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"There are no great football teams any more," observed the Washington Redskins' laconic Super Bowl hero John Riggins. "Except maybe Nebraska," he mused, "and they're not on our schedule, thank God." Riggins, a Kansan, was speaking a few days after the Perm State opener, a game set apart from the rest of the schedule, one that everyone in college football could watch. "I don't feel as bad about the Nebraska game as I might have at that moment," Perm State Coach Joe Paterno says, "because we may have played one of the best collegiate football teams of all time. Nebraska is certainly as good a football team as I have seen in my 33 years at Perm State. They are comparable to the 1965 Michigan State team and the 1959 Syracuse team with Ernie Davis. I can't recall ever playing or ever seeing a team as good as Nebraska was on opening day." Immediately, some pronounced Nebraska the best team ever. Expectations reached the point where, following 51-25 victories, Nebraskans fretted, "What's wrong with the defense," the vaunted Black Shirts? Nothing was, except in the context of the offense and the obligation to be the best at everything.
The three most renowned players are Tailback Mike Rozier, Quarterback Turner Gill and Wingback Irving Fryar, all seniors. Coming from Camden and Mount Holly, N.J., within ready reach of Philadelphia, Rozier and Fryar are city types and friends of long standing. As though consciously maintaining a Philly attitude, both are partial to scalley caps, the shapeless headwear that suits Eastern cab drivers so well, and they seem to own an endless collection. Gill is from Fort Worth, about the only place in Texas where a boy could grow up playing football and baseball and end up preferring baseball. "I just have more fun playing baseball," he says, realizing it is an absurd admission for one so near to a national championship. It was Tom Osborne's uncommon tolerance for a quarterback who would never be single-minded that delivered Gill to Nebraska. "People back home weren't so much upset that I chose Nebraska," Gill recalls, "as they were puzzled."
One percentage point short of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's 2.0 academic minimum, Rozier was required to detour through Coffeyville, Kans., for a year of junior-college classes. While Rozier was bowling over archrival Independence for the glory of the Coffeyville Red Ravens, strangers Fryar and Gill threw in together as freshman roommates, and Fryar attempted to ease their homesickness with tales of the terrific runner who would soon be joining them.