36-3-1 doesn’t tell the story

Roger Moore
Stillwater NewsPress

October 27, 2006 11:52 am

— 36-3-1.
1960, 1961 and 2002.
Oklahoma State and Nebraska have played 40 times in football, dating back to 1960. The first two meetings saw the Cowboys pick up victories with Jim Stanley’s first team, in 1973, earning a 17-17 draw.
A lot has changed in college football, and at Nebraska, since the days of bell-bottom pants and the beginnings of corporate rock and roll.
Dr. Tom Osborne used to march his troops onto the turf, throw five or six passes a Saturday, and leave the opponent bruised and battered. There was nothing fancy about Husker football — here is our playbook to study all week ... try to stop us.
The philosophy was simple: recruit linemen with a take-no-prisoners attitude, add a Tom Rathman clone at fullback, throw in a Mike Rozier or Lawrence Phillips or I.M. Hipp or Ahman Green and run the football at, over and around you.
After the blitzkrieg of a 10-play, 70-yard drive, get a cold drink and sit back and watch the Black Shirts destroy an inferior Big Eight offense.
While standing on the sidelines doing some manual labor for ESPN in 1995, I made the mistake of looking Jason Peter in the eyes. I wasn’t a member of the media just yet, so he really had no reason to hate me. But I had this creepy feeling that I was looking at Jason of Friday the 13th fame instead of a defensive tackle/student athlete.
They were intimidating and they knew it.
As a 12-year old in 1979, I managed to get a ticket to the OSU-Nebraska affair, a 36-0 slaughter in Jimmy Johnson’s first season as O-State head coach. As scary as the men in red were, their fans were ten times as nice to one of the few wearing orange in the west end zone.
Back then you got the sense that they almost felt sorry for everybody in the Big Eight with the exception of the Oklahoma Sooners.
As good as the Huskers were in the 1970s, however, Jim Stanley’s Pokes gave them fits.
In six meetings between Stanley and Osborne, NU outscored OSU 119-78.
In 1974, ninth-ranked NU beat unranked OSU, 7-3, in Lincoln. A year later, it was No. 4 Nebraska, 28-20, in Stillwater.
1976 saw 13th-ranked OSU drop a 14-10 game in Lincoln. NU was rated ninth.
Jimmy Johnson had a chance in 1983 when the top-ranked Huskers escaped Stillwater with a 14-10 victory. Two seasons later under Pat Jones, NU, ranked ninth, beat the fifth-ranked Pokes 34-24 at Lewis Stadium.
From 1986-95 things weren’t close and that includes the 1988 Cowboys with Barry Sanders, Mike Gundy and Hart Lee Dykes. Remember the infamous black shoes and some tough words from Thurman Thomas in 1987?
Nebraska 35, Oklahoma State 0.
And then 1998 happened. Well, that and Osborne retiring, the massacre against Colorado, Frank Solich getting fired and Bill Callahan doing a complete makeover of the offense.

1998
A very touchy local subject, O-State moved its home date with Nebraska to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City in order to help with the building of a new softball complex. Former head coach Bob Simmons was coming off the program’s first bowl game since 1988 and had a team that was unranked and already with a loss to Tulsa through three games. The Huskers were ranked second.
As if you need any more close calls as an OSU football fan, the Pokes had a chance to force overtime in the final moments but came up a yard short in a 24-17 loss. For the first time in a decade it appeared that OSU had the same quality of athlete as a Nebraska … or that NU had come back to the pack after winning a pair of national championships in 1996 and 1997.
The next time Nebraska came to Stillwater, in 2002, very few Cowboy fans recognized the Huskers. It turned out to be a nail-biter, with OSU winning 24-21, but only because the Pokes thought they were playing Nebraska and not some average football team.
Had OSU turned the corner? Could they win in Lincoln to start the 2003 season?
Not quite, but the Pokes went on to win seven straight after a tough 17-7 loss and eventually played in the Cotton Bowl to finish 2003.
This Saturday a good Nebraska football team visits Stillwater. The days of six or seven passes per afternoon are long gone, but so is that mystique of the Cornhuskers.
Try this on for size:
Nebraska ranks fourth in the Big 12 in passing offense at 248.4 yards per game and is behind Texas A&M (203.9) and Oklahoma State (203.3) in rushing offense (186.5). NU is eighth in the league in total defense, allowing 320.2 yards per contest.
Ladies and gentleman, I hate to do this to you but much like last week — and with Stanley and Co. hanging around — Saturday afternoon might be another down-to-the-wire affair.

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