John Anthony had about five minutes to sell an idea to a room of Big Ten athletic directors and other league dignitaries. He didn't have to sell them all. He just needed two of them, and he sure as heck knew who he wanted one of them to be.

"Even though it was a large room, 50-plus people, you would have sworn I was a high school kid focused on one girl at the dance," said Anthony, the CEO of Anthony Travel who helped bring together this 2021 Aer Lingus Football Classic in Ireland that will feature Nebraska and Illinois. "Because with 50 people there, I stared at Bill the entire time."

That would be Husker athletic director Bill Moos, who hadn't been on the job in Lincoln long, and didn't even know who his football coach might be by 2021. At that moment, about 23 months ago, Nebraska was still laboring to the finish line of its 2017 season with a lot of uncertainty about the future of Mike Riley.

But playing a Week 0 game in Ireland takes deep planning and commitment years in advance. You have to navigate through a little unknowing, and Anthony wanted the Big Ten represented in this 2021 game. And given that Anthony lives in South Bend, there was one Big Ten team in particular on his mind due in part to a memory that goes back 19 years.

Anthony was in Notre Dame Stadium in 2000 the day Nebraska fans overtook it and probably had more red in one of college football's famous cathedrals than there was Notre Dame green that day. Pictures of that game are still sold in Husker stores around here. Anthony carries the picture of it in his mind. "I've never forgotten it," he said. "Now to be able to capitalize on that for Ireland, we want that whole sea of Red to take over Dublin and the country of Ireland like you did South Bend, Indiana."

He feels nobody can match travel like Nebraska fans, and already on the first day of the announcement, there had been more sales to Husker fans for this game than any fan base has yet produced. Anthony went a step further, challenging Husker fans to beat the record of 35,000 people who traveled to Ireland when Notre Dame-Navy played there in 2012. He noted it's the largest movement of international travelers for a single-game sporting event. There were 28,000 who came on behalf of Notre Dame that year alone.

"So we're here today to say, 'Let's go after that ... Let's get to 29,000 Husker fans taking over Ireland for a sea of Red in Dublin in 2021,'" Anthony said.

Moos had been intrigued by Anthony's idea for the game from his opening presentation. He liked the idea it could provide student-athletes, who he guessed at least 70 percent wouldn't have a passport or opportunity to otherwise take a trip like this at this point in their lives.

Also, the exposure it would provide the Huskers on a weekend when people are itching for college football could be invaluable.

"It will really showcase our brand on an exclusive zero week window," Moos said."When people want to watch college football and they're all going to be hungry for it coming out of the summer, the first one they're going to see, and probably one of the better ones, is going to be the Huskers playing the Illinois in Ireland."

Moos also found quickly after hiring Scott Frost that the Husker coach's first inkling was to say, 'Let's do it.' Granted, it wasn't going to be just that simple.

But you can see the same allure of it that Frost saw: Nebraska would be able to start practices a week earlier by taking the game on Aug. 28 of that year. It would open up another bye week for the team after the game, and could break up its Big Ten schedule some by moving a game against FCS foe Southeastern Louisiana into November amid a rugged league layout.

The conversations about doing all this really got serious in the last four or five months. What no conversations included was giving up a seventh home game. Nebraska won't do that. "At least not as long as I'm in the chair," Moos said. "Just because of our fans, and how great they are, they deserve that."

Left unsaid, but it's a WHOLE LOT of money to give up a weekend of Husker home game business in Lincoln. But Illinois was willing to give up one of theirs, as it turned out. When Moos found that out, he had trouble seeing the downside.

Don't lose a home game – check. National exposure – check. The experience for players in regards to perhaps helping recruiting – check.

A key ingredient was working with Northern Illinois, who the Huskers were scheduled to play that Sept. 4 weekend of 2021. Moos and Frost wanted that week to be a bye after a big, possibly exhausting, trip to Dublin. So they needed to get NIU to agree to play that game years down the road. They found a space for it in 2027 with both sides on board. A 12th foe was still needed.

"To do that, I had to go and get a waiver on the floor with my colleagues in order to play an FCS school on a year that we had five home conference games," Moos said. "And that was unanimous. I appreciated that from my colleagues."

It is impossible to project, of course, where any team will be by 2021, as Nebraska looks to move past a bad week in Minnesota and get some momentum going in 2019 after a 4-3 start.

But the Huskers hope to be functioning at a higher level two years from now, and will need to be in a 2021 season that includes much more than an adventure to Ireland. It includes road games at Oklahoma and Michigan State in the first month, as well as playing host to Ohio State and Michigan as crossover foes before October ends. That's stuff Frost isn't thinking about now. At one point he joked, "I'm just trying to get through this bye week."

When 2021 does show up, though, Anthony wants Husker fans to know successful years for programs have started in Ireland before.

"We have had some teams use this game as a trajectory to really a notable season," Anthony said, "including an undefeated season when someone opened in Ireland with Notre Dame in 2012. So where your program is right now, and where it's headed, it just seems like Nebraska football is the best place to be."