At 31 million tickets and counting, Nebraska’s 400th straight sellout a full-circle moment

Troester fell in love with Nebraska football the day The Streak began. 

Husker fans have long forgotten the result from Nov. 3, 1962, when Missouri came to Lincoln and won 16-7 in a battle of Big Eight unbeatens. Three lost fumbles and three interceptions snowballed into the first loss under a wisecracking new head coach named Bob Devaney.

But excitement had built all season and by kickoff, each of the 31,080 seats in Memorial Stadium. Official attendance that day was 36,501, with spectator totals likely pushing 40,000, including schoolkids who could join the south-end “Knothole” section for 50 cents apiece.

Troester, now 73, attended with his older brother and a Little League teammate who invited them on a whim. Sixty-two years later, Troester now lives in Hampton, Nebraska, still tries to see a game or two in person each fall while recalling his first one that started an unprecedented run of Saturday loyalty for an entire fan base.

“I look back on it and call it the grace of God,” Troester said. “One game out of the blue and it happened to be that game.”

The streak of home sellouts that began days after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended has endured ever since. It turns 400 games old when the No. 22 Huskers, once again unbeaten and generating buzz under a new coach after years of losing, welcome No. 24 Illinois to a full Memorial Stadium — capacity: 82,841 — Friday night.

Nebraska’s ongoing record is an exercise in relentless addition. Like how it will surpass 31 million tickets purchased with none left over after this weekend. Like how no other school is within three decades of equaling No. 400 (second-place Oklahoma will reach 156 on Saturday).

Somewhere amid five national titles, three conference affiliations and 324 home wins, The Streak became as much of the Husker identity as the Blackshirts and the band playing “Hail Varsity” after touchdowns. “SOLD OUT SINCE 1962” reads a massive sign on a wall of NU’s indoor practice field. An updated ticker of consecutive sellouts on the East Stadium façade is surpassed in prominent display only by the list of championship seasons.

A new century mark is coming.

“It just shows the dedication all these fans have and what they mean to us,” said sixth-year linebacker John Bullock, a Creighton Prep grad. “They mean as much to us as we mean to them.”

The Streak isn’t just numbers. It’s fans like Bill Davison telling tales of irrational commitment.

The Omaha native started going to games regularly during that fall of 1962 and has only missed a handful since. A couple absences in 1976 when he lived 10 hours away in Peoria, Illinois, and his father, an avid NU supporter himself, held the phone to the radio so his son could listen. One in 1987 when he lived in Fort Collins, Colorado. One “under protest” in 2003 for his son’s wedding. A pair in 2021 for health reasons.

Davison regularly made the drive from eastern Iowa when he lived there into the early 1980s. Once at a company event in Kansas City, he rented a car with a couple other Nebraska alums to drive up and see part of the game to count his attendance before heading back.

Now living in Fremont, Davison has four tickets 79 rows up in South Stadium and takes his two grade-school grandchildren to share the experience. He sees a parallel to 1962, when the Huskers got good and free unclaimed tickets were no longer lying on tables at the Omaha Grain Exchange where his father worked.

Time marches on. The sellout streak still brings him full circle every fall Saturday.

“The whole world has changed around us,” Davison said. “And yet, to me, that has been a constant. Once I get in that stadium and take my seat, I feel the same. I always think, ‘Man am I glad I’m here.’”

The sellout streak makes the times and spans generations like an heirloom. It saw the JFK assassination, man on the moon, Y2K and 9/11. It survived a pandemic — The Streak paused in 2020 with only cardboard cutouts of fans in seats for three home affairs — and, so far, smartphones and streamed games.

Nebraska is 7-0 for milestone sellouts, including two during national-title years in 1970 and 1994. No. 150 became a 42-33 win over No. 3 UCLA in 1987. No. 350 was a 35-32 win over Oregon in 2016 that remains Big Red’s last triumph over a ranked opponent. That day the student section unfurled a 3,500-square-foot banner of rapper DJ Kaled, known for his catchphrase fit for the occasion.

Of course, all full houses aren’t created equal. Capacity increased to 44,829 in 1964 with the south-end expansion that gave Memorial Stadium a horseshoe look. It cracked 50,000 in 1965 with new seating on the north side and 60,000 the next year as the venue became a bowl. It passed 70,000 in 1972 as the south end extended back and 80,000 in 2006 as the north side grew and added skyline suites. It reached as high as 87,000-plus in 2013 with the addition atop East Stadium before widened seats led reductions a few years later.

The Streak, for long stretches, seemed an invulnerable byproduct of winning football. Ahead of sellout No. 200 in October 1994, Nebraska linebacker Ed Stewart made a prediction set to come true Friday.

“The way it’s been going for 200,” Stewart said, “I think it can go for 200 more.”

The coach who sparked The Streak left it for dead when he was still on the sidelines.

Devaney, during a World-Herald interview in 1994 after he retired as athletic director, figured 6-4 campaigns in ’67 and ’68 would quell fan enthusiasm. A 12-0 shutout loss to Kansas State represented the last clunker as rain turned to snow on swaths of empty Memorial Stadium bench seats.

Local rumblings had Devaney on the hot seat. The coach responded by taking a chance on strength training — revolutionary at the time — and moving eventual Hall of Fame coaches Tom Osborne and Monte Kiffin into de facto coordinator roles. Nebraska won back-to-back titles soon after.

Husker supporters stiff-armed apathy but couldn’t always keep the fervor red hot. Six straight losses to Oklahoma through 1977 hurt. So did annual near misses into the ‘80s, none more painful than a one-point loss in the 1984 Orange Bowl when Osborne went for two and missed an outright national title by the flick of a wrist in a 31-30 crusher.

Fans wondered if Nebraska would ever summit the mountain again.

The Streak had its own close calls, only some of them documented. Nebraska in 1990 had almost 1,000 tickets available the Monday before the season opener amid declining student enrollment — “We’re not alarmed but we’re concerned about ticket sales,” NU’s Joe Selig, in charge of the ticket office at the time, said then. The school enlisted help from local businesses to fill the gaps before kickoff vs. Baylor. 

“If we stink,” then-athletic director Bill Byrne said early in his tenure in the early ‘90s,” I don’t think people will come out and support us.”

Osborne as A.D. feared for the record in 2007 as Nebraska staggered to a 5-7 finish and fired its coach. Byrne, after his retirement from Texas A&M in 2012, said the Huskers had to “work like the devil” to keep a full stadium before the breakthrough championship in 1994.

The most recent decade tested the sellout run like never before amid losing to depths not seen since the ‘50s. Nebraska development officer Jack Pierce in 2015 called on some donor friends to save the day with The Streak in jeopardy for three games after opponents returned parts of their ticket allotments.

In 2021, former A.D. Trev Alberts launched the Red Carpet Experience, a department-led initiative in which donors purchased hundreds of open tickets and NU gave them to underprivileged in-state kids and their families for free. In the wake of Nebraska firing coach Scott Frost in September 2022 and playing out a lost season, one fan purchased 2,100 tickets at a bulk rate of $10 each.

“I can’t tell you that maintaining the sellout streak is not an overwhelming effort, but it’s an area of focus for all of our staff,” Alberts said in 2021. “I’ve said it publicly and I’ll say it again: I’m not sure the University of Nebraska has much more of a differentiator between our peers and ourselves other than our fan base.”

A sellout streak by definition, if not by spirit. It hasn’t always meant packed stands — scanned-ticket totals between 2016-19 revealed Memorial Stadium was, on average, about 80% full during that stretch. An empty top of the student section in the southeast corner often told the tale.

Yet, mostly, people continued to gather at One Memorial Drive. Out of obligation. Duty. Loyalty. Hope.

Like any lasting marriage, both sides keep working at it. For better or worse.

“I know they say there’s no better place but I really believe that,” NU sixth-year defensive lineman Ty Robinson said. “… I felt like there’s never been a drop.”

When will The Streak end? Good luck trying to guess.

Weather hasn’t done it, from record-high temperatures in a blowout loss to Michigan last year to the 1986 “blizzard” game against Kansas State. Windy days, cold nights, lightning delays and endless renditions of “Boomer Sooner” haven’t kept fans away. Neither has a seven-year bowl drought spanning three head coaches.

Other schools saw their own streaks halt in the early 2010s with multiplying options to watch games on television and mobile devices. Florida at 137 games. Oregon at 110. Virginia Tech at 93. Alabama at 56. Notre Dame had been the closest challenger until its run ended at 273 in November 2019.

Nebraska’s rising number — more of burden than of boast since then — appears as natural as it has in years with electric environments against UTEP, Colorado and Northern Iowa. Like in 1962, fans beaten down by losing are responding to a strong start led by star players and a building head coach.

That coach, Matt Rhule, takes visiting recruits to the Memorial Stadium field right away to remind them of the support that’s been reliable through a dozen U.S. presidents, eight permanent Nebraska skippers and 62 years. If Rhule does what he does for the players first, he said, he grinds for the fans next. His staff aims to match its work ethic to the people of an agriculture state with no professional teams.

“I feel it all the time,” Rhule said. “I feel a tremendous – not a burden in a bad way but a sense of responsibility to make sure that we’re doing our part.”

Fans like Davison, who know The Streak like a childhood friend, notice the effort and feel the excitement.

The best part about No. 400 is how much it’s like No. 1.

324-75: Nebraska’s record at home during the streak (an .812 winning percentage).

Nine: The number of head coaches for Nebraska home games since the streak began. Husker coaches and their home records during the run include Bob Devaney (54-9), Tom Osborne (145-16), Frank Solich (38-4), Bill Callahan (19-8), Bo Pelini (41-10), Mike Riley (12-9), Scott Frost (11-12, excluding 2020), Mickey Joseph (1-4 as interim) and Matt Rhule (7-3).

30,935,712: The number of sold Nebraska tickets through 399 consecutive home sellouts. That’s more than the population of Texas, the second most populous state in the U.S.

7-0: Nebraska’s record in milestone 50th, 100th, 150th, 200th, 250th, 300th and 350th sellouts. Those include some big wins, including a thrashing of Joe Paterno and Penn State in 1979 (100th) and wins over third-ranked UCLA (150th in 1987) and second-ranked Colorado (200th in 1994). The Huskers beat No. 22 Oregon (350th in 2016) in what remains their last win over a top-25 foe.

Oops: Nebraska’s 35-14 win over Utah State in 1979 was noted as the school’s 100th consecutive sellout but it was actually No. 99. The mistake, caused by a record-keeping error dating back to the 1960s, wasn’t discovered until 1987.