Pregame Hype
The game was billed as a classic #1 vs. #2 matchup, featuring two completely different but equally potent offenses.
Nebraska, the defending national champion, opened the season by defeating Oklahoma State by a score of 64-21. During the 1995 season, no opponent came within 13 points, including three Top-10 ranked opponents whom the Huskers defeated by a combined score of 134-49. The Huskers averaged more than 53 points per game and 400 yards rushing.
Florida, behind the passing of future Heisman winner Danny Wuerffel, had racked up similarly impressive offensive numbers, though mostly through the air, and had emerged through a brutal Southeastern Conference schedule unbeaten, having throttled rivals Tennessee and Florida State, and whipping Arkansas 34-3 in the SEC championship game. Florida, like Nebraska, had rarely been tested; its closest margin of victory being 11 points.
Oddsmakers had made Nebraska about a 3-point favorite going into the game. However, many experts picked Florida to win, as it was thought that Nebraska's option attack would not succeed very well on Sun Devil Stadium's grass field, and that Wuerffel's passing arm would be too deadly for Nebraska to stop.
Read more about this topic: 1996 Fiesta Bowl
Famous quotes containing the word hype:
“Fashion is primitive in its insistence on exhibitionism, which withers in isolation. The catwalk fashion show with its incandescent hype is its apotheosis. A ritualized gathering of connoiseurs and the spoilt at a spotlit parade of snazzy pulchritude, it is an industrialized version of the pagan festivals of renewal. At the end of each seasonal display, a priesthood is enjoined to carry news of the omens to the masses.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)