Husker Do (1995)

Tim Walz, the '95 Huskers, and that place where nostalgia meets progressivism.

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A wide-open, reckless game (1914)

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I.

There is a certain type of football that defined the Midwest for most of the 20th century, and it largely entailed pounding the rock and churning up a cloud of dust. I have written several times before about how the regionalism of college football has long reflected the country’s diverse geography and culture (see the link above); the Midwest’s role in that was to embrace its inherent conservatism, to run the football and play stout defense and then run the football again.

That brand of football is so ingrained in the culture of the Midwest that it’s almost difficult to discern how much the ethos shaped the football and how much the football shaped the ethos. But one might argue the peak for Midwestern football in the modern era occurred in 1995, when the Nebraska Cornhuskers won the national championship with one of the most dominant teams in college football history.

That Nebraska team, coached by Tom Osborne, ran the football 73 percent of the time, utilizing an option-heavy scheme to drill its opponents into submission. In the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, they steamrolled the pass-heavy Florida offense like a John Deere demolishing a beach volleyball game. They were arguably the greatest team of the 20th century, as well as a bridge to the 21st century, in that they managed to be both methodical and thrilling, a football team that genuflected to football’s past while also hinting at its future.

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II.

One evening in September of 1995, a 31-year-old Nebraska native named Tim Walz, after a day of watching college football with friends—and most likely watching the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers—got clocked going 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. He failed a sobriety and breath test, pleaded guilty to reckless driving, and began to change the trajectory of his life.

Walz quit drinking. He moved to Minnesota with his wife and children and became a teacher at Mankato West High School, and the defensive coordinator of a football team that had lost 27 games in a row. He ran a stout 4-4 scheme against teams that were still largely relying on the running game, and in 1999, he won a state championship, which, he said half-jokingly, was the only reason he upended a 12-year Republican incumbent to win a seat in the House of Representatives, and eventually become governor of Minnesota, and this week, become a candidate for vice president.

In a way, Walz’s claim about only getting elected because of that state title might actually be true, because there are still few cultural forces more powerful than football in the Midwest, and the metaphors that kind of football evokes. For better or worse, it is one of the last unifying forces in American life, and if you can convey what it symbolizes without alienating your audience, you can tap into something that few others can.

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III.

“Nebraska (had been) exposed as big, slow lugs from the heartland…Yet even as that stereotype dug deep roots, Osborne was transforming his program, recruiting speed in Florida, Texas and California and permitting an edginess to develop. This was no longer your father's Nebraska.”

—Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated

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IV.

We are at a peculiar juncture in American history, a moment where everyone knows something has gone wrong and everyone wants to recapture something that once existed but feels as if it has disappeared, particularly in the Midwest. But you cannot do it merely by regressing into some gauzy vision of the past; you cannot do it simply by embracing the old ways and refusing to acknowledge how things have changed, or you become Kirk Ferentz. You have to find a way to bridge the gap idealistically, and make it palatable to the people watching.

That’s what you see when you watch that ‘95 Nebraska team. Sure, they ran the ball three out of four times, but they did it with verve. At a moment when quarterbacks were just beginning to become more diverse and more athletic, it was Nebraska’s Tommie Frazier who bridged the gap:

Three decades later, Frazier’s run still resonates because of what it heralded. The old way of quarterbacking was about to change. The game was pushing ahead, and will always push forward, whether you want it to or not. The question is, How you bridge the divide between old and new while staying true to who you are?

There will be a painful number of football metaphors evoked this fall, but in the end, this is the only one that matters: Like Tommie Frazier, you just have to keep pushing forward.

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