6 Things Nebraskans Do on a Game Day That Nobody Else Would

Do you think a Nebraska Husker football Saturday looks like game day pretty much anywhere else in the country?

It doesn’t.

These are the things Nebraskans do on a game day that nobody else would.

1. Cheering the Visitors

Nebraskans have built a national reputation for clapping for the team that just beat them on game day.

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden wrote after beating Nebraska in Lincoln in 1980 that Nebraska fans thanked his players for making the trip instead of jeering them.

The Associated Press republished that letter decades later.

He called the gesture almost unheard of in the sport.

Texas coach Mack Brown has a similar story about 1998, the day running back Ricky Williams ended Nebraska’s 47-game home winning streak.

Instead of booing him off the field, the crowd stood and cheered for the trophy he’d go on to win that December.

Brown has called it one of the classiest things he’s ever seen from an opposing fan base.

The scoreboard didn’t matter.

The pattern has held into recent seasons, too, with visiting coaches on the losing end of blowouts.

They describe a Husker crowd that wishes them well on the way out instead of piling on.

Sportswriters covering college football’s traditions have singled Nebraska out by name for it, a label some call Nebraska Nice.

Try that anywhere else and see how far it gets you.

2. Filling Every Seat

Nebraskans fill every seat in Memorial Stadium, and they keep doing it game after game, whether the team is ranked or rebuilding.

The University of Nebraska’s history of the stadium describes game day filling it with enough people to rank as the third-largest city in the state.

Only Omaha and Lincoln rank higher.

The state has no NFL, NBA, or MLB team pulling fans away on a fall Saturday, so Husker football becomes the one thing worth driving for.

Many of those fans drive in from small towns and farm country hours away, not just from Lincoln.

By Monday, Memorial Stadium empties out completely, and Nebraska’s third-largest city disappears until the next home game.

3. Lining the Tunnel Walk

Husker fans do more during the game-day Tunnel Walk than watch it happen on a screen.

The athletic department built the tradition in 1994 so fans could share in a moment that used to belong to only the few people standing at the gate.

Those fans still line a red carpet outside the tunnel before every kickoff, close enough to watch the team pass without a video board in between.

The Huskers touch the same horseshoe above the locker room door that the team has touched on the way out since that first season.

Inside the stadium, tens of thousands more fans time their roar to the exact second the team bursts through those doors on the video board.

That roar starts before a single player reaches the field, timed to the video board instead of the game clock.

Nebraska has kept fans showing up for the routine for more than three decades, moving it to a new stadium entrance in 2006 but never dropping it.

4. Family-Held Season Tickets

Families keep the same Memorial Stadium seats for decades of home games, and many never let them go.

The Olson family bought Nebraska season tickets in the 1950s, and four generations of Olsons have sat in the same section since.

They still sit next to the family who first sold them those tickets, the Daily Nebraskan reports.

The Doehling family has held its seats since North Stadium opened in 1966, and Mark Doehling has brought his daughter Christina to those same seats since 1996.

For families like the Olsons and Doehlings, a season ticket isn’t something a fan buys once. It moves to the next generation instead.

That loyalty is a big part of why Nebraska keeps selling out.

Nebraska hasn’t played a home game with an empty seat for sale since a Bob Devaney-coached team lost to Missouri on November 3, 1962.

They lost that day and still sold every seat.

The run has kept going ever since, and Nebraska opened this season with 411 straight sellouts.

ESPN’s rundown of college football’s hardest records to break lists the streak as an honorable mention.

5. Watching for the Blackshirts

Nebraska’s defense wears a color no other team’s does, and every fan at the game knows what it means.

Only the Huskers hand out black jerseys called Blackshirts, and only to the players who earned the top spots on defense that week.

The tradition traces back to 1964, Bob Devaney’s third season, when assistant coach Mike Corgan bought black pullovers from a local sporting goods store.

The pullovers were the store’s unsold stock, sitting there because nobody else wanted them.

It started as an accident.

Fans have kept scanning the field for black ever since, and losing a Blackshirt still stings a Husker defender more than losing a starting job anywhere else would.

Local sports-radio hosts spend entire weeks debating who deserves a Blackshirt before Nebraska ever takes the field again.

6. Letting the Balloons Fly

Fans hold bunches of red balloons and let them go together the moment the Huskers score their first touchdown of a big game.

The tradition started in the 1960s.

It grew big enough over the decades to draw a lawsuit from environmental groups over the balloons' impact after they came back down.

Nebraska Athletics suspended the release in 2022, blaming a national helium shortage for taking the tradition off the table.

Fans went two full seasons without letting a single balloon go.

Athletic director Troy Dannen brought the tradition back for the biggest games starting in September 2024, and fans filled their hands with balloons again for Nebraska's game against Colorado.