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Inspirational speakers are frequent visitors to college football teams. Alumni now in the NFL return to dole out advice. Superstars from other sports stop by to talk competitive spirit. Sports psychologists discuss how to handle stress.

Brenda Tracy is none of these.

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But there she was Wednesday afternoon, standing in front of the University of Nebraska football team, delivering a powerful speech unlike any other the players are likely to ever hear.

Back in 1998, when Tracy was 24, she was gang-raped by four football players, she told the team.

Two of her attackers played for Oregon State University, she continued. When the charges were dropped, and the players received nothing more than a one-game suspension, their coach called the two men “really good guys who made a bad choice.”

That coach, the one whose words had enraged her 18 years earlier, was now standing in front of her. Mike Riley — who once coached Oregon State and the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers — was now in charge of Nebraska football.