LINCOLN, Neb. — Sandwiched around a visit this week from Colorado for what’s set up as perhaps the most consequential football game at Memorial Stadium in the past decade, members of the 1994 Nebraska national championship team plan a 30-year reunion.
They’ll revel in their past glory as the first squad to bring a title to former coach Tom Osborne. They’ll remember the adversity of that season. They’ll hope to deliver a bit of their old mystique to these Huskers, who are bidding to rebuild from a fall unlike anything the Nebraska program has experienced in more than 60 years.
And they’ll relive stories like the doozy that Rob Zatechka concocted when Colorado came to Lincoln for the ninth Nebraska game of that 1994 season.
The Huskers, ranked No. 3, hosted the No. 2 Buffaloes, whose offense featured star quarterback Kordell Stewart, Heisman Trophy-winning running back Rashaan Salaam and All-America wide receiver Michael Westbrook.
Colorado had beaten Michigan on a Hail Mary at the Big House and Texas in consecutive weeks early in the season, among five wins against ranked opponents in seven games.
“Whether it was by one point or 40 points, we were going to win that game,” said Troy Dumas, Nebraska’s senior All-Big Eight linebacker in 1994. “So it didn’t matter who they had out there. They were going to have to deal with us.”
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Zatechka played left tackle on the Nebraska Pipeline, the famous moniker for a dominant offensive line that fueled the Huskers’ 340-yard rushing average. A senior and three-time academic All-American, Zatechka graduated as the only player in Osborne’s 25-year coaching career to maintain a 4.0 GPA.
Today, he’s an anesthesiologist in Omaha. Thirty years ago, Zatechka played the role of amateur psychologist.
He watched the local news on the night before the CU game and saw footage of the Buffs’ airport arrival in Lincoln. The next morning in an O-line meeting, he asked teammates if they had seen it, too.
“They all said no, so I was like, ‘Alright, game on,’” Zatechka said. “Coach Osborne and the culture that he instilled, we were not a bulletin-board material kind of program. We didn’t pay a ton of attention to what other people said.
“Osborne’s big thing was, ‘Hey, you focus on what you can control.’ But I just wanted to make sure that everybody was a little salty going into that game.”
So Zatechka told the offensive that while watching the news, he saw that Colorado defensive linemen Shannon Clavelle and Darius Holland held industrial pipe cutters as they walked off the team plane.
They did it, according to Zatechka, to show that Colorado planned to chop up the Pipeline. The other linemen grew irate.
“I just left it at that and walked away,” Zatechka said.
Nebraska ran for 203 yards and held Colorado scoreless until the final two minutes of a 24-7 victory.
“We felt disrespected,” said Joel Wilks, the Huskers’ senior left guard. “It got me so fired up. We were going to kill those guys. (Zatechka) got everybody so jacked.”
For years, the Huskers believed it. The story of the pipe cutters made its way into a book about Nebraska football as the answer to a trivia question.
“I guarantee there are people on the Colorado team who thought their guys carried pipe cutters off that plane,” Zatechka said.
But nothing like that ever happened. Zatechka made the whole thing up.
Aside from the old tales, the 1994 Huskers had quite a story. Star quarterback Tommie Frazier, after three games, sat for the remainder of the regular season with blood clots in his left leg.
Brook Berringer took over the offense and directed the Huskers. But he was hurt in October, suffering a collapsed lung. He missed one start, and Osborne handed control to undersized walk-on Matt Turman. Turman, with help from Berringer in the second half, won on the road at 16th-ranked Kansas State.
The offense featured running back Lawrence Phillips, who gained 1,722 yards and finished eighth in the Heisman voting. The defense was a bruising group.
“Mental toughness, physical toughness was preached to us,” Dumas said. “Being physical, that was our trademark. And everything that we went through in the ‘94 season, we were prepared for from the seasons before.”
Nebraska, unbeaten to enter the Orange Bowl in 1993, lost 18-16 against Florida State to fall short of a national championship. In 1994, the win against Colorado vaulted the Huskers past previously No. 1-ranked Penn State — even as the Nittany Lions beat No. 21 Ohio State 63-14 on the same day — and the Huskers did not relinquish the top spot.
They beat Miami in the Orange Bowl to finish 13-0 as Frazier and Berringer split time at QB in the final victory. Voters in the Associated Press and coaches’ polls awarded the championship to Nebraska over Penn State, 12-0 after a Rose Bowl win against Oregon.
The outcome broke the heart of a third-team PSU linebacker, 19-year-old Matt Rhule.
“I just remember how painful that was,” said Rhule, Nebraska’s second-year coach.
Rhule said he followed the Huskers from afar but that they seemed to operate in a “whole other world,” especially icons of the sport like Frazier.
Frazier returned in 1995 and outdueled Berringer for the QB spot, then led Nebraska to another perfect season and a second consecutive title.
The 1994 team holds a special place in Nebraska history. It provided a stage for Berringer, who threw for 1,295 yards and 10 touchdowns as a junior. In April 1996, he died in a plane crash.
“I would love to think that all of us who played with Brook try to keep his legacy and his memory alive within our own hearts and minds,” Zatechka said. “But whatever we do will always pale in comparison, because Brook secured his own legacy.”
A statue of Osborne and Berringer stands outside the Osborne Legacy Complex that houses Nebraska’s football headquarters.
Wilks joined the Huskers as a walk-on from Hastings, Nebraska. His father took him to an Oklahoma-Nebraska game when Joel was barely old enough to understand the sport. He remembers the feeling inside the stadium. It was the ultimate in excitement, Wilks said.
He decided then that he wanted to play for Nebraska. In Lincoln, Wilks rose to start alongside Zatechka and three All-Americans on the Pipeline — center Aaron Graham, right guard Brenden Stai and right tackle Zach Wiegert.
“Playing was great,” he said, “but we were just so close. It was such a great group. And we took so much pride in how hard we practiced.”
The O-line often practiced in “the pit,” a stretch of turf that sat under the long-removed field house on the north side of the stadium.
“That was the hardest part of the week, harder than the games,” Wilks said. “Down there in front of all the coaches, we’d do one-on-ones. You were either going to get exposed or you were going to get it done. It was a pressure cooker.”
Wilks is a 19-year member of the fire department in Portland, Oregon. He coaches the offensive line at Lake Oswego High School, for which his sons, Cash and Ace, play as a sophomore and a freshman.
He’s set to bring both boys, along with his wife and daughter, to enjoy this weekend’s festivities. They’ll take a redeye flight from Portland after the high school game on Friday, head to Wiegert’s tailgate upon arrival and stay at Stai’s home for two nights.
Wilks’ boys have learned about their father’s time as a Nebraska lineman. In Oregon territory, they’re enamored with the Huskers.
“If I have a tough day,” Wilks said, “I look back on that time and know that nothing was as tough as those practices. It made me who I am and made me want to instill that toughness in my kids.”
Wilks said he follows the 2024 Huskers. His high school players hear some of Rhule’s coaching lessons.
“I’d love to play for him,” the 52-year-old former lineman said. “He gets me fired up. He’s hard-nosed and wants to be physical.”
Dumas sees it, too.
“I think there’s been some real progress there,” he said.
Originally from Wyoming, Dumas lives in Fort Collins, Colo. He’s heard enough about Colorado, dating to his days in a Nebraska uniform.
“That’s a team that we despise and they despise us back,” Dumas said. “It’s a statement week, just like back in ‘94.”
In that 1994 game, former Huskers said that Osborne outschemed Colorado coach Bill McCartney. Nebraska showed new looks on defense that held the high-powered CU attack to 314 yards.
Offensively, Wilks recalls an added wrinkle called “wham.” It called for wide receiver Clester Johnson, in motion, to cut through the line at the snap to hammer the nose guard and open a running lane. On another new look, Graham and Stai double-teamed the nose as Wilks pulled to flatten linebacker Ted Johnson and open a hole for fullback Cory Schlesinger to score the Huskers’ first touchdown.
“There was stuff they just weren’t ready for,” Wilks said.
No one, of course, was ready for Zatechka’s tale about the pipe cutters. He stayed quiet about it for more than 15 years. Not even his old Pipeline mates knew.
When Nebraska joined the Big Ten in 2011, the Big Ten Network interviewed several ex-Huskers for a pair of documentaries on the football program. Zatechka told the whole story in public for the first time.
He can hardly go a week now without someone bringing it up. He’s been asked about the pipe cutters in an operating room as he prepared to administer anesthesia.
It is the stuff of legend, just like his 1994 Huskers.
Photo: RVR Photos / Imagn Images
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Publish date : 2024-09-04 13:00:00
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