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Nebraska's first football game with Iowa was a humbling 22-0 loss — the first shutout defeat in team history — to a bigger, stronger and better-prepared Iowa team.
It was 120 years ago, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1891.
The 3 p.m. game was played in front of a turnout of 2,500 fans who crowded the sidelines at a YMCA field at 16th and Douglas Streets in Omaha.
The swarming crowd interfered with players and obstructed the view of the city's silk-stocking set watching from horse-drawn carriages festooned with the colors of Ivy League schools.
This was Nebraska's second season of football, long before the Cornhuskers nickname took root. Big Red was a paler shade in the 1890s era of the Old Gold Knights and Bugeaters. Yellow chrysanthemums — not red attire — marked Omaha fans' allegiance to the Lincoln squad.
There was no full-time Nebraska coach. T.U. Lyman, a Yale graduate who coached at a small Iowa school, helped prepare the Nebraskans for the game.
Games were rough and tumble. Helmets and pads were later innovations. Forward passes were illegal. Teams were given three attempts to make five yards for a first down.
Nebraska's star player was right halfback and tackle George A. Flippin from Stromsburg, Neb. He ranked among the state's 100 all-time best athletes in a 2005 World-Herald listing.
Flippin was the largest man on the Nebraska team — at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds — and ruggedly handsome.
He also was black. Missouri forfeited to Nebraska in 1892 rather than play against a team with an African-American on the field. Nebraska was one of the first three racially integrated football teams in the nation — but later banned blacks from athletic competition from 1917 until the late 1940s.
The World-Herald's next-morning account of the first Iowa-Nebraska game by reporter Clinton T. Brainard noted that Flippin "followed the ball better than any in either team" on defense, and had his teammates blocked better when he carried the ball, "the score would have been different."
Born in Port Isabelle, Ohio, Flippin was the son of a freed slave. He went on to medical school and returned to Stromsburg as a physician in 1907, where he and his doctor father established the town's hospital.
Flippin is immortalized as one of the six sculptural silhouettes of Husker greats from yesteryear decorating panels on the northwest Memorial Stadium gates to the Nebraska locker room. He died in 1929 and was voted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974.
Nebraska's other top player was James H. Johnston (misspelled as "Johnstone" in The World-Herald's game story). He was team captain in 1891 and 1892.
Nebraska finished the 1891 season 2-2. Its only other games were against in-state competition, Doane College.
Iowa was led by halfback Bert German and fullback William Larrabee Jr. German coached Iowa State for five seasons later in the 1890s. Larrabee, the son of a former Iowa governor, managed the Iowa team in 1895 and later was elected to three terms in the Iowa House of Representatives. He donated his trophies and game footballs to his alma mater in 1928.
The Omaha game was Iowa's first outside the team's home state since its inaugural 1889 season. Iowa finished the 1891 season 3-2, beating Cornell, Nebraska and Kansas (a disputed victory) and losing to Minnesota and Iowa College (known now as Grinnell).
Iowa's return to Nebraska for today's nationally televised game is the 42nd meeting between the schools. Nebraska leads the series with 26 wins, 12 losses and three ties.
In 1892, Nebraska and Iowa joined Kansas and Missouri in the Western Interstate University Football Association.
The Omaha Athletic Club and the YMCA sponsored the inaugural Iowa-Nebraska game, the first of 10 played in consecutive years in either Omaha or Council Bluffs.
Iowa's 22 points in the first matchup came from five touchdowns and one goal after a touchdown. Touchdowns in those days were worth four points and the goal after a touchdown counted as two points.
The World-Herald's coverage of the game — excerpts of which are reprinted at left — appeared on Page 5 of the eight-page newspaper.
The story of Yale's 19-0 defeat of Princeton was on the front page.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com
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