Oklahoma State University Athletics
Barry Blog - Game 5: Nebraska
October 31, 2008 | Cowboy Football
Game 5: Nebraska Cornhuskers
Oct 15, 1988 - Written by Robert Allen
Radio Host, Sportswriter, Cowboy Sports Radio Network
Robert Allen currently serves as a radio personality, sportswriter and member of the Cowboy Sports Radio Network. In 1988, he was an Oklahoma City television personality. He is also a former Cowboy football player.
I spent 1988 covering the greatest running back in the history of the game of football -- viewing all of Barry Sanders' acrobatic gridiron exploits through a small viewfinder on a Ikegami video camera. That was fine with me because Sanders was so good that shooting highlights of his runs made me think I was ready for NFL Films.
One of us was more than ready for the National Football League, but it wasn't me.
Barry Sanders was Superman in Puma cleats, a helmet, and a 21 jersey. In the first four games of the season he had proven to those of us covering the 1988 Cowboys that all things were possible when he was on the field. That is why Oklahoma State faithful were convinced that the longest drought against any one team on the Cowboy schedule was about to end. On October 15, when the 10th ranked Oklahoma State squad traveled to Lincoln to face seventh-ranked Nebraska, the firm belief was that OSU was going to beat the Huskers for the first time since 1961.
Back in those days we would fly a chartered prop engine plane to cover the Oklahoma State road games. It would usually be Bob Barry, Sr., myself, and Van Shea Iven on the flights. Barry Sr. was then the voice of the Cowboys and Iven was to later become a reporter at Channel 4 and now hosts a statewide show spotlighting high school sports in Oklahoma.
By the time the three of us flew to Lincoln for the showdown with the Cornhuskers, the Cowboys were 4-0 and Sanders had rushed for 813 yards. With Gundy and Dykes along with the “War Pigs” offensive line, even with an average to slightly below average defense, Van Shea and I were convinced we were about to witness the break in the 28-year draught.
The early afternoon kickoff came under gray skies and surprisingly, even with TV restrictions having been taken away from the NCAA allowing for more games on television, this one wasn't.
At Nebraska the games are so popular with the media that you are restricted to certain areas and you have to be down on a knee while shooting video on the field. I was happy to oblige by all the rules because of what I thought I was going to see. Besides, with Sanders, the end zone was a preferred shooting location as it was where a vast number of his runs ended.
What we saw was a nightmare as the Cowboys turned the ball over several times early, including a Mike Gundy interception thrown deep in Nebraska territory as OSU was driving to try and tie the game at 7-7. Instead of an OSU touchdown, the pick was returned for a score by the Huskers. The Cowboys defense was absolutely outmanned. By early in the second quarter, Nebraska had taken a 42-0 lead.
I was younger and less mature in those days, so let's just say there was a degree of frustration built up, and it was about that time that the Nebraska marching band came out of the stands and started marching through the end zone from where we were shooting. I was already mad, but now was being kept from doing my job by band members that didn't seem to care. Van Shea could tell that I was about to erupt and I did, right as the tuba section was passing through. I didn't care, but the tuba players are the biggest members of the Nebraska, and probably any other band. I stood up and screamed for the band's equivalent of linemen to go around.
It was about that time that Sanders scored his first touchdown. While Oklahoma State lost, Sanders put together some of his finest work of the season against the famed Blackshirts. There was one run in the third quarter in which Sanders ran one way, reversed field, juked several tacklers, came back his original direction, making several more defenders miss, before being taken down for the greatest six-yard run anybody had ever seen before  -- or since. It was so good the Nebraska fans gave it and Sanders a standing ovation right after the whistle blew.
Barry Sanders made the disappointing outcome bearable as he rushed for 189 yards. Those yards very well may have been his hardest earned of that Heisman season.
Tom Osborne, the great Nebraska coach, never substituted his Blackshirts despite leading at one point 42-0. In the end Osborne, later a U.S. Congressman and now the Huskers athletic director, proved he knew what he was doing. Sanders helped revive the Cowboys. He later had a run that to this day people believe covered 75-to-100 yards going back and forth across the field to gain 25 yards of positive yardage.
Nebraska won 63-42 in a game that set the record for most points scored in Memorial Stadium. The 42 points by the Cowboys were the most scored by a Nebraska opponent in Memorial Stadium at that time. Who would have ever thought 42 points with Barry Sanders on your side wouldn't be enough. It wasn't and the Husker tuba section cost me video of the only touchdown of the 39 Barry Sanders scored that season that I didn't capture on tape.
