1944 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team
Nebraska at #19 Indiana
|
1 |
2 |
Total |
| Nebraska |
|
|
0 |
| • #19 Indiana
|
|
|
54 |
|
Nebraska at Kansas
|
1 |
2 |
Total |
| Nebraska |
|
|
0 |
| • Kansas
|
|
|
20 |
|
Nebraska at Iowa
|
1 |
2 |
Total |
| Nebraska |
|
|
6 |
| • Iowa
|
|
|
27 |
|
Iowa State at Nebraska
-
Date: November 11
-
Location: Memorial Stadium • Lincoln, Nebraska
-
Game attendance: 7,263
|
Kansas State at Nebraska
-
Date: November 25
-
Location: Memorial Stadium • Lincoln, Nebraska
-
Game weather: Rain/Snow
|
Nebraska vs. Oklahoma
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Total |
| Nebraska |
0 |
0 |
0 |
12 |
12 |
| • Oklahoma
|
7 |
18 |
0 |
6 |
31 |
|
The 1944 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team was the representative of the University of Nebraska and member of the Big 6 Conference in the 1944 college football season. The team was coached by Adolph J. Lewandowski and played their home games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
World War II was dragging on, with the United States now in its third year since being drawn into the conflict. College sports programs across the nation were shorthanded with so many young men enlisting into the armed forces, while all of the "service teams" that had entered the college football landscape, fielded by the branches of the armed forces, had the advantage of adding former players to their rosters. This gave the service teams the ability to concentrate the best former players into their programs, and at the end of 1944, service teams made up half of all of the ranked teams. It was in this environment of upheaval and disparity that a struggling Nebraska football team that had never previously suffered consecutive losing seasons was now returning from three losing campaigns in a row. Head coach Lewandowski was back for his second year, while also serving as Nebraska's athletic director, to see if he could reverse the fortunes of the Cornhusker football squad.
The new season did not start off on a good note, as Nebraska was completely unable to stop the Golden Gophers, who rolled over the Cornhuskers to post 33 unanswered points in the first half. It may have been that Nebraska's halftime adjustments slowed down Minnesota's assault, or perhaps the Gophers simply backed off, but even though Minnesota's scoring slowed in the second half, the Cornhuskers never were able to put up points. For the second year in a row, Minnesota handed Nebraska an opening shutout loss, the 20th Golden Gopher victory over the Cornhuskers and improving in the series to 20–4–2, setting the tone for what looked like might be another year of heartbreak.
Nebraska's only bright spot in this game was a single 55-yard running play in a contest that was otherwise all Indiana. The Hoosiers kept the Cornhuskers off the scoreboard even as they repeated their record-setting 54 points scored on Nebraska, which was the fourth time in two years that the 54 mark was hung on the Cornhuskers and was a repeat of Nebraska's worst-ever defeat, matching the 54–0 shutout handed down by Minnesota last year. With four wins in a row against Nebraska so far, Indiana finally took the series lead between the teams at 4–3–2.
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Wikipedia
