Searching for a place like Nebraska

Husker football was the winningest program from 1961-2000, then the last 20-ish years happened. Is there an equivalent?

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

My baseline position, when considering the future of Nebraska football, is that the Huskers’ recent(-ish) fade from past glory is surmountable and not uncommon. Furthermore, despite whatever blue-blood ranking might cross your desk here in July,¹ I think Nebraska still maintains the one big advantage that hasn’t previously been for a sale: A history of success and a fan base that expects success. Those are powerful things in college football, as we knew it, and I wouldn’t bet against that changing rapidly in our new paradigm.

In the old paradigm, programs like Nebraska almost always experience low periods and almost always came back eventually. That’s what history showed and how I always viewed it, like the traditional programs batted near the top of the order—a team might drop from third to sixth in the order, but it still got more at-bats than 7-8-9.

I’ve tried to hack away at this question—will Nebraska ever be NEBRASKA again—any number of ways over the years: conference titles, national titles, AP poll appearances. One question I haven’t asked prior to now was this: Have we ever seen another team experience 40 years of dominance followed by the past 20 years we’ve seen from the Huskers?

From 1961 to 2000 (40 seasons), Nebraska had a winning percentage of .822, a remarkable run no matter how many caveats anyone cares to mention. Over the last 20 seasons (2001–20), the Huskers have a winning percentage of .601, a drop of -.221 points. Let’s call that a 40/20 split going forward.

Have we ever seen anything like the anguish Nebraska fans have experienced since 2001, whether they lived through, vaguely remembered or simply read about the Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne eras?

That was the question, and I was prepared to start with college football and move to the other major American sports until I found comparable drops, something where you could reasonably say, “Oh, modern day Nebraska is like the Cubs after The Great Depression.” Or, whatever, that’s just an example off the top of my head.

Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t have to run through baseball or anything else because I found comparisons much closer to home.

A few disclosures up front: No algorithms were used or harmed in this project because I’m not smart enough to do that. I just took 40-year chunks, starting in 1901, that were round (i.e., the span ended in a 0) because, in addition to my limitations, I think this is how most people talk about football anyway. I may not have captured the best 40-year run for any team, but there were no big surprises doing it that way either when looking at the top-10 teams in each segment.

After that I looked at the 20 years that followed for each top-10—the best programs of the previous 40 years—to see just what Nebraska’s past 60 years look like in context. Due to my simplicity, that meant I had to cut things off after 2020, the last 20-year stretch possible if the look-back period had to end in a 0. I’ll stop with methodology now because this isn’t an academic paper, but hopefully that’s enough to allow you to get to the interesting stuff.²

Nebraska’s 40/20 drop from winning more than 80% of its games to about 50% ranks right up there with the worst we’ve seen in college football. Pittsburgh fans who were alive in 1941 have an argument here. The Panthers had a .749 winning percentage from 1901–40, won eight national titles and finished in the top 10 of the AP Poll in the first four years³ of its existence. In the 20 years to follow, Pitt had a below-.500 record (.452), meaning a more severe drop (-.297) in winning percentage from what we’ve seen at Nebraska since 2001. Assuming you’re not very aware of Pitt football in the first 40 years of the 20th Century, when is the last (or first) time you’ve ever considered the Panthers a national power?

This, essentially, is why Nebraska gets left off any blue-blood lists that pop up this time of year.

There are other schools in the vicinity of the Huskers’ recent decline, but they come with major caveats. Can you realistically compare modern-day Nebraska to pre-WWII Dartmouth, which went from .757 (1901–40) to .503 (1941–60, -.254)? How about Army, given how much the game has changed and that program’s unique circumstances? West Point shows up twice near the top of the list, falling from .738 from 1921–60 to .462 from 1961–80 (-.276) and from .682 between 1931–70 to .448 between 1971–1990 (-.234). These aren’t really relevant examples—at least Husker fans should hope so—but they are the closest.

Just below Nebraska on this list are some power-conference schools, but it’s not great company either if you’re looking to feel better about what we’ve seen in Lincoln post-Devaney/Osborne. If the big-picture question is “Can Nebraska be NEBRASKA again?” it doesn’t exactly make things easier to mention that Minnesota (-.210 in the 20 years after 1940) or Duke (-.205 after 1960) have been through this before. Those are the last two schools on my list to see their 40/20 winning percentage decline by 20 or more percentage points.

All of the examples I just mentioned won big early in the 1900s, a different era of football, and lost later. The closest comparison for Nebraska of a more modern variety is Tennessee, .702 between 1961–2000 and .544 between 2001–20 (-.158). The Vols are the only power-conference program with a longer span between⁴ conference titles than Nebraska, but Tennessee made the Playoff last season and is generally considered on solid footing since Josh Heupel took over in 2021.

Maybe that’s a glimmer of hope here and support for my previous line of thinking—this happens to everyone. Alabama went 17 years without a conference title until Nick Saban arrived. Georgia went 20 years without one. Michigan won one undisputed national title between 1948 and 2023, and that’s the program with the most wins in the sport’s history.

But the most hopeful thing I found on my journey to answer a simple question over a long weekend is that the Huskers’ ongoing 40/20 decline isn’t even the worst Nebraska has ever seen. NU football was good over the first 40 years of the 20th Century with a winning percentage of .754. Over the 20 years to follow, Nebraska would post a winning percentage of .369, a drop of -.385. That dwarfs what Pitt experienced over the same 60-year span and is the worst decline by the way I chose/needed to measure this.

Few reading this likely remember first-hand what that drop must’ve felt like, but I found a certain calmness in learning it existed. Nebraska might not be doomed to mediocrity, though a lot of the evidence paints an ugly picture, because Nebraska has already been through this before.

There is no place like Nebraska? Husker fans should buy into that typical, fight-song claim because, best-case scenario, it might be true.

1. It’s that time for this sort of thing, and I read them all, too.

2. If not, feel free to ask me to learn more.

3. The poll began in 1936, which is what I’ve always considered our “current era” of college football.

4. That’s different than without a conference title. Tennessee last won the SEC in 1998. Nebraska won its last conference title in 1999.