30 Years Ago: Devaney's Hall-of-Fame Moment

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By Randy York

A retired sports editor of the Omaha World-Herald (OWH) posted a photo of Bob Devaney on his Facebook page last night to commemorate Devaney's 30-year anniversary as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Steve Sinclair, the 15-year OWH sports editor who still lives in Omaha, is the 32-year-old on the left in the photo above. Virgil Parker, the late sports editor of the Lincoln Journal-Star, is the man on the right. Shortly after Sinclair posted the photo, Chuck Pool, then assisting Nebraska's sports information efforts and now Sports Information Director at Rice University in Houston, mentioned someone else in the right corner of the photograph. "Isn't that Ed Weir?" Pool asked about the man holding his hand over his mouth while the picture is being taken, and sure enough, it is. Most Nebraska football fans probably have no idea that Weir was Nebraska's first member of the College Football Hall of Fame 30 years before Devaney was inducted. Weir's name, in fact, still honors Nebraska's outdoor track and field stadium adjacent to Memorial Stadium because the Huskers' first two-time football All-American also was a track legend.

The picture with Devaney, Parker and Sinclair was taken at a 1981 reception before Devaney's Hall-of-Fame induction dinner at the New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the same hotel that hosted the Will Shields Hall-of-Fame induction earlier in the week. "I remember going to a luncheon at the Twenty One (restaurant) the same day and sitting next to Roger Staubach," recalled Sinclair, a Nebraska season ticketholder that travels to the vast majority of the Huskers' road games with his wife, Kathy. "Staubach was inducted that year with Devaney. I remember going out to dinner the night before with Fox (Don Bryant, Nebraska's Sports Information Director Emeritus and Donn Bernstein (ABC's lead college football publicist who loved advancing Nebraska football games in Lincoln). I have zero memory of the induction ceremony or banquet. I'm not even sure who sent me the photo from the reception. I do remember interviewing Devaney for a special package we did related to the Hall of Fame. It was a snowy night, and he stayed late after work to do it. We probably talked for more than an hour in his office. I think we were the only people left in the building."

Thirty years later after that historic night that honored Devaney, Sinclair admits that he finds it "a little sad" that there are "new generations of Husker fans now that probably don't have full appreciation of Bob Devaney and what he accomplished as Nebraska's coach and athletic director." What's more, Sinclair said, "It's been 40 years since the first national championship and next year will mark the 50th anniversary of that the incredible sellout streak that began in Devaney's first season in Lincoln. None of what we know now as the tremendous phenomenon of Husker football would exist without the foundation built by Devaney. It's been fun to be around all these years and watch what Devaney accomplished and how Tom Osborne found a way to take it to another level."

We all know that time never stands still, and Saturday night's scattered pictures that stay in the corners of some of our minds remind us of the way it was when Devaney arrived from Wyoming, took Nebraska by storm, won hearts from Alliance to Albion and led the Cornhuskers to unimaginable heights, not to mention a prominent place in college football history. On the same day that Devaney was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ronald Reagan was president, and the U.S. requested that all of its citizens leave Libya immediately and that all U.S. passports for travel to Libya would be invalidated. In other words, the world isn't all that much different now than it was then. I'm just glad that Missouri passed on trying to hire Devaney in favor of Dan Devine and that Nebraska seized the opportunity when it presented itself. What a world of difference that made for you, me and everyone else that follows the Cornhuskers.

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