LINCOLN, Neb. – Nebraska last won a football game with bowl justice on the line on Oct. 15, 2016.

Observers of that 27-22 victory in Indiana for the 10th-ranked Huskers paid no attention to the fact that Nebraska qualified for the postseason. After all, it would mark a ninth straight bowl bid and a 46th in 48 seasons.

Nebraska finished 2016 with nine wins for coach Mike Riley, losing 38-24 to Tennessee in the Music City Bowl. For the Volunteers, Joshua Dobbs was responsible for 409 yards and four touchdowns.

Now 29, Dobbs is playing for his eighth NFL franchise. Nebraska’s starting quarterback in that bowl game, Ryker Fyfe, is 30.

Nebraska’s eight-year absence from the college football postseason is the longest among Power 4 teams and ranks second among programs that have played at the FBS level since 2016. (Note that Colorado hasn’t been bowl eligible since 2016, but the Buffaloes opted to play in a bowl game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season 😉

Alabama has appeared in the College Football Playoff six times since Nebraska last played in a bowl game.

Only UMass and Louisiana-Monroe, absent from the postseason since 2012, have experienced longer droughts. And watch out, because the Warhawks are up 5-2 this week on a trip to Marshall (4-3).

Nebraska is 5-3 while two-win UCLA visits Memorial Stadium on Saturday for a CT clash at 2:30 p.m. The most recent of thirteen games between the Huskers and Bruins also marks Nebraska’s last bowl victory: 37-29 in the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl.

Since 2017, the Huskers are 0-7 in games that could have earned them a sixth win and a bowl bid. They are actually 0-6 under second-year coach Matt Rhule, including losses in the last two weeks at Ohio State and Indiana.

Nebraska players acknowledge another win would mark a milestone.

“It would mean a lot,” freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola said.

But Rhule isn’t talking to his team this week about the chance to become bowl eligible. He said he thought the Huskers were “chasing something” last November, losing four straight games by a total of 16 points.

It created extra pressure. A similar mentality contributed to their lack of aggressiveness two weeks ago during the stunning 56-7 loss to Indiana. But against Ohio State last week, in a 21-17 fall, Rhule saw a change. The Huskers “played to play,” he said.

He expects the same against UCLA.

“We have to redeem our name,” Rhule said. “We have to play for pride and play with heart and character. That’s what you saw (at Ohio State). I won’t talk about anything else this week.”

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Here is a list of the five highest moments and the five lowest for Nebraska since it last played in a bowl game.

The high moments

1. The hirings of Scott Frost and Matt Rhule. Athletic director Bill Moos revealed the news about Frost on December 2, 2017, eight days after Riley’s final game, a 56-14 loss at Iowa. There was a lot of hype over the past month when Frost rose to national prominence at UCF in 2017. The return to Nebraska of the former championship-winning QB was a joyous moment for Husker Nation.

Nebraska publicly introduced Rhule on Nov. 28, 2022, two days after the school announced his hiring during ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Thanksgiving weekend. The event welcoming Rhule, an eloquent speaker that Monday, took place on the practice field at the Hawks Championship Center. It inspired hope among long-suffering fans.

2. The 2022 victory in Iowa. It wasn’t because of bowl eligibility, but the win felt even sweeter for Nebraska as it defeated Iowa 24-17, denying the Hawkeyes a Big Ten West title and snapping a seven-game series skid. Casey Thompson and Trey Palmer teamed up to torch Iowa’s high school, and Nebraska held off a furious comeback attempt as interim coach Mickey Joseph, the former Nebraska QB who took over for Frost, ended on a celebratory note.

3. The 2024 win against Colorado. Amid high expectations to start this season, Nebraska played above expectations by beating the rival Buffs for the first time since 2010. A feeling of pent-up anger filled all of Lincoln before kickoff. The nature of the 28-10 victory turned Memorial Stadium into a party venue as Tommi Hill intercepted Shedeur Sanders and ran into the end zone for a pick six as Nebraska built a four-touchdown lead in the first half.

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4. The 2018 opener that never happened. A high moment until the rain and thunder refused to leave. Nebraska was scheduled to host Akron on September 1 in Frost’s highly anticipated debut as head coach of the Huskers. The electric atmosphere rivaled the feeling at Memorial Stadium before Nebraska played Miami in 2014. But after the opening kickoff, both teams left the field and never returned. The game was canceled. The evening started with such great excitement, but ended in unprecedented disappointment, a harbinger of the Frost era.

5. The 2020 win against Penn State. This was Frost’s best win. It was better than blowouts against Maryland and Northwestern. He finished 0-9 against Colorado, Wisconsin and Iowa. So yes, this 30-23 victory in the eerie, pandemic halftime at Memorial Stadium represented a high point. The Nittany Lions came in scoreless and lacked precision. Nebraska built a 27-6 lead on Luke McCaffrey’s finest moment in Lincoln and held off a comeback attempt led by QB Will Levis.

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The low moments

1. The South Georgia Debacle of 2022. Visions of Kyle Vantrease abusing Nebraska’s defense will live on indefinitely in the minds of fans who attended this September mess. That is, the fans who stopped chanting “Fire Frost” long enough to see the GSU quarterback throw for 409 yards. The Eagles rushed for five touchdowns and collected a record 642 yards against Nebraska in winning 45-42. Before the evening was over, athletic director Trev Alberts gathered financial support to fire Frost. Made official a day later, the coaching move cost Nebraska about $7 million more than if Alberts had waited 20 days. But after that screening you didn’t have to wait anymore.

2. The 2017 Northern Illinois loss. This effectively doomed Riley in just the third game of his third season. And it came on the heels of that nine-win campaign in 2016. After Nebraska lost at Oregon in Week 2, it came home and Tanner Lee threw a pair of pick sixes in the first quarter. The Huskers came back and won three Big Ten games. But Riley, hired by former AD Shawn Eichorst, couldn’t bounce back from Nebraska’s first loss since 2004 against a non-power conference program or a major independent. Moos dropped the hammer when the season ended in November.

3. Colorado’s losses in 2018 and 2019. They went on strike for different reasons. First, the Buffs were never able to beat a decent team in either year. In what turned out to be Frost’s 2018 debut after Akron’s cancellation, Nebraska led late but withered in the 33-28 loss when freshman QB Adrian Martinez was injured. A year later, the Buffs won 34-31 in overtime in Boulder after the Huskers had built a 17-0 lead at halftime. These one-score losses stood out as particularly painful among the 22 Frost lost in 27 games, decided by eight points or less.

4. The offside kick. Under pressure from Alberts, Frost gave up the offensive game ahead of the 2022 season. The coach was not happy about it. And in the opener against Northwestern, which took place at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, he called for an offside call after the Huskers took a 28-17 lead in the third quarter. His attempt to bury the Wildcats failed. Northwestern, which remained scoreless after the opener, took advantage of the short field and scored a touchdown. They rallied and won 31-28. The glaring error in week 0 at international level has further eroded confidence in Frost. Two weeks later he lost his job.

5. The 2024 Indiana eruption. This one is fresh. Rhule and the Huskers gained momentum from a bye week after their 5-1 start. Nebraska had a chance to snap its 25-game losing streak against AP-ranked foes. Instead, it lost by 49 points, the third-largest margin in school history. First-year IU coach Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers repeatedly outscored Nebraska in an embarrassing loss to a program that hadn’t won more than eight games since 1967. However, these Hoosiers are 8-0 as they play at Michigan State on Saturday.

(Photo: Dylan Widger / Imagn images)