| Nebraska Cornhuskers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| University | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| Conference | Big Ten (primary) Patriot Rifle (rifle) |
| NCAA | Division I (FBS) |
| Athletic director | Troy Dannen |
| Location | Lincoln, Nebraska |
| Varsity teams | 24 (10 men's, 14 women's) |
| Football stadium | Memorial Stadium |
| Basketball arena | Pinnacle Bank Arena |
| Baseball stadium | Hawks Field |
| Softball stadium | Bowlin Stadium |
| Soccer stadium | Hibner Stadium |
| Lacrosse stadium | Cook Pavilion |
| Other venues | Devaney Center Dillon Tennis Center East Campus Bowling Lanes Hawks Championship Center Nebraska Rifle Range Wilderness Ridge Golf Club |
| Mascot | Herbie Husker Lil' Red |
| Nickname | Cornhuskers Big Red |
| Fight song | Hail Varsity |
| Colors | Scarlet and cream[1] |
| Website | huskers |
 | |
| Team NCAA championships | |
| 21 | |
| Individual and relay NCAA champions | |
| 136[2] | |
TheNebraska Cornhuskers (often abbreviated toHuskers) are theintercollegiate athletic teams that represent theUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln. The university is a member of theBig Ten Conference and competes inNCAA Division I, fielding twenty-fourvarsity teams (ten men's, fourteen women's) in fifteen sports. Nineteen of these teams participate in the Big Ten, while rifle is a member of the single-sportPatriot Rifle Conference and beach volleyball and bowling compete as independents. The Cornhuskers have two official mascots,Herbie Husker andLil' Red.
Early nicknames for the university's athletic teams includedAntelopes (later adopted by theUniversity of Nebraska at Kearney),Old Gold Knights, andBugeaters.[3]Cornhuskers first appeared in a school newspaper headline ("We Have Met The Cornhuskers And They Are Ours") after an 1893 victory over Iowa, though in this instance the term referred to Iowa.[4][5][6] It was first applied to Nebraska in 1899 byNebraska State Journal writerCy Sherman and was officially adopted by the school the following year – and later by the state ofNebraska itself, which became "The Cornhusker State" in 1945.[7][8][9]
Nebraska was a founding member of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1907 (later known as the Big Six, Big Seven, andBig Eight Conference) and competed in it for the next eighty-nine years, with a brief hiatus duringWorld War I. In 1996, NU and the seven other members of the Big Eight merged with fourTexas schools from theSouthwest Conference to form theBig 12 Conference. Nebraskajoined the Big Ten in 2011.
Nebraska's athletic programs have won thirty-two national championships: eleven inbowling, eight inmen's gymnastics, five each infootball andvolleyball, and three in women's track and field.[10] Twenty-one of these were bestowed asNCAA championships.
| Men's sports | Women's sports |
|---|---|
| Baseball | Basketball |
| Basketball | Beach volleyball |
| Cross country | Bowling |
| Football | Cross country |
| Golf | Golf |
| Gymnastics | Gymnastics |
| Tennis | Soccer |
| Track and field† | Softball |
| Wrestling | Swimming and diving |
| Tennis | |
| Track and field† | |
| Volleyball | |
| Co-ed sports | |
| Rifle[a] | |
| † – Track and field includes both indoor and outdoor. | |
Nebraska's baseball team was founded in 1889, making it the oldest athletic program at the school. It was disjointed in its first decades, frequently disbanding for years at a time. The hiring of Tony Sharpe in 1947 brought stability to the program, but success was limited. Sharpe and his successorJohn Sanders combined to lead NU for fifty-one seasons, making just threeNCAA Division I tournament appearances between them. Nebraska hiredDave Van Horn in 1998 and he quickly turned the Huskers into a national power, reaching theCollege World Series in 2001 and 2002.Mike Anderson took over for Van Horn and in 2005 led NU to a school-record fifty-seven wins and another College World Series berth. Anderson could not sustain this success, and since his departure in 2011 Nebraska has experienced modest success under head coachesDarin Erstad andWill Bolt.
In 2002, the Huskers moved from the agingBuck Beltzer Stadium toHawks Field at Haymarket Park, considered among the best collegiate baseball facilities in the country at the time. Nebraska has ranked in the top thirty nationally in average attendance each year since moving to Hawks Field.
Men
Nebraska's men's basketball program has accomplished little of note since the establishment of theNCAA Division I tournament in 1939. Nebraska has not won a regular-season conference championship since sharing the Big Seven title in 1950 and has not won an outright title since 1916. Nebraska's lengthiest period of success came in the first years of the sport's existence; the retroactivePremo-Porretta Power Poll ranked the Cornhuskers in the top ten three times between 1897 and 1903.[11]
Nebraska did not make an NCAA tournament appearance until 1986, forty-six years after its establishment, and is the only power-conference program without a tournament victory. Much of the team's modest recent success came underDanny Nee, who coached the Huskers from 1987 to 2000. Nee is the team's all-time winningest head coach and led Nebraska to five of its eight NCAA tournament appearances, the1996 NIT championship, and the 1994 Big Eight tournament championship (NU's only conference championship of any kind since 1950). Nebraska has made just two NCAA tournament appearances since the departure of Nee in 2000. The program has been led by formerChicago Bulls andIowa State head coachFred Hoiberg since 2019.[12]
Women
Nebraska's women's basketball program began as a club sport in 1970 and became a varsity sport five years later. George Nicodemus led the Huskers to a 22–9 record and the second round of theAIAW Tournament in its first varsity season. Nicodemus left the program in 1977 and the school cycled through several head coaches before hiring Angela Beck in 1986. Beck led the Huskers to the Big Eight championship and the school's firstNCAA Division I tournament appearance in 1988. She left the program in 1997 and was succeeded by Paul Sanderford, who took Nebraska to the tournament in each of his first three seasons. When Sanderford resigned in 2002 due to health issues, the school hiredCreighton head coachConnie Yori.
Under Yori's guidance, Nebraska became a fixture in the national top 25 and NCAA tournament. In2009–10 the Cornhuskers went 32–2, earned a number-one seed in theNCAA tournament, and reached the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in school history. Yori resigned in 2016 following an athletic department investigation into reports that she mistreated her players and assistant coaches. Former Huskers point guardAmy Williams was named Yori's replacement.
Bowling has been a varsity sport at Nebraska since 1996. Bill Straub, who led the bowling club program to national championships in 1991 and 1995, was hired to lead the varsity program and won three moreWIBC titles. The inauguralNCAA Bowling Championship was held in 2003 and Nebraska won the first two national titles. Nebraska has won four more titles since, and has never ranked outside the top ten since national collegiate rankings debuted in 1990. In 2019, Straub retired and longtime assistant Paul Klempa was named head coach.[13]
Bowling competes as an independent, making it one of only three programs at Nebraska not affiliated with theBig Ten.
Nebraska's men's bowling club team won theAmerican Bowling Congress intercollegiate championships in 1990 and 1996.
Nebraska's men's cross country team was established in 1938, winning its only conference championship two years later. The women's program was established in 1975. Megan Elliott has coached both teams since 2024.
Men
Women
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Nebraska competes as part of theNCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, representing theUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln in theBig Ten Conference. Nebraska has played its home games atMemorial Stadium since 1923 and sold out every game at the venue since 1962.[14]
Nebraska is among the most storied programs in college football history and has the eighth-most all-time victories among FBS teams.[15] NU has won forty-six conference championships and fivenational championships (1970,1971,1994,1995, and1997), along with seven other national titles the school does not claim. Its 1971 and 1995 title-winning teams are considered among the best ever.[16][17] Nebraska's threeHeisman Trophy winners –Johnny Rodgers,Mike Rozier, andEric Crouch – join twenty-four other Cornhuskers in theCollege Football Hall of Fame.[18]
The program's first extended period of success came just after the turn of the twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1916, Nebraska had five undefeated seasons and completed a stretch of thirty-four games without a loss, still a program record.[19] Despite a span of twenty-one conference championships in thirty-three seasons, the Cornhuskers did not experience major national success untilBob Devaney was hired in 1962. Devaney won two national championships and eight conference titles in eleven seasons as head coach, but perhaps his most lasting achievement was the hiring ofTom Osborne as offensive coordinator in 1969.[20] Osborne was named Devaney's successor in 1973, and over the next twenty-five years established himself as one of the best coaches in college football history with his trademarkI-formation offense and revolutionary strength, conditioning, and nutrition programs.[21][22][23] Following Osborne's retirement in 1997, Nebraska cycled through five head coaches before hiringMatt Rhule in 2022.[24]
Men
Nebraska's golf program began in 1935, led byCollege Football Hall of FamerDana X. Bible. The team's greatest successes came under longtime head coach Larry Romjue, who took NU to all four of itsNCAA Division I Championship appearances. The program has been coached by Judd Cornell since 2022.
Women
NU established a women's golf program in 1975, initially under the leadership of men's coach Larry Romjue. In 1979, Nebraska hired its first coach exclusively to coach women's golf. The Cornhuskers have made theNCAA Division I Championship three times. The program has been coached by Jeanne Sutherland since 2022.
Men
Nebraska's men's gymnastics program is one of the most successful in the nation, with eight team national championships and forty-one NCAA event titles. Ten Huskers have represented theUnited States in the Olympics. Nebraska is one of only fiveBig Ten schools to sanction a men's gymnastics program.
Women
Nebraska's women's gymnastics program was established in 1975. The school's first team, led by head coach Karen Balke, was made up entirely of freshmen and sophomores. Judy Schalk replaced Balke after two seasons and led the Huskers to five conference titles and a national tournament bid. Rick Walton became head coach in 1984 and soon won four straight Big Eight championships, each resulting in an NCAA tournament appearance. Michele Bryant won NU's first individual NCAA event title in vault in 1990. Dan Kendig was named head coach in 1993 and under him, Nebraska upset No. 1Utah to reach the 1997Super Six Finals, a first in school history. Kendig won his sixth consecutive conference championship in 1999 and was named national coach of the year. Kendig's teams won four individual event titles; Heather Brink won the all-around and vault in 2000 and Richelle Simpson won the all-around and floor exercise in 2003. Brink was named Kendig's replacement in 2019 when he resigned in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
Rifle became an official sport at the university in 1998. The team practices and hosts meets at the ten-point indoor firing range in NU's Military and Naval Sciences Building (ROTC). The team has been coached by Richard Clark since 2024.
Although rifle is classified as a coeducational sport by the NCAA, Nebraska fields an all-female team. The program competed as an independent for six years before joining theGreat America Rifle Conference in 2004. NU left the GARC for the Patriot Rifle Conference in 2021, making it one of only three programs at Nebraska not affiliated with theBig Ten.
In 1995, Nebraska became the first Big Eight school to sponsor a varsity women's soccer program. John Walker was hired lead the new program and took his team to theNCAA Division I Championship in his third year, the first of eight consecutive tournament appearances. This streak ended in 2005, and the Cornhuskers have reached the tournament just three times since. The team has reached the round of 16 eight times and the national quarterfinals three times. Walker, the only coach in program history, has earned NSCAA National Coach of the Year, NSCAA Central Region Coach of the Year, and Big 12 Conference Coach of the Year during his tenure in Lincoln.
Nebraska's softball program started in 1970, before it was an official NCAA sport. Since the NCAA sanctioned softball in 1983, the Cornhuskers have made eight appearances in theWomen's College World Series and won the tenth-most games of any program. The program's greatest successes came under head coach Wayne Daigle shortly after the tournament's creation, culminating in a national runner-up finish in 1985 (though it was quickly vacated by the NCAA Committee on Infractions).Rhonda Revelle became the program's head coach in 1992, and has since won more games than any coach in Nebraska athletics history. Revelle has won seven conference titles and was inducted into theNational Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2010.
Men
Nebraska's men's tennis team was established in 1928 and has reached theNCAA Championship twice, most recently in 2011 under longtime head coach Kerry McDermott. Five Cornhuskers have won conference championships and seventeen have been named all-conference selections. In 1989, Steven Jung was the NCAA Singles runner-up and was named NU's first All-American.[26] Jung is the only men's tennis player in theNebraska Athletic Hall of Fame.[27] Peter Kobelt has led the program since 2024.
Women
NU's women's tennis program was established in 1976 and has made theNCAA Division I Championship six times since 2000, most recently in 2013. Fourteen Cornhuskers have won conference championships, and twenty have been named all-conference selections. The team was coached by Scott Jacobson from 1992 until his retirement in 2022.[28]
Men
Nebraska's men's track and field team started in 1922 under coachHenry Schulte, who led the Huskers to nine conference titles before his retirement. His assistant,College Football Hall of FamerEd Weir, replaced Schulte. NU won eleven individual national championships under Weir's successor Frank Sevigne, with forty-two All-American selections and 103 individual conference champions in combined indoor and outdoor events. Gary Pepin coached both the men's and women's teams from Sevigne's retirement in 1983 until his own retirement in 2022.
Women
Nebraska's women's track and field program began competition in 1976. Carol Frost, whose sonScott would later quarterback the Cornhuskers to anational championship, took over the program in its second year. Frost left Nebraska after the 1980 season, and Gary Pepin took over the program. Two years later Pepin assumed control of the men's program as well, a dual role he held until his retirement in 2022.
Nebraska's volleyball program is among the best in the history of the sport. The Cornhuskers have won fivenational championships (1995, 2000, 2006, 2015, 2017) and reached the national semifinal on twelve other occasions. NU has won more games than any other program and ranks second in national semifinal appearances, tournament wins, and tournament winning percentage. Nebraska has made the NCAA tournament for forty-two consecutive seasons and has never been ranked outside of the national top twenty. The Cornhuskers have featured moreAVCA All-Americans than any other program, including fourNational Player of the Year award winners.
Nebraska volleyball is one of the most popular spectator attractions in women's sports. It has led the country in attendance each year since moving to theBob Devaney Sports Center in 2013 and has sold out over 300 consecutive home matches, an NCAA record for any women's sport. Before moving to the larger Devaney Center, Nebraska played at the historicNU Coliseum; the Cornhuskers had fifteen undefeated seasons and a record of 454–30 at the Coliseum, including a then-NCAA-record ninety consecutive home victories from 2005 to 2009. On August 30, 2023, NU hostedOmaha atMemorial Stadium – the event's official attendance was 92,003, the highest ever for a women's sporting event.[29]
Beach volleyball
Nebraska added beach volleyball as the school's twenty-second intercollegiate varsity sport in 2013. In 2016, the NCAA began sponsoring a beach volleyball tournament (previously the sport was run by theAVCA), but Nebraska did not attempt to qualify. Nebraska runs one of the only beach volleyball programs in the Midwest and plays the bulk of its season during a spring break trip toCalifornia orHawaii. NU's beach roster is made up entirely of players from its indoor program, and head coachJohn Cook has said the school views beach volleyball primarily as a training and recruiting tool for its indoor team. Beach volleyball competes as an independent, making it one of only three programs at Nebraska not affiliated with theBig Ten.
On March 8, 2017, Nebraska hostedMissouri Baptist at the Hawks Championship Center. The match was closed to the public due to space limitations, but was noteworthy as the first collegiate beach volleyball match to take place in the state of Nebraska.
In 2007,Jordan Larson andSarah Pavan defeated student-athletes from seven other schools to win the Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship, an invitational tournament featuring two players per school.[30]
Nebraska's wrestling program began in 1910 under the guidance of head coach R. G. Clapp. Despite modest success in the program's early years, NU has been a mainstay in the national top ten since Tim Neumann was hired in 1985. Mark Manning has led the Huskers since 2000 and twice won conference coach of the year.[31] Former Nebraska standouts include2000 Olympic gold medalist and2004 bronze medalistRulon Gardner, and two-time NCAA champion and2012 Olympic gold medalistJordan Burroughs.
Individual
Team
TheUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln sponsors club programs in badminton, baseball, women's basketball, bowling, broomball, climbing, cricket,curling, cycling, dodgeball, golf, men's hockey, women's hockey, judo, women's lacrosse, pickleball, rifle,rowing, men's rugby, running, sailing, shotgun, women's soccer, fast-pitch softball, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, men's ultimate Frisbee, men's volleyball, women's volleyball, and water ski.
In its earliest days, the Nebraska Department of Athletics had no central figure serving as the head of the department, and the history of how this position developed is unclear. Early on, the head of the athletics department often had only a partial or part-time role and held other titles and responsibilities. The first six heads of the Athletics Department held the title "Athletics Manager," first held by Raymond G. Clapp, NU's basketball coach and a professor of physical education.[32] The first individual to hold the title "athletic director" wasE. J. Stewart, who served from 1916 to 1919, while also coaching men's basketball and football during parts of his tenure.[33] However, he is not considered Nebraska's first athletic director because it was not considered a full-time administrative position by the Board of Regents; this designation belong toFred Luehring, who held the position from 1920 to 1922.[34]
Many of Nebraska's athletic directors simultaneously coached one of the university's varsity programs. These included basketball, baseball, and swimming, but the majority of dual-role administrators were football coaches: Stewart,Fred Dawson,Dana X. Bible,Biff Jones,Glenn Presnell,Adolph J. Lewandowski,George Clark, andBob Devaney.[e] NU's longest-serving athletic director was Devaney, who led the department from 1967 to 1992.Troy Dannen was appointed Nebraska's seventeenth full-time athletic director on March 21, 2024.[35]
Home venues
| Additional facilities
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The University of Nebraska Athletic Hall of Fame was established in 2015, located just northeast ofMemorial Stadium. Twenty-two former student-athletes were honored in the inaugural class.[37] At least one student-athlete from each of Nebraska's varsity sports has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Football is the most-represented sport with sixteen student-athletes and coaches inducted.
Class of 2015
| Class of 2016
Class of 2017
Class of 2018
| Class of 2019
Class of 2020
Class of 2021
| Class of 2022
Class of 2023
Class of 2024
|
A total of 120 Nebraska athletes have combined to make in 176 appearances in the Olympic Games. Nebraska athletes and coaches have won sixty-two medals, including nineteen gold medals, while representing thirty-one countries.Merlene Ottey is Nebraska's most decorated Olympian in terms of medals won, winning three silver and seven six bronze across seven Olympic Games, a record fortrack and field competitors.[38] South African swimmerPenelope Heyns – the only Cornhusker with multiple gold medals – is the only woman to ever win the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke events at the same Olympic Games.[39]
| Athlete |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 Penelope Heyns | 2 | 0 | 1 |
 Don Quarrie | 1 | 2 | 1 |
 Jordan Larson_pictogram.svg) | 1 | 2 | 1 |
 Adam Pine | |||
| Kelsey Robinson | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Curtis Tomasevicz | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Justine Wong-Orantes | |||
Rulon Gardner | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Charlie Greene | |||
Francis Allen_pictogram.svg) | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Jordan Burroughs | |||
| Trent Dimas | |||
Tyronn Lue | |||
| Jim Hartung | |||
| Tyler Hildebrand | |||
| Scott Johnson | |||
| Jim Mikus | |||
| Linetta Wilson |
Nebraska cycled through several official mascots before settling on the now-familiarHerbie Husker andLil' Red. The first of these was Corncob Man, a man in green overalls with an ear of corn for a head. After just a few years, the university sought a more "representative" mascot and debuted Huskie the Husker, a farmer who stood ten feet tall and wore overalls with a straw hat on top of a fiberglass head.[40] Huskie soon gave way to Mr. Big Red (more commonly known as Harry Husker); Harry was equally tall but dressed in a blazer and red wide-brim hat. Harry's head was so large it couldn't fit on the team's traveling bus and was so heavy the student wearing the costume had to be switched every forty-five minutes.[41]
The physical demands of the Harry costume meant the university was soon looking for another mascot, and in 1974 NU acquired the rights to Herbie Husker, based on the design ofLubbock, Texas artistDirk West. Nebraska hiredDisney cartoonist Bob Johnson to refine West's design into a costume and Herbie made his first appearance at a Nebraska football game at the1974 Cotton Bowl Classic, a 19–3 Cornhuskers victory overTexas.[42] Mr. Big Red wasn't officially retired until 1988, but was infrequently seen while coexisting with Herbie.[43]
Historically, Herbie had blond hair and dressed in denim overalls (with an ear of corn in the pocket), a white undershirt, and a red cowboy hat. Prior to the 2003 season, Herbie's appearance was altered to include a red workshirt, blue jeans, and workboots in an effort to update the overall appearance of the state's agricultural workers and general public; however, the new design was not well-received and many of the modifications were reverted in 2023.[44][45]
Since 1994, Herbie has often been joined on the sideline by the inflatable Lil' Red. Initially, Lil' Red was created to appeal to younger fans and to primarily represent the school's volleyball team, which occasionally played at the same time as Nebraska's football team. Lil' Red was so popular that then-athletic directorBill Byrne considered discontinuing Herbie entirely, but later decided the mascots would coexist.[43] The mascots are now frequently seen together across all sports.
Herbie was named the 2005 National Mascot of the year at halftime of the2006 Capital One Bowl. Lil' Red won the NCA National Mascot Competition in 1999 and was inducted into theMascot Hall of Fame in 2007.[46]
Decades of high attendance and well-traveling crowds across all sports have earned Nebraska fans a reputation for being fiercely loyal and dedicated. The school's athletic department proclaimed their fans "the greatest fans in college football" in an inscription above each of the twenty-four gates atMemorial Stadium.[47][48] In 2001, PresidentGeorge W. Bush stated that he "can't go without saying how impressed I am by the Nebraska fan base. Whether it be for women's volleyball or football, there's nothing like the Big Red."[49]
Memorial Stadium is sometimes referred to asThe Sea of Red due to the home crowd's propensity to wear the color. Nebraska has sold out every home football game since November 3, 1962; at 389 it is the longest sellout streak in college athletics history.[50] The streak, historically a source of pride for the school and its fans,[51] has been scrutinized in the decades followingTom Osborne's retirement as NU's athletic department has occasionally been forced to sell a large number of tickets at a discounted rate to keep the streak alive.[52] Cornhuskers fans are noted for often applauding the visiting team as they leave the field at the end of the game.[53] Nebraska is considered to have one of the best-traveling fanbases in the country – the most famous example of this occurred in 2000, when an estimated 35,000 Nebraska fans watched No. 1Nebraska defeat No. 25Notre Dame atNotre Dame Stadium.[54][55]
Nebraska's volleyball program has sold out 303 consecutive matches between theNebraska Coliseum andDevaney Center, the longest streak of its kind in women's college sports. The Cornhuskers have led the country in attendance for nine straight seasons,[i] and have played in nine of the tenhighest-attended college volleyball matches ever played. Nebraska's five-set loss toWisconsin in the2021 national championship match broke college volleyball records for both attendance and viewership.[56]
Nebraska has produced 347 Academic All-Americans, more than any other Division I school and second only to theMassachusetts Institute of Technology among all universities.[57] Nebraska's 108 Academic All-Americans in football is forty-one more than second-placePenn State; the school also leads all volleyball programs in Academic All-Americans with thirty-eight.
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