Nebraska-Colorado Rivalry’s Bittersweet End

Today marks the last day two once-great rivals will share the same conference.

Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten and Colorado’s to the Pac-12 is the final chapter on one of the most exciting volumes of my college football fandom. Anything resembling the Big 8 Conference is essentially smashed to smithereens, and what was among the game’s greatest rivalries is dead. True, the Nebraska-Colorado rivalry has lost some of its luster through mutual down periods, and that lack of national prominence softens this blow. This softening takes the sting off only slightly, though. It’s akin to Humphrey Bogart’s monologue to close Casablanca. Maybe one day CU will regain its past glory, and maybe these two proud programs will again meet on Thanksgiving weekend. Yet, just like Ingrid Bergman on that airplane, CU and Nebraska heading to opposite conferences feels like the end.

We’ll always have the ’90s.

Perhaps for the sake of preserving my youthful memories it’s best this increasingly lopsided rivalry ends. In my early years of football following, the Buffaloes and Cornhuskers engaged in some classic battles that shaped the national championship race. The 1989 showdown would elevate the winner to the Orange Bowl and the de facto title game, making this matchup a national semifinal. The Buffs’ 27-21 victory helped erase years of heartbreak against the rival Huskers. The Darian Hagan play in that game remains one of the most incredible scores of the last 25 years.

And the next year was CU’s first win in Lincoln since 1967, a 27-12 decision that paced the Buffaloes to their first national championship. Even throughout the coming affairs of the 1990s, of which Nebraska won 10 consecutively, the rivalry provided countless classic encounters. From 1996 to 2000, the combined margin of victory was 15 points. Fifteen points over five seasons!

After dropping three-of-four from 2001-2004, Nebraska regained control of the series with five wins in six years, including three straight. The Buffs’ lone victory was a 65-51 shootout in the low point of recent Husker years, the final Bill Callahan season. Bo Pelini’s Huskers put a 45-17 exclamanation point on the rivalry this past year, making this perhaps a worthwhile time to part ways. The rivalry had hit its apex in the ’90s, and there was no recapturing that magic, something Hollywood too often fails to recognize. Had Casablanca been made in this era, a sequel would have been inevitable and would have tarnished the original’s legacy. Imagine Bogey and Bergman reuniting and fighting Soviets, hiding from atomic blasts under empty fridges. I shudder to think.

Well equally, extending this series any further could only sully the past greatness and the memories this series provided. As for these programs’ futures, the Big Ten and Pac-12 are the beginnings of some beautiful friendships.