The Nebraska Cornhuskers finished 12-1 in 1982 and finished ranked 3rd in the country. Who gave them their only loss on the season? Penn State, in State College, Pennsylvania. With the Huskers finishing 3rd and just missing the national championship, that had to grate on Nebraska coach Tom Osborne and the players. It certainly mattered to the fans.
Penn State happened to go on and win the 1982 national championship with a win over Herschel Walker and the Georgia Bulldogs. It was Joe Paterno’s first national championship after years of frustration and just coming up short.
Back in those days, two of the expected better teams were selected each year to play in a Kickoff Classic. It was the first game of the year and after a long, hot summer with no football, all college football fans looked forward to it.
On August 29th, 1983 the Kickoff Classic was to be played in East Rutherford, New Jersey and just happened to feature the number one ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers and the third ranked Penn State
Nittany Lions.
Nebraska returned almost everybody on offense.
Quarterback Turner Gill had been a major recruiting victory for Osborne and his staff. Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer had wanted the Fort Worth, Texas product pretty badly for his Wishbone offense, which demonstrated what kind of athlete Gill was. Gill was not only a fantastic runner in Nebraska’s option based offense, he could throw with the best of them and was an experienced senior in 1983.
At their famous I-back position, the Huskers returned one of their best of all time in Mike Rozier. The senior, from the rough streets of Camden, New Jersey ran for almost 1,700 yards in 1982 and was eager for more.
Ahead of him were experienced fullbacks Mark Schellen and Tom Rathman.
The offensive line did lose all world center, Dave Rimington. But, not to worry, they returned the incredible Dean Steinkuhler, plus Mark Behning, Harry Grimminger, Scott Raridon and Mark Traynowicz. The Huskers always had a good offensive line, but this was a great one and Osborne’s best, so far, at Nebraska.
They also had the best wide receiver/wing back in the nation in Irving Fryar.
The defense wasn’t quite up to the same standards, but it was experienced enough and back up players in 1982 had gotten plenty of playing time.
Penn State, on the other hand, was coming off it’s first Paterno national championship. The Nittany Lions had experienced years of championship frustrations after going unbeaten in 1968, 1969 and 1973 only to see the titles handed to somebody else. In 1982, they beat the favored and unbeaten Georgia Bulldogs with outstanding tailback Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker to finally break on through to the other side.
Gone were fantastic quarterback Todd Blackledge and tailback Kurt Warner and many other star players.
This would now be back up quarterback Doug Strang’s team. Kurt Warner was gone to the NFL.
Star receiver Kenny Jackson was back after a super season in 1982, but without Blackledge his numbers would drop.
With the top ranked team coming in to play the 4th ranked team, this game just had to be great, didn’t it?
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Well, it started off looking good for Penn State. When they kicked off, Nebraska fumbled the ball and even though they recovered their own fumble, it looked like they were really nervous.
On the games first play from scrimmage, Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill ran the wrong way and was tackled for a huge loss. Even a couple of decent plays by Nebraska couldn’t save the drive and they were forced to punt.
Surprisingly, Joe Paterno’s Penn State came out throwing the football. Then, even more surprising, after stopping the Nittany Lions, the Huskers moved the ball down the field and scored a touchdown mostly behind the passing of Turner Gill. He completed 4 out of 4 passes on the drive.
It was 7-0 and the route was on.
21-0 at halftime, and 27-0 in the 3rd quarter when Nebraska picked off a pass and returned it for another score.
Penn State tried Dan Lonergan at quarterback, because Strang was totally ineffective, same results. The Penn State quarterbacking was simply just terrible.
Nebraska won going away, 44-6, proving that they were for real and a good shot at winning it all in 1983.
Penn State was humbled after coming off a national title and they looked to be in trouble. The following game, they lost to Cincinnati, 3-14. Then, they got beat by 13th ranked Iowa, 34-42. Penn State starting off 0-3 was truly rare under Joe Paterno, and they got it together the following week against Temple finally getting their first win of the season. They followed up with a win over Rutgers.
At 2-3, the Nittany Lions hosted 3rd ranked Alabama and beat them, 34-28.
They beat Syracuse and then beat 4th ranked West Virginia, 41-23. Not only were they back, they were way back.
But, with their record now at 5-3, they lost to 19th ranked Boston College, before beating Brown and Notre Dame. They finished their regular season with a tie against 17th ranked Pittsburgh and earned a berth in the Aloha Bowl where they beat Washington.
The Nittany Lions finished their season with a very average 8-4-1 record.
Nebraska won every one of their regular season games and many said this was the best team ever. The only problem for the Huskers occurred in the Orange Bowl where upstart Miami seemingly came out of nowhere and pulled off the upset of the year by holding off Nebraska, 30-31.
The Huskers made a valiant come back only to fall short when Tom Osborne elected to go for the win instead of the tie and the two point conversion pass was tipped by Miami and fell incomplete.
It was the first of five Miami national championships.
Tom Osborne and his faithful Cornhusker fans would have to wait until 1994 to get their national title and revenge would be sweet as they wore down the Hurricanes.