In the mid-1950s, Ed Svendsen went to his first Nebraska football games, riding with his father from Nelson to Lincoln to see the Huskers in Memorial Stadium.
Saturday, the man known as “Big Red Ed” will hit a milestone, attending his 600th Nebraska football game, a remarkable streak that started when he was a teenager, but it really took off when he enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1960.
And things escalated even further in 1962, when a coach from Wyoming named Bob Devaney resurrected a moribund Nebraska program and started the Huskers on a four-decade run of greatness.
“I think I saw a game in ’54 and ’55,” Svendsen said. “I know I saw Indiana in ’56. I was in the band, and we came up for band day. I started at NU in the fall of 1960, and in my second year, Bob Devaney came in and it turned around. That’s when I got hooked. My wife (Dorothy) got hooked when she married me. She loves to go to the games as much as I do.”
Svendsen, who spent more than 30 years as an independent adjuster for GAB Robins and retired from the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association in 2004, could hardly have been a more loyal fan.
“Since I started at the university, I’ve missed — I don’t remember for sure — six or seven or eight home games,” he said. “Then when our kids got old enough that we could get a babysitter or they could babysit themselves, in ’81, ’82, ’83, we starting going to quite a few away games.”
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