What Are We Driving on Saturday?

The week that was, the week that is and why my weakness for vintage Nebraska Cornhusker memorabilia has me wondering if aliens play football

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PRACTICAL vs. SPORTY – Husker QB Dylan Raiola finished last week's 38-27 win over Michigan State … with 194 passing yards. If he threw all those yards in a single pass, the ball could sail over 50 Honda Civics lined up bumper-to-bumper. What the hell does that mean? It means Dylan had a solid passing total last week. It wasn’t a Porsche or a G-Wagon, but a Honda Civic is a very reliable car, and if Dylan can get us from Point A to Point B with a “W" in a Civic then I’m cool with practical … .

Meanwhile, Emmett Johnson – the Husker running back who takes off like a sprinter with a hot foot and finishes runs like one of those bullish military-grade battering ram trucks – scored three(!) touchdowns. He also wins the Coolest Major for Someone Who Just Scored Three Touchdowns in One Game game:  The junior studies advertising and public relations. And as a marketing/PR lifer moonlighting as a football columnist, I approve.

Who's ready to rock?

Playmaker with a last name that sounds like a very cool punk band: Rowdy Bauer, with honorable mentions going to Gunnar Gottula and Williams Nwaneri, who all sound like they could open for Machine Gun Kelley at the CHI next month. And how about this one: Best name for playing a game of Clue: Willis McGahee IV, a linebacker whose name alone should raise suspicions about the whereabouts of the candlestick …

Rough start ...

In 1892, Maryland’s football team played its first-ever game against St. John’s College – and lost 56-0. They were so embarrassed they quit football for seven years. Nebraska, meanwhile, has been stubbornly refusing to quit anything since 1869 – including running up the middle on 2nd-and-9 for a one-yard gain to make it third-and-long ... .

Dude doesn't like sweat ..

Here's a fun Maryland tie-in for this week … Kevin Plank (pictured at right), a former special teams captain and fullback at the University of Maryland in the mid-1990s, hated practicing in soggy cotton T-shirts. So, in 1996, at age 24, he began sewing tight, moisture-wicking shirts in his grandmother’s D.C. basement. His first clients? Former Maryland teammates who’d gone pro – and soon, the entire Maryland Terrapins program was wearing his prototypes. Those shirts became the first Under Armour product: the compression “HeatGear” shirt. Maryland was the first college football team in America to wear them, effectively serving as Plank’s live R&D lab.

Game-day party fodder – impress your friends!

The first game in Memorial Stadium was on Oct. 13, 1923, and was played on dirt, and because Oklahoma brought the wrong jerseys Nebraska had to wear blue practice jerseys. Yep, blue. The centennial nod in 2023 when the Huskers wore a special red jersey with blue outline around the numbers tipped its cap to that oddity.

Are we allowed to recruit aliens?

And finally, we’ll end with my latest weird-odd-random piece of vintage Husker memorabilia that I found for sale online. This is what happened back in the 1990s when two sports marketing people had a three-martini lunch and then started brainstorming “out-of-the-box” promotional ideas for the Husker football team's spring game.

First Husker marketing person: “Do you think aliens play football? And if they do, how can we convince them to come play for the Huskers?”

Second Husker marketing person: “I don’t know about you, but a 5-inch bendable alien wearing a Husker football jersey is a damn good start … do you need me to keep going?”

First Husker marketing person: “Nope. You had me at bendable. Let’s go.”