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The brutality and bumptiousness of football were dismissed as fit subjects here 90 years ago by Willa Cather, the beautiful writer from Red Cloud, as cherished an alumnus as Vince Ferragamo, the handsome quarterback from Los Angeles. She admired the game as "one of the few survivals of the heroic," and it pleased her that football "arouses only the most simple and normal emotions" and "offers no particular inducement to betting." She wrote: "Of course it is brutal. So is Homer brutal, and Tolstoi; that is, they all alike appeal to the crude savage instincts of men. We have not outgrown all our old animal instincts yet, heaven grant we never shall! The moment that, as a nation, we lose brute force, or an admiration for brute force, from that moment poetry and art are forever dead among us, and we will have nothing but grammar and mathematics left. The only way poetry can ever reach one is through one's brute instincts. 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' or 'How they brought good news to Aix,' move us in exactly the same way that one of Mr. Shue's runs or Mr. Yont'* touchdowns do, only not half so intensely. A good football game is an epic, it rouses the oldest part of us. Poetry is great only in that it suggests action and rouses great emotions. The world gets all its great enthusiasms and emotions from pure strains of sinew."
The Nebraska football team strains its sinew in a weight room that Cub Scouts tour. In the foyer of this unbelievable expanse of sweat, set off by red velvet ropes and little curators' plaques, is a museum of the original Cornhusker barbells and exercise bike. One has to grin. Associate Professor Susan Rosowski of the English department agrees that a sense of humor is helpful. "There's a strange duality," she says. "On the one hand, we're terribly proud of our Big Red, but we're also a little defensive about how big it is here. We wonder how we fit into the broader world. Willa Cather spoke of the 'clammy shiver of embarrassment' she felt in the presence of Easterners merely at the mention of the name Nebraska. We all partake in this tribal ritual of football, this coming together in the community, this need for a common identity. But we are a bit self-conscious about it, and saved, I suspect, by a sense of humor. I think one of the reasons Nebraskans feel as secure as we do is Tom Osborne. He's so civilized."
This is not the universal impression of those against whom Head Coach Osborne has charged this season. Nebraska 44, Penn State 6. Nebraska 56, Wyoming 20.
Nebraska 84, Minnesota 13. Nebraska 42, U.C.L.A. 10. Nebraska 63, Syracuse 7. Nebraska 14, Oklahoma State 10. Nebraska 34, Missouri 13. Nebraska 69, Colorado 19. Nebraska 51, Kansas State 25. Nebraska 72, Iowa State 29. Nebraska 67, Kansas 13. And then last Saturday, to end an undefeated season, the most prolific (52 points per game) since the Blanchard-Davis Army team of 1944 (see box): Nebraska 28, Oklahoma 21. In a stirring game, which ended on a defensive stand, the Cornhuskers became the first team ever to score 600 points in a single season and if they defeat the University of Miami in the Orange Bowl Jan. 2, they will be the national champions and a team of special memory.