The extraordinary fact which eternally connects USC and Nebraska football
USC will join Nebraska in the Big Ten next year. The Trojans and Huskers never did meet when both schools had historically great juggernaut teams, but they both attained and maintained elite status during the same period of college football history.
We noted a few weeks ago that “When USC and Nebraska first met in 1969, Nebraska was unranked. The Huskers lost only one game after the Trojans beat them in the 1969 season opener, but they finished No. 11 that year, which was — measured against the NU standard at the time — a modest result for coach Bob Devaney’s program.
“In 1970, the teams met again. USC managed to tie the Huskers, but the Trojans actually labored through the rest of their year, losing four games. Nebraska didn’t lose to anyone else it played, winning the national championship.”
USC and Nebraska never meeting for a national championship despite having tremendous teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s is one of college football’s biggest “what-if” scenarios. However, this long history of missed connections — not meeting when both teams had great squads — is compensated for by an extraordinary fact. We’re not going to reveal the fact directly until the end of the piece, but just look at decades of history between the two schools. They created an incredible reality which magnifies the two programs.
Let’s start with the year 1962 and go from there. You will be blown away by the fact which emerges at the very end.
Here we go:
1962: USC finishes No. 1 in final AP Poll
In 1962, USC won the national championship. That was the same year Bob Devaney began his storied career as Nebraska head coach. USC’s John McKay and Devaney both launched supreme dynastic periods for these two football schools in the early 1960s. What they started did not flame out for a very long time, as you’ll see below:
1963: Nebraska finishes No. 6 -- 1964: Nebraska finishes No. 6, USC No. 10
Nebraska and USC began to become top-10 regulars. Stay with us on this.
1965: Nebraska finishes No. 5, USC No. 10 -- 1966: Nebraska finishes No. 6
Nebraska was able to finish in the top 10 in 1966 when USC had a down year. That’s important to note.
1967: USC finishes No. 1 -- 1968: USC finishes No. 4
USC finished in the top 10 in two years when Nebraska briefly struggled under Devaney.
1969: USC finishes No. 3, Nebraska No. 11 -- 1970: Nebraska finishes No. 1, USC No. 15
USC wasn’t great in 1970, but good enough to finish in the top 20. That detail matters. You might be getting a sense of what we’re doing here, and what the ultimate fact of this piece actually is. Just stay with us.
1971: Nebraska finishes No. 1, USC No. 20 -- 1972: USC finishes No. 1, Nebraska No. 4
USC finished No. 20 in 1971. Boy, that was close! Too close for comfort, in fact … but the Trojans were a top-20 team at the end of that season.
1973: Nebraska finishes No. 7, USC No. 8 -- 1974: USC finishes No. 2, Nebraska No. 9
USC and Nebraska were top-10 teams in both 1973 and 1974.
1975: Nebraska finishes No. 9, USC No. 17 -- 1976: USC finishes No. 2, Nebraska No. 9
USC struggled in John McKay’s last season as Trojan head coach in 1975, but still stayed in the top 20.
1977: Nebraska finishes No. 12, USC No. 13 -- 1978: USC finishes No. 2, Nebraska No. 8
Neither USC nor Nebraska were spectacular in 1977, but both good enough to finish in the top 15.
1979: USC finishes No. 2, Nebraska No. 9 -- 1980: Nebraska finishes No. 7, USC No. 11
USC didn’t have a great 1980 season, but the Trojans were still right there in the top 15 at season’s end.
1981: Nebraska finishes No. 11, USC No. 14 -- 1982: Nebraska finishes No. 3, USC No. 15
John Robinson didn’t have overwhelmingly great USC teams at the very end of his tenure in the early 1980s, but the Trojans still made the top 15.
1983: Nebraska finishes No. 2 -- 1984: Nebraska finishes No. 4, USC No. 10
Nebraska finishing in the top 20 in 1983, when USC fell out of the top 20, was and is hugely important for the purposes of this remarkable fact we’re going to reveal at the end of the piece.
1985: Nebraska finishes No. 11 -- 1986: Nebraska finishes No. 5
Nebraska bailed out USC in these two years, when the Trojans languished under coach Ted Tollner.
1987: Nebraska finishes No. 6, USC No. 18 -- 1988: USC finishes No. 7, Nebraska No. 10
Larry Smith revived USC in the late 1980s, bringing the Trojans back to national relevance for a few short years.
1989: USC finishes No. 8, Nebraska No. 11 -- 1990: USC finishes No. 20
It almost came to an end in 1990. USC finishing No. 20 barely kept this streak alive. That was a cliffhanger.
1991: Nebraska finishes No. 15 -- 1992: Nebraska finishes No. 14
The Huskers once again bailed out the Trojans in these two years, plus 1993 as well. USC did not finish in the top 20 from 1991 through 1993. Nebraska saved the Men of Troy and this streak.
1993: Nebraska finishes No. 3 -- 1994: Nebraska finishes No. 1, USC No. 13
USC returned to prominence in 1994, in John Robinson’s second tenure at the program. The Trojans won the Cotton Bowl with Keyshawn Johnson dismantling Texas Tech’s defense.
1995: Nebraska finishes No. 1, USC No. 7 -- 1996: Nebraska finishes No. 6
USC won the Rose Bowl in the 1995 season, but that was the year when Nebraska produced one of the greatest, most dominant seasons in the sport’s history.
1997: Nebraska finishes No. 2 -- 1998: Nebraska finishes No. 19
Nebraska finishing 19th in 1998, while USC drifted along outside of the top 20, kept this streak alive.
1999: Nebraska finishes No. 3 -- 2000: Nebraska finishes No. 8
Nebraska once again carried USC in this two-year period. The Huskers were more consistent than USC from the early 1980s through 2001. Nebraska did most of the heavy lifting to keep this streak going for so long.
2001: Nebraska finishes No. 8 -- 2002: USC finishes No. 4
This is how a streak manages to endure: Precisely when Nebraska, after many years of upholding the streak, finally had a bad year — going 7-7 in 2002 — USC rose under Pete Carroll and finished in the top five. This is one of the more amazing plot twists attached to the incredible streak USC and Nebraska forged together.
2003: USC finishes No. 1, Nebraska No. 19 -- 2004: USC finishes No. 1
This was another two-year period in which USC again bailed out Nebraska. The roles had been reversed.
2005: USC finishes No. 2 -- 2006: USC finishes No. 4
This was yet another USC stretch in which the Trojans carried the freight, all while Nebraska floundered under Bill Callahan.
2007: USC finishes No. 3 -- 2008: USC finishes No. 3
Once more, USC rescued Nebraska and kept this streak alive. The Huskers were still trying to figure out how to regroup in 2007 and 2008.
2009: Nebraska finishes No. 14 -- 2010: Nebraska finishes No. 20
USC started the 2009 season well with a win at Ohio State, but the Trojans then tailed off at the end of Pete Carroll’s tenure, with NCAA clouds hovering over the program. The Trojans fell out of the top 20, but after several years of aimless football and awful results, Nebraska picked itself off the canvas enough to get back to the top 20 and continue this streak for two more years.
When one of these two schools faltered, the other was there to preserve the streak. It was — and is, and always will be — uncanny.
2011: USC finishes No. 6
The one great Lane Kiffin team finished in the top 20 while Nebraska finished just outside the top 20. The streak lived for one more season.
2012: The streak ends
USC endured a brutal year, while Nebraska finished outside the top 20 of the final AP Poll. That said, the Huskers still did make the last AP Poll of the 2012 college football season, checking in at No. 25.
Nevertheless, this remarkable streak had finally come to an end. It’s time to reveal it:
50 STRAIGHT SEASONS IN WHICH USC OR NEBRASKA FINISHED IN THE AP TOP 20
There it is, in all its glory: For 50 consecutive college football seasons, from 1962 through 2011, either USC or Nebraska finished in the top 20 of the Associated Press Poll. How many other programs can say that? It’s a remarkable two-team streak in which — as we noted above — one of the two was always there to bail out the other team when it had a bad year.
POSTSCRIPT NO. 1
Of these 50 straight seasons in which either USC or Nebraska finished in the AP top 20, the two schools both finished in the top 20 in 23 of them, nearly half.
POSTSCRIPT NO. 2
The top-20 streak ended in 2012, but the top-25 streak — which encompassed the 50 straight seasons from 1962 through 2011 — continued three more years through 2014. It ended in 2015, when neither team finished in the AP top 25.
