[Husker] The flight 1961 "Go Big Red"

[DUXANDLOXY at aol.com]

The Devaney era began soon after the end of
the 1961  football season and the departure from
the Lincoln campus of Bill Jennings,  one of a parade
of coaches who had failed in their efforts to lead
the  Cornhuskers back to the glories of the teams
of Walter (Bummy) Booth, Jumbo  Stiehm, D. x.
Bible and Biff Jones.
It was a gray afternoon in late  December. Carl
Donaldson, then the university purchasing agent and
later  the business manager, had been sent out to the
Lincoln Municipal Airport on a  dual errand -to pick
up the luggage of William Henry Harrison (Tippy)
Dye,  who had flown to Lincoln that very morning, and
to meet a stranger who was  arriving on the 3:30
plane from Denver.
Donaldson waited in the cold for  the visitor from
the West, a Mr. R .Roberts. The university  official
didn't know the man. But he had a photo. As passenger
after passenger alighted from that DC-6,  Donaldson
peered into each face and then glanced at the
picture.  Finally the last man descended the ramp
steps. He looked around through  squinty eyes. Don-
aldson looked at him and decided this must be  Mr.
Roberts. He examined the visitor. Even though it was
cold the man was  carrying his topcoat. He was
slightly paunchy, balding and when Donaldson  ex-
tended his hand in recognition, the man grinned
puckishly. He might  very well have been a sales-
man of the type Donaldson dealt with regularly.  A
hardware peddler, perhaps.
Donaldson drove him to the main campus.  The
first major facility seen from the direction of the
Municipal Airport  is Memorial Stadium. They stopped
and got out of the car for a moment. By  this time
the visitor had put on his coat. The north wind  was
frigid.
They went past the Coliseum and over to the
men's  dormitories at Selleck Quadrangle. There Don-
aldson introduced his new  friend to the director of
dormitories, who in turn proudly showed off  rooms
in which men students dwell. Then the visitor was
escorted to the  cafeteria.
As the operation of the eating place was ex-
plained, Mr.  Roberts exclaimed in sudden surprise:
"You mean you have a special table just  for foot-
ball players? Well, I'll be."
He said goodbye to the dormitory  manager and,
still in the company of the purchasing agent, was
taken to a  darkened room. There he was shown reel
after reel of motion pictures -movies  of Nebraska
football games, of all things.

Football films for a salesman? Yep. But this
salesman wasn't selling  nuts and bolts; he was selling
himself. He had traveled to Lincoln from Laramie,
Wyo., under an assumed  name to ward off the press.
When he had seen enough of the Cornhuskers  of
1961, he stood up and remarked for all in the room
to hear:
"Bill  Jennings was quite a recruiter. There are
some good boys here."

And with that, Robert S. Devaney -the Mr.
Roberts who had been met  at the airport by the 
university's purchasing agent -agreed to become  the
twenty-seventh head football coach of the University
of  Nebraska.
Bob Devaney didn't just happen in. Jennings
was gone. Bill  Orwig, athletic director during much of
the lean years period, had previously  moved to Indiana 
University. The University of Nebraska ad-
ministration was  determined that there must be a new
era, an era of success, in Cornhusker  football.
Chancellor Clifford Hardin and other university
officials  searched nine months for the man they felt
would capably head the Athletic  Department. They
found him in Tippy Dye -former Ohio State foot-
ball and  basketball player who had coached the cage
sport at Brown, Ohio State and  then for nine years
at the University of Washington, where his teams
won  six northern division Pacific Coast Conference
titles. He came to Nebraska  after three years as 
athletic director at the University of Wichita. Under
Dye's  guidance the Shockers became a national
basketball power and began  registering surprising
football successes, including one trip to El  Paso's
Sun Bowl.
Shortly after Dye arrived at the Nebraska cam-
pus,  Dr. Hardin heard a rumor that Duffy Daugherty,
who had built a succession of  gridiron powerhouses
at Michigan State University, was looking around  for
a new post. Dr. Hardin, himself a former Michigan
State dean,  immediately picked up the phone and
offered Daugherty the Nebraska coaching  job.
"That rumor is false. I'm not interested in leav-
ing East Lansing,"  the Michigan State coach told the
Nebraska Chancellor. "But if it's a good  man you're
interested in. ..well, there's a fellow who used to
work for me  as end and defensive backfield coach.
And before that we were assistants  together here
under Biggie Mulln. He's put together some great
teams at  the University of Wyoming. Name's Bob
Devaney."
Indeed he had experienced  success at Wyoming.
In five years Devaney-coached teams had won 35,
lost  10 and tied five -this despite an unspectacular
four victories, three losses  and three ties his first
year in the Skyline Conference. He had  attracted
enough of a splash to have been offered the head
coaching jobs  at Maryland and California. These he
turned down. But Nebraska appeared  promising. And
he seized the opportunity.
And Nebraska saw promise in  Devaney. Not that
this was unusual. Hope springs eternal, and nowhere
does  hope spring more doggedly eternal than in the
breasts of Nebraska football  fans. From Rulo to Har-
rison, from South Sioux City to Kimball there is,  and
always has been, a great football optimism. Now this
optimism was  buoyed by a man with a barrelful
of ability and an impish grin.
Most  Nebraskans knew very little about Devaney
when it was announced in early  January of 1962
that he had been named head coach. In fact, his
name was  commonly mispronounced. It took a coup-
let composed by the ever-popular  Gregg McBride of
the Omaha World-Herald to impress people with  the
preferred pronunciation:
Get off your fanny
And help Bob  Devaney.



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