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70 at 50: After Devaney’s ultimatum, Epley helped transform Huskers into national power | Football



“I promoted that,” Epley said. “I started writing a weekly newsletter called, ‘The Lifting News.’ Each week I’d have highlights of what happened during the week, and I tried to use that as a motivator for people that are doing a good job. That caught on, and I did that for years and years.”

Nebraska’s first weight room was about 400 square feet. It had a Universal Gym and a few pieces of equipment acquired from a health club in Lincoln that had gone out of business.

Later, Epley saw a fence being taken down on campus and asked if he could claim the steel posts. Then the university welder used the posts to make Epley some equipment for doing the bench press and squat lifts.

“That’s when we really had equipment that we needed very badly,” Epley said. “So Coach Deavney allowed me to expand the weight room by taking over where the varsity locker room was.”

In 35 years as strength coach, Epley’s program helped transform many Huskers into good players.

Mike Beran, a backup offensive lineman, on the 1970 team, was one of them. The walk-on from Ord became a starter in ’72.

“I was a 6-foot, 184-pound walk-on offensive guard. Not a big calling for those,” Beran said. “Fortunately for me, Boyd Epley was just getting started with the weightlifting program, so I jumped into it head and shoulders and really started working out and lifting and gained a lot of strength and a little more speed and got up to 234 pounds when I was a junior.



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