1941 record 4–5 (3–2 Big 6) | ||
The 1941 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team was the representative of the University of Nebraska and member of the Big 6 Conference in the 1941 college football season. The team was coached by Biff Jones and played their home games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Before the season
Nebraska was fresh off its first ever bowl appearance, a well-fought 21-13 loss to Stanford in the 1941 Rose Bowl, and started the 1941 season, the program's 50th year, as defending Big 6 champions, having surpassed 100 conference wins the previous year. The Cornhuskers lost nineteen seniors to graduation, and it was a tall order to hope for a performance to top 1940. Prompted by the stunning success Stanford found by reviving the T formation offense, that was used to defeat the Cornhuskers in the Rose Bowl, coach Jones installed the same formations into the Nebraska offense schemes for 1941.
After the season
Although the two wins to close the season provided some relief, it was not enough to overcome the meaning of the program's first ever five-game losing streak. The dark mood over the nation brought by the expansion of World War II was soon made manifest when Japan carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor just a week after the end of the season. Shortly afterward, coach Jones was recalled to active military duty and was forced to step down as head coach. In his five years at Nebraska, he compiled a Big 6 record of 17-6-2 (.720) and an overall program record of 28-14-4, moving Nebraska to 298-103-31 all-time with an overall conference record of 104-17-11. The effects of the war would soon be felt by the football program in other ways, as many thousands of young men immediately started volunteering for duty overseas to help the war effort, many of them from the pool of college football players.