Conference Big Six Conference Home stadium Memorial Stadium | 1928 record 7–1–1 (5–0 Big 6) | |
Head coach Ernest Bearg (4th year) | ||
The 1928 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team was the representative of the University of Nebraska in the 1928 college football season. The team was coached by Ernest Bearg and played their home games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Before the season
Coach Bearg's Cornhuskers had accomplished many feats, but had yet to put up a conference title banner during his tenure. The Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association had split up following the 1927 season, with the smaller schools (Drake, Grinnell, Oklahoma A&M, and Washington (MO)) forming a new league, the similarly named Missouri Valley Conference. The schools which remained in the MVIAA (Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma) were henceforth commonly referred to as the Big Six Conference, although the league's name technically was not changed. The result was that the league no longer had teams from smaller schools which were typically easily overwhelmed by Nebraska. Securing a league title was now more difficult than ever.
After the season
Coach Bearg finally obtained the league title after four previous attempts fell short, and when his squad finally did bring the banner home it was against a much tougher league than the MVIAA had been before evolving into the Big 6. Bearg, having secured the title, was offered the head coaching position at Washburn, his alma mater, and departed the Nebraska program after improving his final record in Lincoln to 23-7-3 (.742). Coach Bearg also left Nebraska's overall record improved at 220-74-20 (.732) and his perfect conference slate for 1928 helped improve Nebraska's league record to 54-8-5 (.843). Nebraska then set about the task of searching for their eighteenth head football coach.