The Game of the Century by Michael Corcoran

Author:Michael Corcoran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

EIGHT

The calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

—Mark Twain

DOWN IN NORMAN, CHUCK FAIRBANKS, HIS YOUNG staff, and their sublimely gifted Sooners impressed people as a group on the brink of being something special. “You can feel it in Norman,” said Dick Wade, a visiting writer from the Kansas City Star. “They think this team can win the championship. Fairbanks seems to be more confident, and that’s a sign of things to come.” The Sooners hadn’t proved anything to anyone yet, however. In subsequent years the myth evolved that both teams opened the season staring straight across a void to their eventual meeting on Thanksgiving Day. For certain, the Sooners didn’t have that luxury, and it just wasn’t the Cornhuskers’ style. Any talk of an eventual Thanksgiving Day battle, particularly early-season talk, was preceded by a big “If” followed by “Oklahoma can make it through the early part of its schedule.”

Up in Lincoln, Devaney and his players welcomed the season with a relaxed confidence that came with having thirty-eight lettermen return from the 1970 national champions. “Today and yesterday are the happiest days of the summer for me,” said senior quarterback Jerry Tagge at the start of summer camp. Tagge spoke for thousands of football players over a hundred years, all of them familiar with the return of camaraderie after a summer apart. “It was so good to see everybody coming back to campus and seeing everyone back together again.”

After nine seasons at Nebraska, Devaney’s record was 79-18-1, and his overall college record was 114-28-6. His winning percentage of .791 was the best of any major-college coach with more than ten years under his belt, and it was suddenly fashionable to refer to Devaney as the winningest coach in the game and then act astonished that he’d won more than Parseghian, McKay, Bryant, Hayes, Royal, and everyone else.

Devaney wore the beginning of his tenth season at Nebraska like a favorite old sweater. “I think we’ll have a great attitude this year,” Devaney said, looking over the team as it gathered for press photos. “Already some of our players have started to make some tough sacrifices. [Split end] Woody Cox got a haircut so short I didn’t recognize him. And [center] Doug Dumler trimmed his mustache. I’d say the squad is starting to get really serious.”

On the field, photographers popped off shots of the giant (6′ 6″, 250) senior defensive tackle Larry Jacobson as he snarled and dived on fake fumbles while wearing the black-rimmed eyeglasses he wore when he wasn’t playing football. The photos were straight out of Attack of the Killer Nerds , and made it impossible to believe that by season’s end Jacobson would win the Outland Trophy as the nation’s outstanding lineman. “I wore contacts for a while,” said Jacobson, “but then I got knocked out in a game and I got one lost up in my eye. I thought I lost it until two or three days later when my eye started hurting, and the lens had gotten knocked way in the hell up there and they were those hard contacts back then.

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