November 23, 2001 – #15 Colorado 62, #1 Nebraska 36
I would be kidding myself if I put anything else atop this list. What other game is so legendary that its final score has become a proper noun among the CU fanbase? If you want to make a Buff fan smile, “62-36” is all you need to say.
In one afternoon, Colorado ended years of heartbreak against their arch-rival, dominated the top-ranked team in the country, and booked themselves a trip to the Big 12 Championship Game. Somehow, in the 23 years since, its significance has only grown.
Neill Woelk, then of the Boulder Daily Camera, did not hesitate to call it the greatest victory in CU history the following morning, but it was much more than that. The passage of time has made it abundantly clear that 62-36 was also the sudden, violent, and permanent death of the Nebraska mystique. To any “better dead than red”, black-and-gold bleeding Buffalo diehard, that might be the sweetest part of it all. To understand why, you have to go back in time a little further.
CU’s 1986 upset of the Huskers rang in a new era for the Buffs, in which they were no longer Big Red’s punching bag. Colorado victories in 1989 and 1990 dashed Nebraska title hopes and gave CU two Big 8 trophies. In 1991, the game was a tie and the schools had to share the conference title. Over a six year period, the Buffs had gone 3-2-1 against their former bullies. But then things swung back the Huskers’ way, beginning with a nightmarish 52-7 bludgeoning on Halloween 1992 that was CU’s first conference defeat since 1988.
The rout kicked off a new era of red domination in the series. Nebraska football entered a golden age with national titles in 1994, 1995 and 1997. CU still fielded great teams with loads of NFL talent, but they couldn’t match the Huskers head to head. Between 1992 and 1996, the Buffs lost five times against Nebraska and once against all other conference foes. The 1994 and 1995 Buffaloes were thoroughly outclassed 24-7 and 44-21 despite being two of the best teams in CU history. The Huskers were a juggernaut.
Beginning with the 1997 season, CU started to fade from national power status while Nebraska kept right on rolling. However, as the gap in success between the programs widened again, the games got closer. No longer equals, Nebraska once again became a target for Colorado to shoot for – their red letter game – the game they wanted to win for the seniors and never could. The Buffs played their hearts out in these games only to come up short in increasingly torturous ways.
In 1997 in Boulder, CU was down 27-10 late in the fourth quarter. They scored two quick touchdowns and stopped the 2nd ranked Huskers to get the ball back with one minute remaining, but came up short on their final drive.
Two years later, #3 Nebraska led 27-3 entering the fourth, before the Buffs stormed all the way back to tie the game and had a 33-yard field goal to win it go wide. The Huskers won in overtime.
In 2000 in Lincoln, the Buffs, in the final game of their worst season since 1984, decided they had nothing to lose. After scoring a late touchdown that seemed like it would tie the score at 31, head coach Gary Barnett decided to go for two and the win instead. It worked . . . except then CU booted the kickoff out of bounds and let the Huskers drive down the field in 45 seconds to kick a field goal that ran the NU winning streak in the series to 9 games.
All of which brings us to 2001. The Buffs were enjoying their best season in five years – ranked 15th in the BCS with an 8-2 record, including a 6-1 mark in the Big 12. Nebraska was 11-0 (7-0 in conference) and ranked #1 in the BCS with the inside track to a fourth national title in eight years. For the first time since 1996, when #4 Nebraska narrowly defeated #5 CU in Lincoln, the game would decide the Big 12 North title.
The Buffs had a fearsome running back room led by Chris Brown and Bobby Purify. The Huskers had dual-threat quarterback Eric Crouch, who would go on to win the 2001 Heisman trophy. Nebraska’s vaunted blackshirt defense had given up 10 or fewer points in 7 of their 11 games. As a program, Nebraska had not allowed more than 40 points in a game since 1990, or more than 50 points in a game since 1956. They had never given up more than 36 points in a game against Colorado. That was all about to change.
It was a chilly, gray Black Friday in Boulder. Football weather. The Buffs won the toss and deferred – giving Crouch the ball first and the CU defense a chance to make an early statement. In four out of the previous six matchups in Boulder, the Huskers had scored a touchdown on their very first offensive play. Today was different. Sean Tufts and the Buffaloes forced a three-and-out which further energized an already cacophonous Folsom. After taking over on their own 31, CU quickly faced a 3rd-and-7, which they converted on a perfectly-placed spiral from quarterback Bobby Pesavento, who had taken over the reins to the offense midseason.
With a first down on the Nebraska 40, Colorado ran the ball up the middle for the first time. The red sea parted, and Bobby Purify found himself all alone with nothing but the end zone in front of him. He was so alone, in fact, that he turned around thinking the play must have been whistled dead and he hadn’t heard it above the din of the crowd. Fortunately, he made it across the goal line before a Husker defender caught him, and CU had drawn first blood.
It was the first of many runs that day where a Buffalo wouldn’t be touched until reaching the Nebraska secondary, if he was touched at all. Shocking the Huskers and the nation, Colorado would run the ball right into the heart of the Blackshirt defense over and over again. There was simply no stopping Andre Gurode and the CU offensive line, as the Buffs repeatedly ran the same few plays down Nebraska’s throats for huge gains.
Still, for the moment it was just one touchdown, and Crouch took the field for the second time with a chance to get the momentum back on his side and quiet the noise. Instead, running back Dahrran Diedrick fumbled on second down, and the Buffaloes pounced on it. Folsom was coming unglued, and so were the Huskers.
With 1st-and-10 from the Nebraska 21, Gary Barnett decided to go, as ABC’s Brent Musburger put it, for the jugular. Pesavento went to the air and found Daniel Graham open. The 2001 Mackey Award winner hauled in the pass at the four and walked into the end zone. It was 14-0. Could this really be happening?
Somehow, it was only just beginning. Pesavento hit Graham again for 49 yards – most of it after the catch – and then went in himself on a quarterback sneak to make it 21-0 before the Huskers had made a first down. Returning from the ensuing commercial break, Musburger had to assure viewers that the score they were seeing was not a graphic error.
For 17 minutes and 49 seconds of game clock, Colorado played nearly perfect football. Every Pesavento pass had the right touch. The running backs found openings everywhere they looked. Nebraska’s offense was swimming in quicksand. The game’s high water mark came when Chris Brown ran for his second touchdown early in the second quarter, which made the score Colorado 35, Nebraska 3. For the Buffs, the game had been the stuff of their wildest dreams, but then the Huskers finally heard the alarm going off and woke up.
The dirty little secret of 62-36 is that Crouch and Nebraska did eventually find their footing, and for the middle 25 minutes of the game they actually played like a national championship contender. CU’s lead narrowed to 42-23 at halftime, and with three minutes to go in the third quarter the Huskers had the ball in CU territory trailing just 42-30. To squander a seemingly-insurmountable 32-point lead would have made for the most excruciating loss in a rivalry that had been full of them, and that dark thought had to have been creeping into the minds of most of the crowd. Fortunately, this game was a three-act drama, and the finale was all Buffs.
Colorado’s defense, so dominant in the first quarter, finally put their foot down and kept Nebraska out of field goal range. CU then took over on their own seven yard line – having yet to make a first down in the second half. The offensive line regained their early form at the perfect time, and the Buffaloes marched 93 yards down the field for a massive touchdown. Overhead, the earlier clouds had moved out – making way for another one of those classic Folsom Field sunsets. The sun was starting to set on the Huskers.
With time starting to become a factor and Nebraska facing 3rd-and-19 on their next possession, Crouch forced a throw that was intercepted by defensive captain Michael Lewis and returned inside the Nebraska 10 yard line. Musburger intoned that this “could be the knife in the heart”. It was. Chris Brown quickly scored his fifth touchdown of the game to make it 55-30.
Then the sequence repeated itself. Another Crouch pick, another short field, another Brown touchdown. Six! Once Jeremy Flores nailed the PAT, the Buffs had 62 points. It was the most ever scored against Nebraska. Not just since Bob Devaney took over, not just since the invention of the forward pass – the most ever. CU could have added more points if they had wanted to, but Pesavento was instructed to take a knee at the Nebraska 15 yard line to run out the clock in the final minute.
When the clock hit triple zeroes and the fans poured out of the stands and onto the field, the final score reverberated around the country. 62-36. In total, the Buffs had gained 582 yards of total offense – more than 400 in the first half alone. 380 of them had come on the ground against a rush defense that was allowing under 100 yards per game. It hadn’t been accomplished with trickery or speed but instead with overpowering physicality and willpower. No one would ever look at Nebraska football the same way again. Simply put, the emperor had no clothes.
The Los Angeles Times called it “unprecedented payback”. CBS said Nebraska had “lost some of its dignity”. The Grand Island Independent called it the “Rocky Mountain Horror Show”. Eric Crouch said it was “a nightmare”. Chris Brown, seeming to agree with him, just said, “They were scared.”
A week later in Dallas, the Buffs took advantage of a turnover-prone Chris Simms and shocked #3 Texas 39-37 to win the Big 12 Championship. When the dust settled on a tumultuous two weeks, with multiple national championship contenders going down, CU had climbed all the way to #3 in the BCS rankings, a fraction of a point behind . . . Nebraska?
Yes, the computers in their infinite wisdom really loved the Huskers in 2001. They were ranked #1 in the BCS every week before 62-36, despite Miami topping the AP poll with a vast majority of first place votes. With a formula that didn’t account for timing of loss (yes, seriously) the machines put the one-loss Huskers ahead of the two-loss Buffs and one-loss AP #2 Oregon – befuddling the nation and enraging those in Boulder and Eugene. Nebraska winning a national championship without having even won their division would have been a cruel twist of fate that might have dimmed the glow of CU’s greatest triumph.
Buffs fans needn’t have worried. The Huskers were dead men walking when they took on #1 Miami in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. By halftime, the Hurricanes were up 34-0. In the Fiesta Bowl, CU met Oregon. Were the Buffs due for a letdown after being denied the chance to play for a national championship? They came out strong with a touchdown on their opening drive, but Oregon dominated the rest of the afternoon to end CU’s magical run.
The truth is that neither Colorado or Nebraska has reached the heights of the 2001 season since. The Buffs haven’t been ranked higher than #7, and Nebraska hasn’t climbed higher than #5. Neither school has won a conference championship. But while CU slid into obscurity gradually over the following decade, for the Nebraska football program there is only before and after November 23, 2001. Up to and including that year, the Huskers had lost more than three games in a season exactly once since 1969. Since then, they have lost at least four games every single year but one. Back in 2015, the Omaha World-Herald said that 62-36 was like a nightmare from which the program still hadn’t woken up, and that was before Scott Frost was hired.
I have no personal memories of 62-36. However, because of 62-36, I had the opportunity to watch the 2001 Big 12 Championship – the first college football game I had ever seen. I was six and had moved to Boulder barely a year earlier. My parents had never been interested in college football. Our neighbors were huge Nebraska fans and it didn’t even bother me. But the buzz around Boulder created by 62-36 was impossible to ignore, so we tuned in to watch the Buffs play Texas. Three hours later, I was a die-hard Colorado football fan. 62-36 had a huge impact on my life, and I didn’t even watch it.
Will any game ever be better? It’s exciting to think about. For the moment, however, 62-36 reigns supreme. It was thrilling. It was cathartic. It was historic. It was Folsom’s greatest game.
Videos:
Full TV broadcast on YouTube
Condensed game (CU radio broadcast)
Condensed game (Nebraska radio broadcast)
Articles:
CU at the Game Recap
Los Angeles Times Recap
CNN Recap
Omaha World-Herald Recap
