On the Monday before Nebraska opened the 1979 season against Utah State, the Husker freshmen defeated the Wyoming junior varsity 26-16 at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyo.

I was there, covering for the Lincoln Journal and Star. That’s how it was.

The newspapers were willing to spend money on a plane ticket and motel room for coverage of a jayvee game.

Technically, Nebraska’s team was a junior varsity, too. But all 74 Huskers who made the trip were freshmen. While I flew to Laramie, they bussed there, about 500 miles.

“You have to put up with those things to play games,” Frank Solich told me before the team left. “I just hope we can forget about the bus ride and think about playing football.”

As the final score indicates, the team did, though not without some glitches.

Solich Returns

Solich was in his first season as Nebraska’s freshman coach. The former Husker fullback and co- captain had spent the previous 11 years as head coach at Lincoln Southeast High School, where his teams won back-to-back state championships (1976-77).

Solich’s Husker coaching debut was the main reason I went to Wyoming. Still, there was sufficient interest beyond that to justify the expense.

Nebraska’s recruiting class included a handful of high-profile freshmen, among them I-back Roger Craig from Davenport, Iowa, and quarterback Nate Mason from Greenville, Texas. The class also included a do-everything eight-man player from tiny Burr, Neb., by way of Sterling High School, Dean Steinkuhler.

Though Dennis Rogan, an I-back from Colorado Springs, Colo. (nickname “Disco King,” according to the Husker media guide), was listed as the starter, Craig opened the game with a 69-yard touchdown run on the fourth play from scrimmage.

Suspense over? Not quite.

The Wyoming team included sophomores and juniors as well as freshmen and proved to be more formidable than Nebraska fans back home had expected. Plus, the Husker freshmen completed only 2-of-10 passes, for 18 yards, and fumbled nine times, losing two.

A 70-yard run by Craig ended with his fumbling out of bounds at the Wyoming 17-yard line.

“A lot of people have taken a big interest in this freshman team,” Solich said afterward.

The team would finish with a 4-1 record, the only loss coming at Missouri, 19-13. It also was Solich’s only loss in four seasons as freshman coach. His record was 19-1.

Big Eight Backs Off

Missouri typically played a non-freshman or two and held its own against Nebraska’s freshmen.

The 1979 game was the last between Tiger and Husker junior varsity teams. In fact, 1979 was the last season in which the Nebraska freshman-junior varsity played more than one Big Eight opponent. And after 1985, no Big Eight teams were on Nebraska’s freshman-jayvee schedule.

The post-1985 schedules included not only junior college teams but also jayvee teams from four-year schools such as Nebraska-Omaha, Bethany, St. Thomas and the Air Force Academy.

The freshman program allowed young players to gain experience and maturity under the direction of their own coaches. They also gained confidence competing against players roughly their own age and developed a winning attitude that carried over to the varsity.

They expected to win because they had done so from the time they stepped on campus.

Records for Nebraska’s freshman-junior varsity team were first kept in 1956, and through its final regularly scheduled season in 1990 the combined record was 120-17-1.

The Husker freshman-jayvees endured just one losing season, dropping their final three games to Air Force, Coffeyville (Kan.) Junior College and Waldorf (Iowa) Junior College in 1987 to finish 2-3.

One Last Time

In February of 1991, Nebraska announced it would discontinue its freshman-junior varsity program, in anticipation of an NCAA reduction in the number of allowable football assistants, a cost-cutting measure that went into effect for the 1992 season. Soon after, the Big Eight Conference passed a rule prohibiting freshman-junior varsity teams, also to cut costs.

Nebraska would play one more junior varsity game in 1993, against the Air Force Academy. Tom Osborne scheduled the game as a favor to Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry.

It was played on a Friday afternoon in early October at Memorial Stadium, in front of an audience estimated at just over 500. Many Husker fans were on the road home from Stillwater, Okla., where, on Thursday night, Nebraska had defeated Oklahoma State 27-13, Osborne’s 200th victory.

Husker grad assistants Gerry Gdowski and Bill Busch coached the team, Gdowski the offense, Busch the defense. The players practiced only once together in preparation.

Redshirted freshman quarterback Matt Turman, a 5-foot-10, 165-pound walk-on from Wahoo, Neb., who had yet to earn the nickname “the Turmanator,” directed the 49-20 victory, completing 9-of-11 passes for 182 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for 73 yards.

Scholarship quarterback Ben Rutz, a redshirted freshman, completed 6-of-11 passes for 71 yards and a touchdown, with one interception, as the Husker jayvees amassed 622 total yards.

Sophomore offensive guard Bryan Pruitt scored Nebraska’s final touchdown, picking up a fumble by junior I-back Scott Davenport behind the line of scrimmage and running 35 yards.

Afterward, Turman told the Lincoln Journal-Star: “We’re going to get two games when things are on the line and we have to show what we can do.”

The second game wouldn’t be played, however.

The Nebraska and Air Force jayvees were scheduled to meet again at Colorado Springs in mid-November. But the game was postponed and then cancelled because of inclement weather.

A highly successful program, which existed in various forms since the early 1900s, was at an end.