The lieutenant that Nebraska football coach Mike Riley calls "DVD" will book the airline ticket on Tuesday. Daniel Van De Riet has worked for Riley over the last 14 years, rising from the video room at Oregon State where he earned that nickname, to his current role as Huskers' Associate Athletic Director of Football Operations.

Brenda Tracy is waiting for the itinerary. She's been waiting 16 years for Riley's invitation, in fact. Most of it, while fuming at him.

"I despised that man," she said Friday. "I hated him with every cell in my body. This is a coach who victimized me, and now I'm going to stand in front of his football team and tell them how I felt."

Her visit to Lincoln is scheduled for June 22. She'll speak to the Nebraska football team and tell them about being invited to an apartment near Oregon State's campus in 1998. She'll tell them about the four college football players -- two of them Beavers -- who were present, and the drink she accepted without knowing what was in the cup.

Tracy will try to find the words to explain what it felt like to grow sleepy, then lose consciousness, only to wake up being sexually assaulted by four men. She'll talk about being terrified, unable to fight back, and how she pleaded with one of them to make it stop.

The assault went on all night, and continued the next morning. Tracy eventually woke up on the floor of the apartment with crumbs, condom wrappers and garbage stuck to her naked body.

"Those men treated me like garbage," Tracy said.

The horrible details of Tracy's assault and the various ways in which she was later let down and re-victimized by Oregon State and the Benton County District Attorney's office were revealed in great detail by The Oregonian. The charges were dropped against her alleged assailants. And over the years, what Tracy came to desire was a face-to-face meeting with Riley, the college coach who she says re-victimized her in 1998 when he suspended his involved players for a single football game.

"One game for my rape," she said. "One (expletive) game."

---

There's been a lot of healing for Tracy in the last 18 months. Also, action. She's lobbied lawmakers in Salem and in Washington, D.C. to pass laws that protect survivors of sex assault. Tracy's worked to help pass five laws, including an expansion of the Oregon statute of limitations for the crime of rape (from six to 12 years). She's also been hired by Oregon State president Dr. Edward Ray to help shape campus policy when it comes to sex-assault prevention. Also, she successfully lobbied the Pac-12 institutions, which passed a rule that bans athletic transfers with conduct issues. But meeting with Riley, and speaking to his football team, represents something much deeper to Tracy.

"All this Baylor stuff drums up so many bad feelings in me," Tracy said. "The football program at Baylor was operating like it wasn't even part of the rest of the campus. It was disgusting."

Baylor University fired football coach Art Briles, demoted the university president and sanctioned its Athletic Director in the wake of a sexual-assault scandal involving numerous football players. The "football-first" campus culture and lack of transparency particularly haunted Tracy, who received threats after her alleged assailants were arrested.

"College football needs to change," she said. "It needs a hero. It needs someone to be vocal and call on the rest of college football to be transparent and accountable when something like Baylor happens. Who better to step up nationally than Mike Riley?"

---

Riley, 62, spent the last 18 months changing jobs, moving states, and trying to reinvent himself in Lincoln, where the Huskers went 6-7 in his first season. Before leaving Oregon State and accepting the Nebraska job Riley promised Tracy that he'd sit down with her, and that he wanted her to talk with his football team and help them understand the effect a sex assault has on a survivor.

On the day Riley was announced as the coach at Nebraska, Van De Riet sent word to Tracy that Riley's offer stood. She'd come to Lincoln, not Corvallis, if she desired.

Riley's also re-shaped his public stance on player misconduct. This week he talked about Tracy's visit and how he's re-shaped his own thinking on player conduct and accountability.

"Doing the right thing is the key," Riley said on Thursday. "What I've learned is that some things that are not negotiable about the opportunity to be on a team. One of those is certain kinds of assault, and one of them is anything to do with guns."

Tracy would still like that 1-on-1 meeting with Riley, if only to tell him that his lack of action as a coach and leader victimized her, almost as if it happened hand-in-hand with the assault itself. She's hopeful that after Van De Riet finalizes her itinerary that it will include an invitation to speak privately with Riley.

"I don't hate Riley today," Tracy said. "Thank God. That type of anger eats away at your soul. I've found a lot of peace."

Riley said he believes it's important for his players to see and hear Tracy tell her story for themselves.

"I think kids have to always understand it's about choices," Riley said. "The other basic thing to understand is how you treat people. It's one more piece. I really appreciate Brenda reaching out, stepping out to do this. I think it will be a real-life thing. I think that's what players need to know about. There's people's lives involved here and how it affects them.

"I think they have to know that."

-- @JohnCanzanoBFT