Why I Drew Memorial Stadium (While Disliking the Huskers)

Dan
Nov 22
4 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

To be completely honest, I've never been a huge fan of Nebraska football, so that's not why I drew this, but I'd love to tell you why I did.

I grew up in Iowa, about 15 miles from the Iowa–Nebraska border, but the small town nearest me may as well have been a Nebraska football embassy. You can drive through most towns in Iowa and see a mixture of Iowa and Iowa State flags flying on the front porch. This town, however, raised exclusively Cornhuskers. The big red "N" flew over every house and would have flown over the high school if they'd been allowed. "Go Big Red!" was as much a greeting as "ciao" is in Italy.

I remember my first Sunday visiting a new church after moving to the area. I walked into the first-grade classroom to a sea of deep red puffy coats on every kid. These were a sign of status in the early '90s, along with Nike or Adidas shoes; the kind they didn't sell at Payless Shoes, where we shopped. Into this room I strolled, sporting a pair of navy dress pants, a button-up shirt, and maybe a clip-on tie.

The first question I was asked by an imposing eight-year-old in a puffy coat was, "You like football?"

It's not that I didn't like football; I just didn't know anything about it. My grandpa was a Packers fan, and one time he let me wear his cheesehead, which was pretty cool. I hadn't really given football much thought, but in desperation I figured baseball was a close enough match. I hadn't given baseball much thought either, but I had an Atlanta Braves hat, so I figured that made me a fan.

I said, "I like the Braves?"

They laughed.

The kind of laugh that tells you instantly that you've made a social mistake that can't be taken back or fixed easily.

As they laughed at me, my cheeks started turning the color of the puffy red coats that filled the room. I didn't know any of these kids, other than that they loved something called the "Huskers."

So I struck out at the only thing I knew they loved, and like a wounded animal, blurted out, "Well, the Huskers stink!"

The room went silent. I had blasphemed their god, and I knew it. So I crawled into the corner of the room and stayed there in some way until we left that church a few years later.

That was my introduction to the Huskers; or at least to some of their fans. Over the years I mellowed, but somehow I retained this heart of simmering dislike for this football team and their ardent supporters.

A few years ago, I started developing a friendship with someone who is now one of my closest friends. He was someone I had crossed paths with a few times in my life but had never really gotten to know.

Ironically, what we bonded over was a shared experience of being exiled for holding to a set of principles. We probably talked weekly for a year about anything but sports, because we both knew it wasn't a shared interest, but one day the dreaded news came out.

We were having coffee, and a man he knew walked by and said, "Ready for the game tomorrow?" To which my friend replied, "YEAH! Gooooo Biiiiig Reeeeeed." (If you didn't already, please read that again in slow motion.)

In stunned silence, I did what had to be done. I threw my room-temperature coffee in his face, said "Good day," and stormed out.

I'm kidding. I did do something I'd never done before, though. I asked him to explain Husker fever, and I'll never forget what he said.

He said, "Dan, have you ever been to Memorial Stadium in Lincoln on a game day?" I had not.

"You should sometime," he insisted, "because it's this massive stadium full of thousands of people, dressed in red, cheering their hearts out. And for a couple of hours, the only thing that matters about the person next to you is that they're a fellow Cornhusker. You just about can't find that kind of unity anywhere else in America, and it's something special."

Here's what I think. I think we're all chasing connection and community and that feeling of being a part of something.

I also think most of us have had an experience like the one I did in that room of puffy red-coated kids. An experience where you walk in the door hoping for connection and end up getting rejected instead. Maybe it's them, maybe it's me…maybe it's Maybelline.

Sometimes we want that so bad that we're willing to get it where we can find it, even if it means huddling around a field on which a group of men huddle around an inflated pigskin.

Okay, so maybe I still don't understand the allure of football, but I think I understand just a little bit of Husker fever now. I understand enough to applaud the desire to be in community with others and even go to the lengths of building a stadium like this one in which to celebrate that. That's what this stadium has come to mean to me, and it's the real reason that I drew it.