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Review:Nebraska Cornhusker Football

When I first saw this book with it's picture of Eric Crouch on the cover and the subtitle "images of sports", I figured it wouldn't be that interesting. To be blunt, I thought it'd be a re-hash of a lot of other books about Nebraska football - covering the Devaney-Osborne era and little else.  'Nebraska Cornhusker Football' covers the entire history of Nebraska football, with plenty of interesting images and facts along the way.

The first third of the book covers the early years of Nebraska football, preceding it's formal origins in 1894. Author Mark Fricke does a good job on his research, finding some rare images, such as the one below and the facts to go along with them.

I found this picture very interesting - teams of this era probably ran a single wing offense - the ball was hiked directly to the ball carrier and the backfield players blocked for the ball carrier. There was nothing deceptive about it - the game at this time was a test of mental and physical strength and toughness.

From Nebraska Cornhusker Football, by permission. Book is available from Arcadia Publishing.

All of the players except the quarterback are wearing some eerie-looking facemasks. I have never seen this before. Notice the shape of the football? The word 'aerodynamic' would not apply here, although it's easy to understand why they'd quick-kick the ball more often, given that it might roll the length of the field.  This is how the book works - each image contains facts about the subject - but as they say 'a picture is worth a thousand words' so you get more than just the printed facts out of every page.

'The second third of Nebraska Cornhusker Football covers the Devaney era and early Osborne years, with the final third focusing on the Osborne era through the end of Frank Solich's time at Nebraska and the beginning of Bill Callahan. Going through those images invokes the memories of Husker football throughout my life - as each one reminds me of where I was and what I was doing at the time it happened. The book keeps to the facts instead of going into any type of Osborne/Solich/Callahan debate, something else I found refreshing.

'Nebraska Cornhusker Football' is a fairly short book, only 128 pages, but it does a darned good job in covering the history of Husker football. It's one I'm going to keep around in my library - it's also a pretty decent reference.

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How Many

books have you read that cover the Osborne/Solich/Callahan debate? I didn't even know that there were any. How can there be when BC has only been here 3 years? Besides when did Osborne become involved? The only place I read any Solich/Callahan debate is on blogs and other web sites or list. Have I been under my rock too long again?

by taflorom on Feb 21, 2007 10:06 PM CST reply actions  

good point

it hasn't been that long.

I have a backlog of books to review.... and trying to get through some of them.

There are a number from different areas around the nation, many of the big name coaches and programs. Given that I like the history channel, I have enjoyed reading a lot of these books, but work has been hell lately.... so it's been tough. A good break from computers, though.

Go Big Red!

by Jon Johnston on Feb 21, 2007 11:16 PM CST up reply actions  

How come...

I cannot post a comment in the diaries section. When I hit comments it says comments diabled. I can read the ones you and Ryan wrote but cannot add any myself. Am I being punished for negative comments about BC? ;) Dang and I thought this was a place to post anything without getting tossed!!!;)

by taflorom on Feb 21, 2007 10:14 PM CST reply actions  

can you create

a new diary?

Because of excessive spam... the system is now set to automatically disable comments on diaries after two weeks. That's one of the reasons why the Cotton Bowl contest had so few entries - I didn't realize that people couldn't add their comments.

Look at the diary you want to comment on - there's just no way to comment, or does it say that comments are disabled? Let me know which it is and I can enable comments on it, then you can post a comment. We should test that and make sure it works properly.

Go Big Red!

by Jon Johnston on Feb 21, 2007 11:14 PM CST up reply actions  

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