1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - How Did the Husker Football Team Fare 100 years ago in 1926? : August 26th, 12:45pm

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

How Did the Husker Football Team Fare 100 years ago in 1926?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back to one-on-one with DP. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7 The Ticket. I'm Jake Falkman and Harris. We're in for DP today. I do want to get to in the next hour, your favorite college football broadcasters. Always like the argument between maybe what ESPN and Fox has to go with. Also, I want to know your most hated ones as well,

because certainly there are those that Husker fans have come to, not like as much over the years. But I did want to go back in time here and look a century ago because we are old enough now. It's been long enough that Nebraska has played football for more than 100 years. So we can go back 100 years and see where Nebraska was at. So we'll jump through the 1926 season. But I will say this.

Harrison, I am interested. What the, what, what you were you born again? 99. 99. Okay. So you can still be offended by this. Jamal ruled the other day referred to the, the ninth. It's referred to the sellout streak by calling it the 1900s. Are you,

are you offended when people say the 1900s? Uh, right? I mean, that's kind of, that's kind of crazy, but you know, I, I will, uh, forgive and not judge. Yeah. Yeah. That's a crazy. We're getting to an age to where that's probably fair, though. I mean, if you were born 10 years out, you know, 2010 or something. I mean, I'm just proud, like to make the 90s cut. Say I'm like a 90s kid, but apparently, um, at some point, I wish I was the 2000s get the older I get here. But yeah, I don't know what it is. I think I'm definitely in that quote unquote unc status.

I think the age is like 26 there when that title officially is given. But yeah, no, I did not see that comment. I call it into 1900s is a different way to go about it. Yeah, I was just like, well, I suppose that's true. It just hurts to hear you're saying that. But going back to the 1926 season, a lot of people feel like Nebraska football started in 1970s, right? I mean, all you kind of hear back is go back to those days. But Nebraska football is actually very successful at times,

despite not winning national titles throughout a majority of their histories. And the 20 was no different. The 1926 season was no different. We're going to go game by game. So don't look it up. It's going to leave you suspense with how this team ends up going. I bet you we played Wesleyan at some point. I think Westland was around.

No Wesleyan on this schedule this time. Actually, a pretty interesting schedule as Nebraska played in the Missouri Valley Conference at the time. They were actually coming off a very prolific year in 1925, where they went four, two and two, but they beat, they had two rather impressive victories. One, they shut out red grains in Illinois, 14 to nothing to open up the season. And they closed out with a 17 to nothing shut out of Newt Rockney in Notre Dame. Oh, okay.

So, yeah, as I'm saying, there was some, there's some interesting name drops along the way here. and some impressive opponents. If you do recall a couple of years earlier, Nebraska is one of the only teams to defeat the four horsemen of Notre Dame as well in the 20s. So this was kind of a big deal. By the way, that Notre Dame team ran a 7-2-2 defense. So I'll see if that ever makes its way back into college football lexicon here. 1926, by the way, was also the first year. And we were 4-2 and 2 this year?

the previous year, 1925. Yeah, I'm leaving suspense here in 1926. But Ed Weir was officially on the coaching staff. He was previously on the team, the previous year in 1925, was captain of the 23 team that actually beat the four horsemen, but was an All-American in 1924 and 25. Of course, they had the track named after him right by Memorial Stadium for the longest time. So he was a great play. I actually went on to play professionally for the Frankfurt Yellow Jackets. of the national football league. So in the NFL, and he and several of his teammates in 1927,

took over the coaching job mid-season and achieved a 6-9-and-3 record, and he earned all pro honors. The following year, he coached the team to 11, 3, and 2 record. Good for second place in the NFL. It's unreal when you look at, like, how things were just done back in the past. Like, that's an incredible run by him.

But like even though like my bear's history, like with George Halle, like, the stories of how those guys like go from player to like, yeah, I'm just coaching the program. now. Yeah. And it's just like natural. anybody's just whoever's around. Yeah. It's like, you were pretty good for us. I think you'd be great at this job. Yeah. Sometimes they actually end up becoming like historical coaches and other times.

It's like, yeah, what were you thinking? Of course that was a disaster waiting to happen. But it's like it worked out pretty well for the Oscars there. Yeah. Well, at least for the yellow jackets in the NFL. Yeah. But also, yeah, for Nebraska. Again, he was, so Ed Weir was on the coaching staff as the assistant line coach. This was Ernest Bargs, uh, believe second season in Nebraska. So already went in 1925 was his first season there. So good debut season. Nebraska was led by a couple guys that were All-American that you might not know.

When I say the names, you don't necessarily think of this, of the primary names for Nebraska. One was Captain All-American tackle, Lou Steiner, or Lon Steiner, excuse me. He was on that 25 team that showed out Red Grange in Illinois. He would on to become a successful Oregon State head coach, who is actually second in all-time wins at Oregon State, only trailing Mike Riley.

He had 74 wins there at Oregon State. And in fact, led them to the Rose Bowl in 1941 at just 38 years old, which is the youngest in Rose Bowl history. So they had some, they had some talent on this roster. By the way, that Rose Bowl in 1942 was the only Rose Bowl played outside of Pasadena until 2021. It was moved to Durham, North Carolina. They played Duke due to fears about the attack of the West Coast of the United States following the attack of Pearl Harbor, you know, less than a month earlier.

So some interesting history there with Mr. Steiner, one of the captains for the team, also led by halfback Glenn Presnell, an All-American in 1927, who ended up setting the NFL single-season scoring record in 1933 and led the league in total offense. In fact, he was the last surviving member of the Detroit Lions 1934 team that led them to their first NFL championship. He also set an NFL record, Presnell did, with a 54-yard field goal in 1934. That record was not broken for 19 years.

And he also served as the head football coach at Nebraska eventually in 1942. Not so impressive three and seven season there. But yeah, Glenn Pressnell, how about that? A, an all-star at the NFL level, a record for 20 years. You never heard his name brought up. No, and that's, I think, you know, that is maybe one problem we do have is we are so locked.

into like the 70s, 80s, 90s, that to your point, like, there was a lot of really great football going on even earlier. And I think the Midwest as a whole, just there's probably quite a few really good teams that just weren't getting the notoriety because the spotlight wasn't quite on those Midwestern teams. I would imagine, right, I'm speculating a little bit here, but I imagine a lot of the focus. It just wasn't a ton of information. And now, you know, on 2026, we get information instantly. We know who's good and where they're at and when they're playing. But back then, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those guys, just get forgotten a little bit because they aren't, you know, in all this media,

that maybe some of those other teams, you know, on the East Coast on the West Coast might have been. But yeah, I mean, it's crazy, especially the Rose Bowl being played down there in North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, things are bad. At least we don't have to move our championship games.

I guess that's the real sign. Yeah. Yeah. So again, it was just kind of fun to do this because there's a lot of history and a lot of moving parts here in the season. But let's jump into it. your 1926 Nebraska Cornhuskers opened up by shutting out Drake 21 to nothing. This was a conference game for Nebraska.

Both Nebraska and Drake were in the same conference. It was the last of eight games played between Drake and Nebraska, with Nebraska holding a 6 to 2 advantage. But they start off 1-0, 21-0-0-1-victory over Drake. Nice. Move on to Missouri. This is a 14 to 7 loss for Nebraska. So they're going to be one-in-one.

Missouri was coming off their first every debut game at Memorial Stadium in Columbia. the previous week with attendance of 10,000 people. Not 9,987. No, just 10,000 people. And they all showed up for this first game at Missouri to watch Missouri and Tulane battle it out to a zero-zero tie. That's the first game in Missouri history. They did bounce back and beat Nebraska the next week, unfortunately.

So we're sitting at one in one. Then they played Washington University. Not that Washington. Washington from St. Louis, who is also in the Missouri Valley, conference at the time. They did beat Washington University 20 to 6. The Bears were coached by Bob Higgins. Okay. Not Bob Huggins. Uh, who would on to beat a coach at Penn State and is actually fourth all time at Penn State in total wins. And interesting that Washington in St. Louis was a

conference opponent for Nebraska since 1907 at this point in time in 1926, but this was only their second meeting and the final meeting between the two school. That is absolutely incredible. Okay. So what are we at? What's our record right now? Two and one. All right. We're two and one. We got a win versus Drake. We got a lost to Missouri. Yeah. And then we just got the last one versus we won versus Washington. A win at Washington. Yeah. St. Louis. In St. Louis. That's correct. Then the next up was a game at Kansas traveling to Lawrence. Okay. They beat Kansas 20 to six. KU wasn't particularly good that year. But KU basketball won the Missouri Valley that year with a 15 and two record under 10th year head coach Fogg Allen. The 12 and six Huskers split the season series with KU that year. And

in February of 26 played their first game in the newly opened Coliseum. He won that game 25 to 14, unfortunately. But Ernest Barg, who I mentioned was the head coach for football, was also the coach of basketball at the time. Okay, so he couldn't get it done on the football field against the Oscars, but basketball, he was doing all right. Yeah, yeah, at least split the series with Kansas. So that's pretty good.

And Fogg Allen, obviously, is a pretty good coach at the time. So pretty good when they're on the football field and splitting the series with Kansas in basketball. So that puts us at 3 and 1. And then they've got Iowa State coming into Lincoln. They beat Iowa State 31 to 6. Guys, I dug for some interesting stats here. There's not a whole lot. Nebraska was now 11 and 1 and 1 against the Cyclones. And this was game four of a 15 game winning streak against Iowa State that didn't end until 1938. Do they like as like a 31 to 6? Like we'd look at like a 62 to 7? I think so. I pretty much. Our offense is on fire today. 31. Why are they even in this league?

we had 100 yards passing today. Oh, nice level. I wanted to look up the leading passing leader of that year, but I didn't quite get to that. Speaking of low-scoring games, the next week they went on to defeat Kansas State, the Kansas State Aggies, three to nothing to improve to five-in-one.

Kansas had already traveled to Nebraska earlier that year to defeat Creighton in Omaha, 12-0. That's right, Creighton had a football team. Creighton would end up suspending their football program in 1942, due to World War II and in the program in 1946. But the K-state Aggies were defeated by Nebraska, leading Nebraska now to 5-1 in 1 on the 19-2060s. Interesting.

I had zero clue that Creighton ever had a football program. Yeah. Like obviously, we always think of Omaha. Yeah, the Mavericks, but like the Great Blue Jays. Yeah, I'd say that's a good reason. You know, obviously I can't, you know, make fun of them for that. That seems like a pretty fair reason to go ahead and suspend the football program there. But, yeah, not know.

Some Creighton history for me. So one more game at Memorial Stadium. This one against New York University. They actually beat New York 15 to 7 in a snowstorm here in Lincoln. This was big because New York, one, one, didn't travel. In fact, they didn't travel. This was their only game they traveled outside the state of New York to play. And they entered the game 8 in 0 and had shut out six of their opponents.

This New York University team also played four of their home games at Yankee Stadium. So big deal for Nebraska to beat New York here. I wonder how they convinced them. I was like, hey, come down here in the middle of winter. Yeah. It wasn't a good idea for him. No, it obviously went terrible for him. Yeah.

Just incredible. That's always the most curious thing is like how they decided schedules. And I get it. Right. Communication is just different. It's a lot harder. But it feels like some of this, they're just kind of piece them along as they went to the point where you got, you know, you got all your games at home.

You're also playing in Yankee Stadium, which that's not totally uncommon. A lot of football teams did that because the baseball fields were already there. But then to just have the one-off. like, hey, boys, we're going to Lincoln for this one game and this one game only. It's just a regular season game, but I don't know if, you know, what the decision was behind that, but it's always an incredible curiosity deciding, you know, not only how they decided the schedule, but in the middle of seasons, it feels like, you know, they're just, hey, do you guys have a team right now?

You know, how many guys do you have in the draft? Do you have a football program? Like, in Creighton's case, I'm sure that's why they had to suspend it. Like, there's so many factors that we just, they had to work around. And today, it's, we just don't even comprehend it. to think about it. Well, it's crazy. And a lot of people, I think, know, you know, part of the history, the, you know, the theater Roosevelt was against college football. And people say, oh, well, yeah, that's when people were dying on the field. Yeah, that's also true. It is, it is crazy.

the history of college football if you look it up. But let's get our final game here. Nebraska enters a common opponent between 1926 and 2026. They'll be playing at, they're playing at Husky Stadium, whereas this year they'll play Memorial Stadium against Washington. They played at Husky Stadium, known as Washington. Washington Stadium at the time. They did end up losing this one, 6 to 10 to close out the year for the Huskers in 1926.

But it was a very close one. In fact, Washington had just had a goal on stand to preserve that 10 to 6 win there at the end for Washington. They had just changed their name to the Huskies in 1922. They were previously known as the Washington Sun Dodgers.

So... What is their Sun Dodger? I don't know. I didn't look up that part of it. I suppose they're just avoiding the sun. I'm not really sure. That's what I took out of it. So Nebraska finished six and two, five and one in the Missouri Valley. Oklahoma A&M at the time. Oklahoma State eventually won the conference by going three, oh and one in conference play despite a three, four and one record overall. I'm trying to figure out what a Sun Dodger is. That is curiosity. That's the other part.

when you go through a lot of this history is the team names that get changed. Oh, yeah. The history here. And a son of Dodger, most commonly refers to a submariner in the variation of a sundag. Okay. Okay. Leave it at that. That's more to me some more sense.

All right. Let's go ahead and take a break. We've got more coming up. Again, I want to get your thoughts on your favorite college football broadcasters. Also, I've got some stats on what was going on in 1926 as two as well. to have some fun. We'll back with more on one-on-one. Download our app by searching 93.7 the ticket in your app store. You're listening to one-on-one with DP on 93-7 the ticket

and the ticketfm.com.