
20:57Look at that.
20:59I had a pretty good shot at him, but he juked and I just missed.
21:03A man crosses my face.
21:05That makes me cut back to my left.
21:07It gets me downfield a little bit more.
21:09Your heart goes to your throat whenever Johnny had the ball because you never knew where he was going to wind up.
21:16We always had agreements that no matter what I say or what return I might call, just meet me down the field because I might have a very awkward way of getting there.
21:25At the point I've tried to make my tackle, he cut to the sideline.
21:29When I was getting ready to turn on, I realized I had just got a telegram from rigor mortis and I really wasn't able to turn on.
21:36I was the last person in pursuit of Johnny Rogers.
21:39I just made that look good for TV purposes.
21:41It was just kind of like watching your life kind of pass by in front of you and hope that it stops, but it didn't stop until it got to the end zone.
21:50I'm in the end zone with Johnny.
21:51We just kind of hug each other and we go off the field.
21:55And he was so excited that he kind of barfed over on the sidelines.
21:59I didn't see that.
22:00I don't get excited until it's over.
22:03But yeah, I went up to the side and I had to throw up.
22:05He had all that nervous energy in him and that was his way of, I think, of relaxing, of getting it out of him.
22:11Several Sooners felt sick to their stomachs as well as they searched the field frantically for bits of yellow cloth that would bring back Roger's return.
22:20But the only place that run ended up was in legend.
22:23I remember saying to...
22:24What flag would have even been called?
22:26Through clips and wondering where the flags were.
22:33I thought I felt somebody hit me from behind as I was trying to make my play.
22:38Let me tell you something.
22:39Joe Wiley was a preacher.
22:41And if Joe Wiley said he was clipped, then he was clipped.
22:45He was hoping something would stop it.
22:47And I wish I had been the guy who made the tackle instead of the guy that got clipped.
22:51John's got the angle.
22:53The contact is made right here, just like this, forward on.
22:57And he falls face down and I fall on the top of him.
22:59I get up off of him.
23:00And, like, all the Oklahoma players and all the Oklahoma coaches are standing right there going, clip, clip, clip, clip.
23:07And I stand up and I go, did they throw a flag?
23:09Somebody there says, no.
23:10And I go, well, then it wasn't a clip.
23:12And turned around and ran off.
23:13I looked at it like if I had done what I was supposed to do, he don't get that far.
23:18And that ref don't have to make that call.
23:20You don't realize how good somebody is until you're face to face with it on the field.
23:25And you see, I mean, this guy's really good.
23:28Normally, those classic plays are game-enders, like Flutie's Hail Mary.
23:33Throws it down.
23:35Caught by Boston College.
23:37I don't believe it.
23:38Or Cal running through the band to win the game on the last play.
23:42Oh, the band is out on the field.
23:44He's going to go.
23:45He's going to go.
23:46He's going to go.
23:48Johnny's touchdown was very early in the game.
23:51And so it was different in that respect that it really set the tone for the game rather than being the clincher of the game.
23:57We had just come to somebody else's house, and we really came to play.
24:01We set the stage for what was going to be happening that day.
24:06After an Oklahoma field goal, Nebraska followed up Johnny Rogers' lightning bolt punt return with another touchdown.
24:12Early in the second quarter, the Sooners were behind 14-3.
24:16Had to play catch-up, a game with which they were neither familiar nor equipped.
24:20I don't know that we'd ever been behind 14-3 as we were to start.
24:24These guys only give up five points a game.
24:26How's Oklahoma, who can't pass?
24:27Too high again.
24:29How are they going to even score a touchdown now?
24:32The wild card in this thing was that Oklahoma had started playing the wishbone.
24:36And early on, nobody had seen it before.
24:39And we had a very good defensive coach, Monte Kiffin.
24:42The biggest thing we were going to do is make the quarterback keep the ball.
24:44We had to take great fruit out of the game.
24:46We knew that Jack didn't have the speed that the other guys in the backfield had.
24:50I'd make the quarterback carry the ball, and then I'd pound him.
24:54And that's what they did.
24:55They made it real hard for us to get the ball to Pruitt.
24:58When Nebraska put the reins on him, it really created a tiny seed of doubt in the Sooners,
25:03thinking, you know, what's going on?
25:04If Pruitt can't get loose, you know, who can?
25:06What happened then is that Mildred ended up carrying the ball.
25:10So we took Pruitt away, but there was still too many weapons to stop in that wishbone.
25:17Mildred kept getting knocked down, and he kept getting back up.
25:20He carried six times in a 13-play touchdown drive that got Oklahoma to within four.
25:25He wouldn't back down.
25:26You could hit him just as hard as you could hit him.
25:28He'd get back up, and he'd be ready to go again.
25:31You choose the way you want to die when defensing the wishbone.
25:34And they chose to take away our outside game, which allowed Jack Mildred to have a great day.
25:39Today, trailing 14-10, almost everyone assumed that with only 29 seconds left until halftime
25:45at the end zone 67 yards away,
25:48Oklahoma, a running team, would run out the clock.
25:51But assumptions can be dangerous things.
25:54We were really told to run out the clock.
25:57I'm not sure if anyone knew what was going on, so it's Jack and I.
25:59We want to pass, and Coach Fairbanks doesn't want to do something dumb, and it was the right strategy.
26:04Jack just looked at me and said, what do we need to throw?
26:06And I told him, hey, I can beat him on post route.
26:09I can get inside of him.
26:10Mildred looking to throw.
26:12Luke's one out.
26:13It's coming in the area.
26:14Paris, and he has it.
26:15The thing that always scared me to death about the wishbone was not the running game.
26:20It was the passing game.
26:21Because in order to stop the wishbone, you had to have your secondary so involved in stopping the run.
26:27The coaches decided to come up.
26:29Let's do something different this year.
26:31Let's switch Blaha and Kush.
26:32Bill had played safety all year, where he really never played much man-to-man coverage.
26:37Bill ended up playing John Harrison pretty much one-on-one.
26:41Billy couldn't push him to a safety, couldn't push him to a linebacker.
26:44It was a very lonely position that Bill was in.
26:48Oklahoma's tradition over the years is you hang in there, you hang in there, and then bang,
26:52they hit you with a big play, and you go, what the hell happened?
26:55Mildred back there to throw again.
26:57He gets his pass away.
26:59Harrison, touchdown!
27:02Boom!
27:02The sooner boomer guns go off, and I was looking for a place to crawl under the bench.
27:08All of a sudden, Nebraska's behind for the first time all year.
27:12We thought we were in pretty good shape there, and all of a sudden, instantly, in two plays,
27:16they had gone the length of the field, scored, and that's the end of the half.
27:20That was a real devastating moment.
27:23I think we were too excited at halftime.
27:26We felt like what we were doing was working.
27:29We knew that we were in command of the game at that point in time.
27:32I was worried that we had scored a couple touchdowns pretty easy,
27:36and I didn't want to have our team have any false sense of security
27:39about how well we had played in that first half.
27:42Boy, there was a lot of football yet to be played.
27:44Even though we were behind, I felt really good about the way we were beginning to take control.
27:54We were trying to be a little cute and going sideways,
27:58and Oklahoma's speed and pursuit was good enough to keep us from doing anything very well.
28:03Our adjustment at halftime was certainly to decide to run straight ahead at them.
28:07I kind of, at halftime, just said, you know, I need to be more determined myself.
28:11I need to run harder. I need not to be afraid of following the football and making a mistake
28:16and just go lay it on the line.
28:19Down 17-14 early in the third quarter, the Cornhuskers reverted to character
28:23and simply overpowered Oklahoma.
28:26We just picked up the intensity a little bit.
28:28Jeff started breaking a couple tackles, and all of a sudden we started to move the ball
28:32like we'd really done all year long.
28:35All of us kind of fed off each other.
28:36When I had some success, they blocked harder.
28:38We all became more motivated, and we all played a lot harder the second half.
28:42The second half, they just came right at us, which accomplished two things.
28:45One, they could outmusk us. They got a lot of big, strong guys.
28:49And two, you know, it kept the ball out of our offense's hands.
28:52Nebraska sent the pile-driving Kenny into Oklahoma's midsection again and again
28:57and pounded out two third-quarter touchdowns, opening a 28-17 lead.
29:02We never thought that we didn't have enough time.
29:04Here we were down 11 again after already having dug out of that hole once.
29:10Desperate to get back in the game, Oklahoma unfurled one of those plays reserved for dire straits.
29:16We had practiced a reverse to Harrison all week in practice,
29:21and we saw it coming, and we all went up to play the reverse.
29:25We basically called Nebraska completely by surprise.
29:28They thought it was an end run.
29:31They trailed by a letter.
29:33And here is a pass drawn.
29:35He got his door.
29:36We kept him from the running plays.
29:39Those crazy pass plays just kept killing us.
29:41Mildred, on his way to 267 yards of total offense,
29:45kept the ball on four straight snaps.
29:47And in the final minute of the third quarter, Oklahoma had pulled within 28-24.
29:53If you think about it, Oklahoma had to start resorting to tricks.
29:56Trick plays.
29:56We didn't.
29:57Ironically, it was an attempted trick play on its next drive that boomeranged on Nebraska.
30:06Hagin lost the ball, and he's Oklahoma with a football.
30:10We were rolling along pretty well until we got a little cute with the play and fumbled.
30:14Oklahoma cashed in the turnover, but again, the running team did it on a pass.
30:20On fourth down, Mildred hooked up with Harrison, his high school teammate, for a 31-28 lead.
30:26It was Mildred's fourth touchdown.
30:28Two by land, two by air.
30:30Here's a guy that's a wishbone quarterback, and he was a terrible passer all year long.
30:34Everybody makes fun of wobbly passes.
30:36Well, hell, that's what they were.
30:38And here he is, you know, hitting people in stride.
30:40Some quarterbacks are pure passers.
30:42Some quarterbacks are throwers.
30:45Jack was a grenade thrower, but Jack passed like a surgeon that day.
30:49Mildred busting one out here to a man who's open.
30:52He is a weird.
30:53Down 31-28, Nebraska found itself with three-fourths of the field to negotiate,
30:58and seven minutes and five seconds remaining in which to do it.
31:01I can remember thinking, I'm not going to be stopped.
31:04I'm not going to let him stop me.
31:06I'm just going to let it all hang out at this point.
31:08Jack sees the lead.
31:10When the Huskers' turn came, they were behind by three and started at their own 26.
31:16When you're facing Taggy and Kenny and Rodgers, you're just worried sick.
31:21Taggy gives to Rodgers on the reverse to the outside of the right.
31:25Slips and falls at the 30.
31:26The difference between the Nebraska offense and the other offenses we had faced up until
31:31that time was their cohesiveness and their ability to execute.
31:36Taggy takes his count at the line of scrimmage.
31:37Jeff is one of those guys where, as the game goes on, the more carries he gets, the better
31:48he gets.
31:48And a flip is out to Kenny.
31:49He's running the left side.
31:51He's to the 40.
31:52He's to the 45.
31:53He's to the 50.
31:54He's hit out of bounds.
31:56I can remember being a first and 10 and being tackled out of bounds, and both of my legs
32:00cramped up.
32:02And so I'm on the sidelines watching the next two plays and realizing we don't get anything.
32:06And so they quit cramping up, and they put me back in the game.
32:10It's 30-8.
32:11It was 30-8 from our 46.
32:13I knew they were going to throw the ball, and I was very much concentrated on getting
32:16a good rush on the quarterback.
32:19I had four receivers out there hooking about 10 yards.
32:22Quarterback Taggy drops straight back to throw.
32:24I beat my guy pretty fast like I thought I would.
32:27I just happened to be flushed out of the pocket.
32:29Hamilton came in and flushed me out.
32:31Jerry's my friend, but if I said he was the most nimble quarterback I'd ever seen, he
32:35would know that that's not true.
32:37And Jerry, I'm sorry, but that's not true.
32:40He wants a receiver.
32:41He's still looking.
32:42There's a linebacker and a linebacker, and I had to throw the ball right between them.
32:46He throws complete to Johnny Rogers.
32:49He's been...
32:49On the return, very few people remember that play.
32:52But from the defensive side of the ball, it was the biggest play of the game.
32:55We did not think that was the end of the game by any stretch of the imagination.
32:58They still had a long, long way to go to score a touchdown.
33:01With under five minutes to play, the Huskers stood 35 yards away from grabbing the lead
33:06back from the Sooners.
33:08He gives to Kitty.
33:08Kitty running outside to the left.
33:1030.
33:11He's the 25.
33:12He's the 22.
33:13And down he goes at the 22.
33:15I remember the look in Jeff's eye and talk about being in a zone.
33:19Jeff was in a zone that would not be denied.
33:22The ball goes to Kitty.
33:23Kitty running over the left side to about the eight-yard line.
33:26And...
33:27Jeff was a possessed man that day.
33:29You weren't going to stop him.
33:30I didn't care what happened to me physically.
33:31I just wanted to go in.
33:33I wanted to score a touchdown.
33:34Kenny, the indestructible at the top of the eye.
33:37Taggy calls his dotting count at the line of scrimmage.
33:40Flips to Kitty.
33:41Kitty running the right side for a couple of yards.
33:44We had to hope for a big play.
33:47A fumble.
33:48Or something close to that.
33:50Somebody's got to make a play.
33:51We've got to get this ball out of it.
33:52They can't school.
33:53We've got to stop this drive some kind of way.
33:55For one giddy moment, the Sooners thought they had the ball.
33:59And that's the man to give it to.
34:00What a man to stop.
34:02Jeff Kenny, a fumble.
34:04I don't think the referees saw.
34:06They didn't see the fumbles.
34:07Steve Aycock recovered it.
34:10And it was definitely a fumble.
34:12I know lots of people think I fumbled the football, which I didn't.
34:15I was down.
34:16I think it was more wishful thinking on our part than anything.
34:18The ball was ruled down.
34:20No fumble.
34:21And it was placed at...
34:22Here he goes to Kenny.
34:23Kenny over to the left side.
34:24Touchdown!
34:25On his seventh carry of a 12-play drive, and on his fourth consecutive run, the 6'2", 210-pound
34:33Kenny scored his fourth touchdown of the day.
34:35It was obviously a tremendous, tremendous moment.
34:39But at the same time, we didn't want to get too excited because they were going to get the ball back.
34:44Obviously, we felt down, without a doubt, but we thought that with a minute and 38 seconds,
34:49we still had a chance to win the game.
34:52...away from the end zone, 93 seconds away from the end of the game, trailing Nebraska 35-31.
35:00And you have to score a touchdown.
35:01You're still concerned, obviously, about the big play, but the wishbone isn't really designed necessarily
35:07to go the length of the field in a minute 30.
35:09We were in a position where everybody in the stadium knew we had to throw a pass.
35:12We were the best defensive team in the nation.
35:16You know, this was a slam dunk.
35:18And so I'm standing on the side with the helmet off, and here's Mildred dropping back to pass.
35:21Split the right end, Harrison.
35:22He's been the bugaboo today.
35:24And they're firing long.
35:25Here comes this pass.
35:26Here's Harrison running down the middle.
35:28I looked up, and there wasn't a safety in the middle of the field.
35:31I thought I really had a chance.
35:33He's in behind, but it's well overthrown.
35:36Talk about a sigh of relief.
35:38That was it.
35:40That play would have been a killer.
35:41Thank God Jack wasn't a great passer.
35:45Finally come through.
35:46You know, he missed.
35:47Johnny catches that.
35:48He's going 80 yards for touchdown.
35:50And then it was that close.
35:50It took everyone's breath away.
35:52Every year, during the time of the Oklahoma-Nebraska game, this pass would come up.
35:57And every year, it would get a little closer and a little closer and a little closer.
36:01And I heard Jack say once, he said, you know, about another three years, John's going to catch that pass.
36:05Mildred tried to run on second down, but gained only four yards.
36:10The Sooners were left with third and six at their own 23.
36:14Mildred takes the ball, fakes it off, back to throw.
36:16Jacobson got him for the loss.
36:18Unless, you know, a miracle happened, we knew we had him.
36:23So we were excited.
36:25But we knew it wasn't over yet.
36:27Fourth and 14, we know we're not going to run the ball.
36:29Everyone in the stand knows we're not going to run it.
36:31And Nebraska knew it.
36:32I remember thinking, you know, this is virtually impossible.
36:37Now our defensive linemen could just lay their ears back.
36:40There was no question they had to pass.
36:42All right, they split the end on the right.
36:43Harrison, Mildred, fakes.
36:45He's back there to throw.
36:46I got around my guy almost without even touching it.
36:50Came in on Mildred, and Mildred kind of gave me a little bit of a juke.
36:54He got away from Jacobson.
36:55I knew how to go get him because he was about getting ready to wind up and throw the ball.
36:59Then the ball knocked down by Clever.
37:01Clever, and Jacobson's on it in the end zone.
37:03Nebraska takes over the ball.
37:10You just knew that, you know, at some point in time, the Miracles had to run out for somebody.
37:15And they ran out for Oklahoma.
37:17Rich Glover, you know, what a way to end.
37:20Really kind of exemplified the kind of game he played.
37:24Glover's knockdown of Mildred's pass would not be counted amongst his game-high 22 tackles.
37:29But there was no play bigger.
37:31Rich had a great game, and my hats have always been off to him.
37:35And so, as the game of the century was ending, Nebraska was left with only tidy-up work,
37:40draining the clock to clinch its 21st consecutive victory and extend its unbeaten streak to 30.
37:45I was as dejected as I've ever been up to that point in my life.
37:50I started playing organized football in the fourth grade, and for now, one of those dreams was never going to be realized.
37:59The feeling of losing that game, yeah, it probably never will leave.
38:03But the pride you have in the type of team we had, I'll never forget that either.
38:10Nebraska knew that they were in a dogfight.
38:13This was a championship fight.
38:15You had two outstanding boxers, if you will, who went toe-to-toe.
38:19Nebraska knew they were bloodied and battered, and we were also, but they were the victors that day.
38:23It's just like somebody took a terrible load off.
38:26You were so happy for the kids, you were happy for the fans, and probably the happiest for Bob Devaney.
38:32We get back to Lincoln, and they drop the rear gate at 727, and there are 35,000 people waiting for us to get off the airplane.
38:40That's when it really started to soak in that, yeah, we really got this done.
38:46Nebraska claimed its second consecutive national championship by beating Alabama in the Orange Bowl,
38:53but it was the Oklahoma game that validated the Huskers' ascension.
38:57It elevated Nebraska from a good team to a great team, and a team that had, to some degree, captured the national imagination,
39:05because it's one thing to be well-known in Nebraska, it's something else to get the national stage,
39:11and certainly that game, I think, did put us among the better teams nationally.
39:16It was a historical game, to draw your power and your strength, you know, from a group of people,
39:21and to understand that you don't win Heisman Trophies by yourself, you don't win national championships by yourself.
39:28It's in conjunction with others that you make your greatest accomplishments, and that's what we did together.
39:33This was much bigger than the national championship the year before, that we won on the last day.
39:39We were number one from the start of the season right through to this game.
39:44We took on Oklahoma, the Wilkinson tradition, and we took the game, and this game really put the foundation for Nebraska football for years and years to come.
39:55For Oklahoma, time has eased the sting of that defeat. Being part of history has its compensations.
40:02I realized I was so hurt that I didn't even like playing in the game. It took me three, four years.
40:07And I was having lunch with somebody, and they said, gee, you played in the 7-1 Oklahoma-Nebraska game, yeah.
40:12Boy, what a great game. And at that point, I said, yeah, you know, it was really a great game to play in.
40:17The University of Oklahoma has one of the best college football records in any place, anywhere, and yet a game that we all talk about is a game that we lost.
40:26That strikes me as a little bit unusual, and I think we do is because of who it's against and because of how we both played.
40:33Jack Miller was a class guy. I remember after the game going out, and he was over shaking hands with everybody.
40:42He respected what we did, and we respected him for, you know, the game that he played.
40:48I wish college football could use that as an example of how a great game should be conducted and the way players should act,
40:55and no hot-dogging and no trash-talking. It'd be a pleasure to see another game played like that.
41:01Both teams deserved to win, and I don't think either team really lost in our hearts. I mean, both teams gave the effort.
41:08We played one of our best games ever. Nebraska did the same thing, and so you had the two best teams in the country coming together on a day that they both played at their very best.
41:20I was elated to have been on the winning team, but you always feel bad, you know, for great opponents who lose because Oklahoma was a great team.
41:28A lot of character, and then we had a lot of respect for them.
41:31The next year, we went up to Lincoln. We win the game. We're coming off the field. Their fans are leaning over the fence.
41:38Good job, Sooners. Way to go. If it had to be anybody, we're glad it was you. So that's the type of respect there was.
41:45It was a great football game, number one versus number two, and whenever they talk about the greatest teams ever, they always mention Nebraska team.
41:53I mean, Oklahoma's got to be right there, too. It'd be one of the greatest college football teams of all time, because they had a great football team and played a great game.
42:02They were one of the great teams.
42:05When it was all over, after Nebraska had driven those final 74 yards to victory, setting up a second straight national title, the winning coach took the locker room phone call from the president.
42:16And Bob Devaney told Richard Nixon, they sold a lot of popcorn today. Nobody left. No, nobody left. If they had, they would have missed a contest that lived up to its hype as the game of the century.
42:31For ESPN Classics Battle Lines, I'm Rich Eisen.
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