MaNu
A.K.A: Brandon Nelson
Residence: Fairfield, Iowa
Born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Occupation: Attorney at Law
E-mail: [email protected]
My first Husker moment: I'm a little kid in Lincoln. I know nothing about football, but some guy comes to school and says we can all have knot-hole tickets to the game this Saturday, for a buck. We trounce South Dakota State 56-0 and that's all I could talk about for days. You know the adrenaline rush of feeling and hearing the power and speed of the game your first time. My attention and heart have been with the team ever since.
Fast forward to 1991 (or 92) my son, daughter, and I drove the hour and a half to Columbia, Missouri-their first games. We got fair seats, but the game was a blowout, and by the third quarter we went down to about row 10 on the 50 yard line. Again, the speed and power were very impressive. When the game was over, I looked down at my 4 year old daughter, who had been playing with some other little girl and asked her is she was bored. She said "No, it was great. I want to go again." I asked my son, age 8, how he liked the game. He could barely describe it. All the way home, all he could o was talk about his new heroes, Calvin and Derek. That night he slept in his Nebraska shirt, wore it all the next day, and said he could feel and hear the game all night long.
It was also great taking my wife to her first game in 1999. Being raised in Quebec, she knew very little about football, but knew that it was important to me and so she began learning about the players and formations during the five hour drive to Lincoln the evening before. Feeling the game atmostphere begin about 10:00 in the morning as we walked around the tailgaters and coffee shops really opened her eyes. Then seeing her jump ujp and scream periodically during the game really opened my heart.
I missed the 1996 Fiesta Bowl. I was in Hamburg at the time. I couldn't get the game that night (real early morning there) on TV or radio, so I fell asleep not knowing who won, but with a bad feeling that Florida had this great passing game and team speed, and that we would probably get beat. In the morning I flipped channels and found CNN-Europe, and the announcer did a US sports summary. He started by saying, "The superbowl of college football was played yesterday, and like so many professional super bowl games, this was wasn't even close." I thought the worst. We got blown out. Then they showed highlights, and when Phillips scored on the screen pass, the announcer said the game was still close, and I continued to think the worst. He went on to say "it stayed that way until early in the second quarter, after which it was all Nebraska." I went crazy, started jumping up and down, screaming like a mad man. I even bonked my head on the ceiling and loved it!
The 1998 Orange Bowl was a pretty great moment too. The night atmosphere was great, and when Ahaman Green's 54-yard run just blew things open, you could feel the crouwd think, "Maybe these guys are the number one team." I fell asleep in my Miami hotel room after the game, just happy to have one, and at about 2 a.m., woke up to a distant sound of an ESPN announcer saying, "Well, it looks like we have TWO number one teams this year." This was followed by more jumping and screaming.
Of course, ther have been plenty of tragic moments.
I still wake up at nights remembering the tipped pass go by Jeff Smith's outstretched fingers in the 1984 ORange Bowl. I borke my remote control throwing it across the room, second after watching us collapse against OU in the 4th quarter in (I believe) 1987. And aftger Andra Franklin fumbled in the 4th quarter, followed by OU's last minute score in (I think)1982, 50,000 of the fans at the game(me included), just sat in our seats in disbelief. We couldn't believe we had lost and we couldn't move the 5-10 minutes. I still decry the injustice of the three completely rediculous penalties against us late in the 4th quarter of the 1994 ORange Bowl against Florida State, a game and natinoal championship that should of been ours. My son still reminds me of th pain in watching Iowa State beat us in 1994, in a game that you could see watching our players on the sidelines, was so cold that no once wanted to be there. We left frozen and bummed.
But these last two games were probably defining moments that did as much as anytyhing to create the national championship style purpose, drive, and focus that helped us work so hard.
Not I say "us, and there's the line that seperates us from other fans, andf what makes this internet group so great. It's a big "we" player, coaches, and true fans. We all have the sense of contribution, and of sharing the failures and successes. Peopple, jobs, and even coaches and players come and go, but "we" the team, go on.
