Why Look Back? Let?s Plan the Next 50 Years!

Randy York’s N-Sider

Forty-four years ago, Jim Croce recorded the song Time in a Bottle, but Nebraska has a better idea to celebrate 50 consecutive years of sellout football crowds at Memorial Stadium ... Time Capsules, and the best thing about them relate to a question we asked ourselves: Why just look back? That, in turn, triggered the only theme that makes sense to us: Let’s plan the next 50 years!

We’ve had 200 scarlet-and-cream time capsules made, and we plan to stuff every one of them with meaningful memories, mementos and memorabilia that describe and define our half-century journey that became an ongoing, unremitting, unrelenting quest to fill every seat in what soon will be a 92,000 capacity stadium.

Our university and athletic department are preparing those time capsules to celebrate Nebraska’s 50 Years of Consecutive Sellouts at Saturday night’s nationally televised home game against Michigan. Our 1962 to 2012 accomplishment covers 323 consecutive home-game sellouts. Your recollections from those games – and predictions for future historic sellouts – must be received by Monday, Nov. 12, to qualify for placement in a vault that will be buried near the East Stadium later this year.

Seeking Your 50-Year Flashbacks, Predictions

Your 50-year flashbacks and your next 50-year predictions won’t be opened until the fall of 2062. That vault, however, would not be complete without Big Red fans submitting their own magic moments from the past 50 years and making their own golden predictions for the next 50 years of consecutive sellouts that will create the opportunity for a Centennial Celebration in the year 2062.

Nebraskans not only are very proud of our past, but also very confident about our future. We only have 1.82 million people in this state, yet over the past 50 years, we’ve sent 24,048,577 fans through those hallowed gates.

There’s a reason why Memorial Stadium archways say: “Through these gates pass the greatest fans in college football.” Who else puts a metaphorical Sold Out sign on its ticket office window every game for half a century?

Vision for 2062: 100 Consecutive Sellout Years

How did we do it? You tell us, so we can put it in a time capsule. But, at the same time, let’s do something bigger and even better. Let’s allow the greatest generation to celebrate and honor its 50-year accomplishment, and, at the same time, let’s encourage the next generation to take us beyond where we are, so they can commemorate 100 consecutive years of sellouts in 2062.

Yes, it’s time to dream big and think big, to go confidently and imaginatively, to follow one path yet create another, to catch some new trade winds, to explore and to sail beyond where we’ve already been, to make the improbable probable and the impossible possible and to believe it, then achieve it.

How can that happen? Let The N-Sider boil down the three most important ways:

1) Access and print a 2062 Husker Time Capsule Kids Sheet or pick one up Saturday at the Husker Nation Pavilion beginning at 4 p.m. before Nebraska hosts Michigan for the first time ever at Memorial Stadium.  The Kids Sheet is a great tool for teachers and parents to help their students and children celebrate 50 consecutive years of Nebraska football sellouts. The activity sheet includes opportunities to predict the future of Nebraska football in seven sub-categories: 1) Concessions; 2) Mascots; 3) Ticket prices; 4) Uniforms; 5) Logos; 6) National championships; and 7) Seating capacity. Kids who participate in the Time Capsule experience also get the chance to answer the proverbial question: What do you want to be when you grow up?

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