Husker Invasion of Minnesota: 2011

Early that Saturday morning, my dad and I stopped at the McDonald’s off at Clear Lake, Iowa for a mid-morning snack/restroom stop. There were about five vehicles with Iowa State decor on them, another car or two with Hawkeye markings. Waiting on our order, I scanned the Iowa State game capsule in the local paper, while the cardinal and gold-dressed patrons enjoyed their breakfast. My dad and I got back in our red truck with Husker license plate frames and continued on our way north, away from Ames.

Earlier in that week, I heard that Minnesota fans were dumped their tickets to the Nebraska game, so I called my dad who lives in Ames now and said to him we should go up to the game. He agreed, and I drove over to their apartment on Friday afternoon from our house in Seward. On Interstate 80, I passed numerous Nebraska and Iowa fans headed to their teams respective games that weekend, a true college football exodus.

We travel to Minnesota a lot for work, but it was nice to go for fun. I arranged to get our tickets from a guy on craiglist, and we met him at a gas station on University Avenue, east of the stadium. He was one of those guys who was friendly in the Midwestern way way, and gave us directions and advice on where to park. I left thinking of great it was to be in the Big 10.

We found a place to park in the lot next to the Leaning Tower of Pizza, a bar offering a great deal: parking for twenty dollar, plus a voucher for twenty dollars worth of food. It was a basic bar, cheap food, but a clean environment, and big screens for every game that was on. And it was packed with Husker fans. We spent two hours there, and four or five times, some raised up a cry of “Go Big Red!”

With an hour to go, my dad and I left the Leaning Tower and headed up University. We’ve been to two bowl games together (’07 Cotton Bowl and ’09 Holiday Bowl) and the Husker fan representation here was no different. Afterward, some reporters Nebraska had as much as seventy percent of the fans in attendance, although I thought it was closer to a 50-50 split. I always thought Minnesota football got a shaft when it had to play a third team every year (after Wisconsin and Iowa) that could come in and fill their stadium for them, and here was the proof.

After wandering around the alumni center and vendors outside the stadium, we took our seats in the upper bowl. Friends who had seen TCF Bank Stadium before told me how great it looked from the outside, and from the inside, it looked even more impressive. The sun was bright that day, and it made the field shine like a Minnesota lake. The band was merry, and Minnesota fans showed their pride as their team ran out on the field, even if the Nebraska fans rivaled them in the stands.

The view from our seats on the east goal line.

I always feel a little awkward in a rival teams stadium (namely, Iowa State and the Cyclone Crazies), and the Minnesota fans made some noise in the early going, but after Nebraska took a 10-0 lead, they were considerably quieter. After Austin Cassidy scooped and scored on a fumble to give Nebraska a 27-0 lead, the three twenty-something Minnesota fans who were sitting next to us left. One of them actually wore a brown and yellow button-down shirt he’d bought at Old Navy to the game.

At halftime, I walked around the bowl of the stadium and was impressed by the job Minnesotans had done in recreating an old-feel college stadium in a new building. The university made a huge mistake when they moved permanently into the Metrodome (under the leadership of Lou Holtz, ironically), and now they had this great stadium. I almost feel sorry for Golden Gopher Nation, having to play six schools every year that our as equally committed to football as they are. But that is what it is.

But as I sat in the stands and watched the fans file out of the stadium (until you could “Minnesota” in the north stands), I was grateful to see one thing was still true about college football: Nebraska still had a good regional series. Granted, Nebraska has only two regional rivals it plays every year (Minnesota and Iowa) as opposed to the five it had in the old Big 12 (Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, and Colorado). But still, as we drove back that night, and I finished driving back to Nebraska on Sunday, I felt pride in every Nebraska vehicle I passed.