Memorial Stadium and the Sellout That Never Ended
Near Lincoln, Nebraska
On a Saturday in late October of nineteen twenty-three, Nebraska defeated Kansas at a brand-new stadium on the north edge of the university campus. The stadium had been completed barely in time for the season opener ten days earlier. The concrete was barely set. The upper sections were still being finished as fans found their seats. But the dedication game drew a crowd that filled the place, and a tradition began that no one in Nebraska would have thought to predict would last longer than a century.
The stadium had been built as a memorial. Construction began in the spring of nineteen twenty-three after university fundraisers met their target of four hundred thirty thousand dollars. The structure was dedicated to Nebraskans who had served in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the First World War. It opened with a capacity of thirty-one thousand and no end zones.
The sellout streak began, somewhat quietly, on November third, nineteen sixty-two, a Missouri victory over Nebraska. Coach Bob Devaney was in his first season, and the crowd of thirty-six thousand five hundred one had come out for a team that was still finding its footing. Devaney's teams improved, then dominated. National championships followed in nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy-one. But the streak did not begin when Nebraska was good. It began the moment Devaney arrived and signaled that something was changing.
By any measure verified, Nebraska's sellout streak is the longest consecutive home sellout run in the history of college sports, across any sport. The stadium now holds more than eighty-five thousand people, which means that on a Saturday when the Huskers play at home, the crowd inside Memorial Stadium is larger than the population of every Nebraska city except Omaha and Lincoln itself.
The stadium has expanded repeatedly over the decades, but its east and west grandstands from nineteen twenty-three still carry the names of the men who did not come home. That was the original point.
