Five years ago this week, Benedict Herbie backstabbed a century of tradition in a fit of pique the University of Nebraska announced its intention to join the Big Ten Conference, setting into motion an existential crisis that reverberates throughout college athletics.
The Omaha World-Herald now looks back at the longest days in Big 12 history — at least, until it happened all over again a year later — mostly through its articles and columns written at the time.
There’s at least one “30 for 30” in all of this. If I could make one, I’d frame it much like “June 17, 1994” using news footage, interspersed with newspaper and website highlights.* (I might also have some narration from the observation point of Iowa State, bracketed with the 2009 eight-turnover special and the 2010 last-game-ever loss in overtime.)
Because some Web content management systems eliminate numbers and cut off the number of words in a title, the hyperlink for the OWH story reads: A look back at how Nebraska bucked the Big Texas. That, really, is the most honest description there is.
*A question: If you want to show a historical newspaper article, you go to the paper itself, or the microfilm, and see exactly how it was presented at the time. If you need to show something from a website, and its host has since undergone a massive redesign that either removes the piece entirely or presents it in a way that looks substantially different from the day it happened, how do you go about doing that?