This is mostly new territory for the Scarlet Knights in their first Big Ten season. They had never played Michigan before this season. They had never played Ohio State before this season, either. But there it is, in the back of the Rutgers record book, an historical oddity involving its current opponent.

Rutgers played Nebraska once, back in 1920 at the old Polo Grounds in New York, and while the Cornhuskers boarded the train back to Lincoln, Neb., with a 28-0 victory, the result may have helped get the coach fired.

More on that in a minute. First, kindly put on a bowler on your head, crank up the Charleston on your phonograph, and take a journey back to Nov. 2, 1920. The big news that day wasn't college football, but Warren G. Harding winning the presidency in a landslide vote.

Still, that didn't stop the Nebraska football team from making it's furthest trip east in the program's history. The New York Times described the visiting players as “giants in height and weight” in a story that ran that day.

“Just what kind of football these Westerners will spring on the Rutgers team remains to be seen,” the Times reported, although the newspaper clearly had high expectations for the visiting team, as one player was described as “reputed to be able to pull the ball down out of the clouds if necessary.”

The game attracted 15,000 to the old home of the Giants – the football and baseball versions – including one big name: Gen. John J. Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. “Black Jack,” as he was nicknamed, had been a Nebraska professor of military tactics before going to war.

And while Rutgers has taken to wearing black for big home games, the tradition apparently started nearly a century ago. Again, from the Times: “It happens that Rutgers and Nebraska have the same color: scarlet. But in order today that the spectators may at all times be able to identify players, Rutgers for this game will adopt black for their jerseys.”

Rutgers was supposed to debut a "brilliant attack" but, while the game was born on its campus 51 years earlier, this was not the university's finest team. The result was a lopsided contest and, well, it would be hard to improve on the sportswriting of the time:



Now

that's

a lead. It gets better.

The Times gushed about “Nebraska's gatling-gun hammering” that led to two second-quarter touchdowns and encouraged Rutgers to “dispense with intersectional football games.” So clearly, the writer – his name, sadly, is lost to history – would've been highly skeptical of the Scarlet Knights move to the Big Ten.

Still, the newspaper's opinion of the contest would change in a few months. Nebraska would get shut out four days later against Penn State on its way back to Lincoln, and the 5-3-1 record was not up to Cornhusker standards.

"The doubtful showing of the Nebraska eleven in the game with Rutgers at the Polo Grounds, this city, last Election Day, is said to be a big factor in the movement to oust Schulte," the Times reported, and ousted Schulte was in March (although he continued as track coach and a field house in Lincoln was named in his honor).

Rutgers, meanwhile, was shut out in its final five games that season, and perhaps heeding the advice to “dispense with intersectional football games” like this one, hasn't played Nebraska since.

Until now.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.