Nebraska Cornhuskers Football

Nebraska Cornhuskers Football

The Nebraska Cornhuskers represent the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in college football. The program has established itself as a traditional powerhouse, and has the fourth most all-time victories of any NCAA FBS team and is one of only eleven football programs in NCAA Division I history to win 800 or more games. The Cornhuskers are the winningest college football program over the last 50 years, by winning percentage and wins. On June 11, 2010, Nebraska announced that its regents unanimously voted to end the university's affiliation with the Big 12 Conference to join the Big Ten Conference beginning with the 2011 season.

Nebraska has claimed 43 conference championships and part or all of five national championships: 1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, and 1997. The titles in the 1990s marked the first time since Notre Dame in 1946–49 when a team won three national championships in four seasons. The 1994 and 1995 seasons still stand as the only consensus back-to-back national titles by any Division 1-A school since Oklahoma in 1956-57.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers also have five undefeated seasons when they were not the national champions; 1902, 1903, 1913, 1914, and 1915. Between 1912 and 1916, a 34-game unbeaten streak was recorded by then head coach Ewald O. Stiehm.

Famous former Huskers include Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier, and Eric Crouch. Rodgers was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and for the new millennium he was voted the team's "Player of the Century"; his Cornhusker jersey (No. 20) was retired. Rozier was likewise inducted into the hall in 2006. Other Husker players and coaches who are members of the College Football Hall of Fame include: Forrest Behm, Bob Brown, Guy Chamberlin, Sam Francis, Rich Glover, Wayne Meylan, Bobby Reynolds, Dave Rimington, George Sauer, Will Shields, Clarence Swanson, Ed Weir, Grant Wistrom, and coaches Gomer Jones, Pete Elliott, Francis Schmidt, Dana X. Bible, Bob Devaney, Biff Jones, Tom Osborne, Eddie "Robbie" Robinson, and Fielding H. Yost.

The Husker defense is known by the nickname of the "Blackshirts." Depictions of the Blackshirts often include a skull and crossbones. This nickname originated in the early 1960s and continued as a reference to the black practice jerseys worn by first-string defensive players during practice. This tradition developed when Bob Devaney had Mike Corgan, one of his assistant coaches, find contrastive jerseys to offset the red jerseys worn by the offense in practice. Further credit is given to George Kelly, Devaney's defensive line coach until 1968, who frequently referred to the top defensive unit by the name; eventually the rest of the coaching staff caught on, while the first mention of the Blackshirts in print was not until 1969.