Last updated Memorial Stadium, the site of Nebraska's NCAA-record sellout streak.
The Nebraska Cornhuskers football sellout streak is an ongoing college football sellout streak. Nebraska has sold out 403 consecutive home games, an NCAA record for any sport that dates to 1962. Every game of the sixty-three-year streak has been played at Memorial Stadium, the program's home venue since 1923. Nebraska's record during the streak is 326–77.
Nebraska dominated at Memorial Stadium for much of the sellout streak under Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, and Frank Solich. NU won forty-seven consecutive home games from 1991 to 1998, among the longest streaks in college football history. The streak has traditionally been a source of pride for the program and its supporters, but has been criticized following Solich's 2003 firing as Nebraska has occasionally struggled to fill Memorial Stadium and been forced to sell bulk tickets to donors and sponsors to keep the streak alive.
History
Home dominance
Bob Devaney was hired in 1962 and quickly turned around Nebraska's program, which had been mired in a two-decade slump following World War II. NU won Devaney's first six games and hosted Missouri on November 3, 1962. The Tigers won 16–7 in front of a crowd of 36,501, the first game of the sellout streak.[1] After back-to-back 6–4 seasons in the late 1960s (Devaney later expressed surprise the streak survived this stretch), Devaney established Nebraska as a national power – the Cornhuskers had separate home winning streaks of twenty and twenty-three games before his retirement in 1972.[2]
Tom Osborne succeeded Devaney in 1973 and continued the program's dominance at Memorial Stadium. Nebraska celebrated its hundredth consecutive sellout on September 15, 1979 against Utah State, though this was actually number ninety-nine. Sellout 100 came two weeks later, a 42–17 win over Penn State.[3] The error wasn't discovered for nearly a decade.[2] Osborne's prolific offenses earned the nickname "The Scoring Explosion" through the early 1980s – from 1979 to 1984, Nebraska averaged 42.8 points per game at home, including 61.5 in a record-setting 1983 season. The streak persisted relatively untested through most of Osborne's tenure, but was threatened in 1990 when declining enrollment meant Nebraska nearly did not sell its entire allotment of student tickets.[4] The school enlisted the help of local businesses to ensure the streak's survival in the early part of the decade.[2]
The streak reached 200 on October 29, 1994, a dominant win for Nebraska over second-ranked Colorado; the Cornhuskers leapt to No. 1 and won Osborne's first consensus national title in January.[5] The win over CU came in the middle of a forty-seven-game win streak, the third-longest in major college football history. The win streak ended in 1998, Frank Solich's first season as head coach, when Texas became the first unranked team to win in Lincoln since NU's 1981 victory over Colorado. Solich's team began another lengthy home win streak, highlighted by a 2001 win over Oklahoma in the first regular season No. 1 versus No. 2 game in BCS history.[a][6]
Nebraska's stretch of seventy-three wins in seventy-four games ended in 2002. Solich was fired in 2003 after a 38–7 loss to Kansas State, NU's first home loss by more than two possessions since the sellout streak began.
Recent criticism and close calls
The sellout streak, traditionally a source of pride for the program and its supporters, has been criticized in the years since Solich's dismissal as Nebraska has struggled on the field and occasionally in the stands.[7][8] Nebraska ended several games of its 2007 season to thousands of empty seats, prompting Osborne to worry about the streak's survival: "they're relatively loyal, more than most any place around the country. But they're human. If you have sustained losing seasons, anybody gets discouraged."[9] The university considers a game a sellout as long as every ticket is sold, regardless of actual usage or if all seats are filled, and has been forced to sell large groups of tickets to donors and corporate sponsors to keep the streak intact.[7][2]
Nebraska's performance at Memorial Stadium continued to decline under Scott Frost – the Cornhuskers went 12–20 at home between 2017 and 2022, and the number of tickets scanned was often far below capacity.[2] The sellout streak survived Frost's tenure thanks largely to a donor purchase of 2,400 discounted tickets to Nebraska's 2021 home opener against Fordham; though many were returned from Fordham's allotment, it was one of several bulk sales required to keep the streak alive.[10] The tickets were distributed to local youth and their families in what athletic director Trev Alberts called the "Red Carpet Experience."[10] Months after Frost's firing a year later, Alberts publicly stated the sellout streak was on "life support" prior to Nebraska's 2022 game against Indiana.[11]
The sellout streak reached 400 in 2024, a 31–24 overtime loss to Illinois in the first matchup of ranked teams at Memorial Stadium since 2013.[2] At 403, Nebraska's sellout streak is over twice as long as the country's second-longest (Oklahoma at 153).[12][13]
↑ Oklahoma was ranked first and Nebraska second by the BCS, but both were ranked behind eventual national champion Miami in the AP and Coaches polls.
↑ Nebraska played three home games during the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 2020 season; no tickets were sold for these games and the university does not consider them part of the sellout streak.
↑ Mickey Joseph served as interim head coach for the final nine games of 2022 following the firing of Scott Frost.
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