Countdown to Kickoff looks at the Huskers 1999 season
Today marks 99 days till Nebraska’s 2024 season kicks off on August 31 against the UTEP Miners at Memorial Stadium.
With the countdown now under 100 days, each day until August 31, Cornhuskers Wire will be counting down by taking a look at the Huskers’ roster for the 2024 season, former players, seasons, and more.
With no No. 99 on the roster for the 2024 season, Cornhuskers Wire takes a look back at the 1999 season.
The 1999 season was a strong sophomore campaign for the Huskers’ head coach Frank Solich.
After the Huskers went 9-4 in his first season as head coach, the Huskers bounced back in 1999 with a 12-1 record while winning the Big 12 Championship and also winning the Fiesta Bowl that season.
The Huskers opened up the 1999 season with a dominant 42-7 win over the Iowa Hawkeyes at Kinnick Stadium. One week later, they would dominate Cal 45-0 in their home opener at Memorial Stadium. Overall, the Huskers would win each of their first six games of the season, also picking up wins over Southern Miss, Missouri, Oklahoma State, and Iowa State.
On October 23, while ranked as the No.3 team in the country, the Huskers suffered their only loss off the season, a 24-20 defeat on the road at the hands of the Texas Longhorns.
Solich’s Huskers would bounce back the next week, downing Kansas 24-17 and wouldn’t look back after picking up the win over the Jayhawks. They would finish the regular season with a four-game winning streak, defeating No. 21 Texas A&M and No. 5 Kansas State in the process, both in dominant fashion.
On December 4 in the 1999 Big 12 Championship Game, the Huskers got their revenge on the Texas Longhorns with a 22-6 win at the Alamodome in San Antonio. They would earn a Fiesta Bowl bid as the No. 3 team, narrowly missing out on the national championship game which featured No. 1 Florida State and No. 2 Virginia Tech, who both were undefeated heading into the BCS National Championship Game.
The Huskers in that Fiesta Bowl on January 2, 2000 would defeat the No. 6 Tennessee Volunteers 31-21 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. The win remains the program’s last New Year’s Six bowl game victory.
As a team that season, the Huskers averaged 31.6 points per game on offense, which ranked 13th in the country that season while allowing just 11.5 points per game, giving the Huskers the third best defense in the country that season.
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