Scooter Chapman

Husky Stadium was rocking last Saturday as the Nebraska Cornhuskers traveled to Seattle to take on the U.W. Huskies in a gridiron contest that drew national interest.

The game marked the first sellout in several years and there were sections of all purple and all red. The stadium, which is scheduled to go under major repair, is in its 90th season and is showing signs of wear and tear but that didn't matter to the throng that showed up.

The Huskies came into the game 21-20-2 all-time against teams from the Big 12 conference but were only 3-3-1 against the vaunted Nebraska program. The last U.W. win against the 'Huskers was 1992. In recent years, Nebraska stuffed the Dawgs 55-7 in Lincoln in 1998.

Hopes were high for an upset of the eighth-ranked Nebraska visitors and Washington is 133-53-2 at home since 1980. Add to the mix that Nebraska was on the road for the first time this year after easy wins at home against Western Kentucky and Idaho, and U.W. fans had a right to be hopeful.

After the loss to Brigham Young to open the season, Husky fans were wondering if the win against Syracuse (41-20) was the result of huge improvement or whether the Orange was not that good.

The atmosphere before the game was much like that of last year when USC came to town and Washington pulled off a big upset.

Due the fact that they are building a giant mass transit station in front of the stadium, 600 parking spaces have been lost, so there were Husky tailgate parties all over the area. Nebraska fans snapped up their allotted 8,000 tickets, but some Husky fans must've "sacrificed" their tickets as it was estimated there were 20,000 fans dressed in red.

The Husky band serenaded fans in the Fun Zone before the game, then the team, which used to take chartered buses right to the dressing room entrance, now has the buses drop them off at the Zone where they march through the fans in their Husky sweats, right to the center of the field where they pause on the big purple W before heading to the dressing area.

The Husky band put on its usual good pre-game show and the forming of the flag pole and running the huge flag up the pole to be unfurled always puts a lump in my throat. It was even greater as two U.S. Navy jets did a fly-by at the end of the anthem. Even the Big Red fans were in awe.

Speaking of awe, not only were there Big Red fans, there were 18 writers in the press box covering the Cornhuskers.



Big Red is bigger, badder

The Nebraska boys looked bigger, stronger and much faster than the Huskies and that was just during the warm-ups.

I expected the Huskies to hang in the game if they made some big plays but still didn't believe Nebraska was that good until kickoff.

Washington took the ball on the 20 as the kickoff almost went out of the closed end zone. After one first down, Heisman Trophy hopeful Jake Locker threw a pass down the middle that was picked off and returned to the Husky 48.

Freshmen red-shirt Taylor Martinez became a Heisman nominee in my mind, folks. A 24-yard rush by Rex Burkhead, then a 24-yard pass to Mike McNeill and it was 7-0.

The Huskies went

three and out from the 20 after the kickoff, then the Huskers scored on three plays from their own 37, the big one a Martinez pass of 55 yards then a 1-yard smash for the score.

Washington came back with an 80-yard drive to score, but it was evident that Nebraska was the better team and they went on to a 56-21 win as three Nebraska backs gained more than 100 yards.

Don't give up on Washington just yet. On the two-deep offensive roster were seven seniors, seven juniors, five sophs and seven freshmen. On defense, U.W. has six seniors, five juniors and 10 freshmen, seven of them true (first year, not red-shirted) rookies.

The Husky program is only in it second year under Steve Sarkisian. Will they reach Nebraska status soon? Yes, but maybe not as soon as the USC game in Los Angeles on Oct. 2.



Reach Scooter Chapman at scooter@olypen.com.