Nebraska Field was an
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
stadium
A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
located on the campus of the
University of Nebraska
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
in
Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United Sta ...
. The stadium primarily served as the home venue for the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team and a variety of other university and state activities. Nebraska Field was demolished in 1923 when the university constructed
Memorial Stadium on its former site.
History
The first person to put considerable effort into creating a football-only stadium at the University of Nebraska was Earl Eager, the school's first graduate manager of athletics.
Eager had played his entire NU career at Antelope Field, which was "either as hard as a pavement or was a sea of mud" and had no seating other than a few wooden benches.
Eager's cause was assisted by the university's expansion, which necessitated the construction of academic buildings on Antelope Field. Eager himself prepared much of the land for the new stadium, and upon its completion at the northeast corner of North 10th Street and T Street, Nebraska Field served as NU's primary home venue from 1909 through 1922.
The stadium's main seating area was a wooden grandstand on its south sideline with bleachers along both sides. Nebraska Field opened on October 23, 1909, a 6–6 tie between Nebraska and
Iowa
Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...
.
The stadium's exact capacity is unknown, but the largest recorded attendance was an estimated 16,000 against
Notre Dame on November 30, 1922, the final game at the stadium.
It was the first of only two losses for Notre Dame's famed
Four Horsemen
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.
Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand tha ...
; the other came in Lincoln the following season. The stadium's capacity must have been lower than 16,000, as overflow fans would sometimes climb rooftops or scaffolding to get a view of the field if the grandstands were full.
![Nebraska field crowd and stands 1922](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Nebraska_field_crowd_and_stands_1922.jpg)
The largest margin of victory in Nebraska football history took place at Nebraska Field on November 24, 1910, a 119–0 Cornhuskers victory over
Haskell
Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming lan ...
. Following the game, Nebraska head coach
William C. "King" Cole resigned to spend time at his
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
ranch. NU's greatest stretch of success at Nebraska Field came under the direction of Cole's successor,
Ewald O. "Jumbo" Stiehm. The fiery Stiehm was subject to such frequent outbursts that the school established a women's sitting section at Nebraska Field far from the home sideline.
However, his "Stiehm Roller" teams were highly successful, particularly at home: his lifetime record at the stadium was 37–0–2. It was during this streak that
Guy Chamberlin
Berlin Guy "Champ" Chamberlin (January 16, 1894 – April 4, 1967), sometimes misspelled Guy Chamberlain, was an American football player and coach. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1962 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame ...
became the first
All-American in school history.
By 1915, there was considerable momentum toward a steel-and-concrete football stadium for NU, due to both the program's success and the already-deteriorating state of Nebraska Field. Stiehm's departure temporarily slowed this momentum, but by the early 1920s, with "the present athletic field as inadequate now as the old one was in 1907," the university began plans to build a new stadium.
The final game at Nebraska Field was a 14–6 victory over Notre Dame on November 30, 1922, also the last home game attended by Nebraska's longtime trainer Jack Best, who had served since the program's inception in 1890. Nebraska's all-time record at Nebraska Field was 60–10–4. Nebraska Field was torn down in early 1923 and the university constructed
Memorial Stadium on the site. The portion of North 10th Street passing Memorial Stadium was renamed Stadium Drive in the years following construction. Nebraska Field ran east-to-west, while the playing surface at Memorial Stadium is conventionally aligned north-to-south.
References
{{Coord, 40.8206, -96.7056, type:landmark, display=title
Defunct college football venues
Nebraska Cornhuskers football
Buildings and structures in Lincoln, Nebraska
Defunct sports venues in Nebraska
Sports in Lincoln, Nebraska