The Bone Yard

I became a Husker fan at the same time I.M. Hipp made his debut in the backfield. I don't think I ever watched a college game before then.

Thanks, Mike. Good Sunday morning reading. The "Fat Fox" ran a smooth, successful program.

Mike i witnessed everything you've stated here. From the start to the very end. I was a freshman in the fall of '75! I once met IM Hipp in person. Boy was he chiseled from head to toe but surprisingly humble enough to kick it with.

Sir HIPP was the true embodiment of success that TO can coach were he did not initially have blue chip athletes but coached them enough with a lot of smarts in play calling was able to efficiently compete and win big!

I looked it up, Hipp rushed for 167 yards and three touchdowns in that game against Utah State, omshusker. I didn't check, though, was Rulon Jones on that Utah State team? That's my recollection.

The Fat Fox was/is as legendary as those he promoted, one of a kind. He had respect and connections all over the country. When Johnny Rodgers won the Heisman, Sports Illustrated's Dan Jenkins (another legend) wrote a great story about Johnny around the time Heisman voting concluded, and I'm sure the SI story was influenced by Bryant's contacting Jenkins and suggesting the subject.

The Rodgers story used the printed page as a metaphor, as if Johnny were running through the margins, from paragraph to paragraph in the story, very clever stuff. Jenkins was/is as good as it gets in sportswriting, along with Jim Murray and Rick Telander.
And yes, I think you're right, Jenkins would have written the Game of the Century story (which I probably have somewhere, along with the Rodgers story).

The great Bronco was on that Utah State team ( I still have the program). Utah St. had a winning record that year but did not make a bowl (not that many bowl games then). I.M. did score 3 of his 4 TD's that year in this game. Another great on that team - Andrea Franklin a standard for Nebraska fullbacks.
HUSKER POWER

You know, IowaHusker79, there have been few times I've seen Tom Osborne show the emotion he did when the Orange Bowl officials announced that Nebraska and Oklahoma would play a rematch. He was stunned.

In Bootlegger's Boy, Barry Switzer wrote that the 1978 team might have been his best. Man, that backfield of Thomas Lott, David Overstreet, Kenny King and Billy Sims was something special. The 1978 Nebraska-Oklahoma game remains my favorite of all time. It was the first I covered for the Lincoln Journal Star. I plan to write about it someday for a How It Was feature. I have some vivid memories, which you brought back with the reference to Lott and Sims . . .

great post, really brings back memories of my youth. loved to watch I.M. and redwine.

It was always a tall task for Osborne's teams to beat Switzer's teams and when after beating Oklahoma in an epic battle the Orange Bowl pitted the two teams against each other in a rematch, well, it was like a slap in the face of the Nebraska football program. As a high school kid I was crying foul but nobody really heard me. Being surrounded by Hayden Fry fans and Iowa Hawkeye fans, they didn't much care about the Orange Bowl or my beloved Huskers. Tom Osborne has always been a class act and I can only imagine how upset he had to have been to show any kind of emotion when the 1978 Orange Bowl announcement came.

In a weird little side story, I.M. Hipp also played a role, although inadvertently, in the demise of Bud Wilkerson's TV career. Anyone remember that?

It was in a televised game where Hipp made a long run skipping past several would be tacklers which Wilkerson stupidly described in rather racist terms. Saying something about a 'boy' picking his way through a watermelon patch. Oh yeah, he said it right out loud in front of cameras and microphones.

Wilkerson 'retired' from broadcasting shortly afterwards. Like I say, weird little side story.