ASU-Nebraska: 10 years later

From the perspective of 10 years later, it’s all still hard to believe. The Cornhuskers were 23-point favorites. They not only were unbeaten and ranked No. 1, they had won 26 straight games, 37 straight in the regular season.

The previous season they had embarrassed their competition en route to the season-ending No. 1 ranking. Those ’95 Cornhuskers — who finished their season in Sun Devil Stadium with a rout of Florida in the Fiesta Bowl — still are regarded as one of history’s greatest teams. In fact, the seeds of ASU’s upset were sown during that season. The Cornhuskers had blasted the Sun Devils, 77-28, in Lincoln, Neb., a game in which the Huskers ran up the score in the waning moments with a trick play for a touchdown.

How much that late score affected the ’96 game is still a matter of conjecture. But there’s no question the game as a whole was an embarrassment that stuck with the Devils over the offseason.

"There’s no question they were going to run it up,” said receiver Lenzie Jackson, who now plays in the Arena Football League. “They were shooting for a national championship.”

Coach Bruce Snyder was so displeased that he declined to shake hands with Nebraska coach Tom Osborne after the game; the two later exchanged letters on the incident.

Today, Snyder, 66 and retired, downplayed the matter’s effect on the ’96 game.

“It was there, but in my mind it wasn’t the big motivating factor," he said.  . . . "I don’t think we were running wind sprints and saying, ‘This is for Nebraska.’ ”

Yet there was an unmistakable uptick in the team’s work ethic in the offseason, coaches and players say. And all during the time, “I thought about Nebraska,” wide receiver Keith Poole said.

Early during the week of the game, coaches tried to sell the players on the idea they could win.

Even so, “I don’t think a lot of the guys believed it,” cornerback Courtney Jackson said.

What Jackson noticed, though, was a coaching staff that put everything it had into the week’s preparation. Defensive coordinator Phil Snow knew all of Nebraska’s tendencies after watching three years of film on the Huskers.

The game plan, designed to take advantage of quarterback Scott Frost’s inexperience: “Pretty much nine in the box and two corners out wide,” said Courtney Jackson, who played one year in the NFL and now coaches in high school in Houston.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

On Friday night at a team meeting, the players asked the coaches to leave. Various leaders including quarterback Jake Plummer, linebacker Pat Tillman and Poole spoke.

Then Derek Smith, an intense though quiet linebacker, got up.

“I got something to say,” Smith said.

Smith, according to numerous accounts, gave such an impassioned, us-against-the-world, nobody-gives-us-a-chance pep talk that his face turned red. “By the end of it, I had chill bumps,” Courtney Jackson said.

Smith, now a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, recalled having “choice words  . . . to the effect that ‘nobody believes in us.’ ”

“In college, sometimes people get scared of a team and its tradition," he said. “I didn't want us to be swayed by that."

After Smith's talk, various accounts have tables being knocked over, at least one chair flying at the chalkboard and players singing the fight song.

“It was pretty wild in there,” Lenzie Jackson said.

After they got back to their rooms at their Scottsdale hotel, “I didn’t sleep well,” Courtney Jackson said. “I don’t think anybody did.”

The next afternoon the players took their customary ride to the stadium, with the offense in one bus and the defense in another. It's usually a low-key ritual, but on this day Snyder — riding with the defensive squad — watched in amazement as players stood in the aisles, “chanting and rocking the bus.” Snyder thought, “What the hell do I do  . . . Is this good or bad?” Later, he would tell his staff that the Devils either would play “a great game or flame out and crash.”

Nearing the stadium, the players became enraged by the presence of thousands of Nebraska fans (there would be 20,000 to 25,000 of them in the sellout crowd of 74,000) dressed in Husker red.

“They looked like a bunch of red ants,” Poole said.

“Our bus had to stop because of all these dumb hicks,” said Plummer, now the Denver Broncos’ quarterback.

One Nebraska fan waved a sign, saying, “This is our house.” In an area normally set aside for ASU personnel, Husker fans tailgated. A couple of fans even were sitting in Snyder's golf cart.

ADDED MOTIVATION

The night would be marked by naming the field for former coach Frank Kush. Plummer used this for even more mental leverage.

With no disrespect for Kush, Plummer said, “I was screaming that the game program was all about Frank Kush, all about Frank Kush  . . . even our own stadium didn’t believe we could win. People were just here to see this special thing for Frank Kush.”

During pregame warm-ups, Sun Devils such as defensive tackle Shawn Swayda thought he could sense the opponent’s mood when he watched a couple of Nebraska’s players “screwing around.”

Swayda, who played in the NFL for five years and now works in real estate in Georgia, thought the Huskers believed, "It’s just Arizona State."

As the Sun Devils ran onto the field, safety Mitchell “Fright Night” Freedman set the tone by carrying a sign that read, "Bring the Pain."

On the opening drive, ASU took the ball 80 yards in 10 plays, capped by Plummer finding Poole wide open for a 25-yard score. It would be the game’s only touchdown.

After the Huskers got the ball, they were pushed back to their own 7-yard line on a holding penalty. Running back Ahman Green couldn’t handle a pitchout in the end zone; the ball bounced out of bounds for a safety.

By halftime, the Devils led by a stunning 17-0 margin.

Watching a TV replay later, guard Kyle Murphy, now a teacher and coach in Huntington Beach, Calif., recalls the TV announcers at halftime predicting, “We’re waiting for Nebraska.”

Fans in the stadium had much the same feeling. Players and coaches wondered the same thoughts. But time after time, a defense led by Derrick Rodgers — a newcomer to ASU who had about as much background playing music as he did football — linebacker Scott Von der Ahe and Freedman stuffed the Huskers.

In the third quarter, Snyder thought to himself, “We’re as good as they are.” By the fourth quarter, he realized that his team had hit the jackpot.

In the waning moments, Green broke into tears after fumbling away his team’s final chance to score.

The two “N’s” on Nebraska helmets would forever stand for “Nineteen to Nothing,” Plummer joked.

The win is considered one of the three greatest in ASU history, along with the 1987 Rose Bowl win over Michigan and the 1975 Fiesta Bowl victory over Nebraska.

As the clock wound down, ASU center Kirk Robertson, now a pediatric dentist in Flagstaff, recalled one of Nebraska’s players walking up to him and saying, "You guys are legit."

By game’s end, the “red ants” had scattered.

“All you could see was maroon and gold,” said Poole, who played five years in the NFL and now runs a gym in Chandler.

Fans carried the goalposts into downtown. Somehow, Snyder ended up with a piece of one; it’s hanging in his home.

TEN YEARS LATER

Great teams tend to have a special bond and sense of brotherhood that sets them apart.

That’s what Snyder expects to see when players from this team — along with those from the 1986 Rose Bowl team — gather for a reunion later this year.

“Within minutes, you’ll sense the chemistry,” he said. "They had it. And you don’t lose it. Thirty years from now, there will be a similar energy.”

And there will still be vivid memories of that wild meeting and that bus ride to the game.