1956 record 4–6 (3–3 Big 7) | ||
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Head coach Pete Elliott (1st year) | ||
The 1956 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team was the representative of the University of Nebraska and member of the Big 7 Conference in the 1956 college football season. The team was coached by Pete Elliott and played their home games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Before the season
Nebraska's quest to return to its dominating winning ways was rather far off the track, the last three bright spots on the record books increasingly far into the past. The last season resulting in a convincing win record was 1950, where Nebraska finished 6-2-1. Prior to that, you had to look to the 8-2-0 finish in 1940. Under this ongoing low period in program history, seven-year coach Bill Glassford had stepped down and was replaced by first-time head coach Pete Elliott, previously the Backfield Coach at Oklahoma, and a former college quarterback who helped lead the 1948 Michigan Wolverines football team to a national championship. With four new assistants on the staff, Elliott set to the task of proving he could run a football team and succeed.
After the season
Coach Elliott's first season did not bring any significant change to the fortunes of the program, finishing with a losing season to extend by another year the stretch of relatively unsuccessful campaigns waged by the Cornhuskers since the dawn of the 1940s. At the conclusion of the season, Elliott announced that he had accepted the head coaching position at California, making his first Nebraska season also his last. His California tenure lasted only three years as he compiled a disappointing 10-21 record, and his last two head coaching jobs at Illinois and Miami produced only four winning seasons over nine years.
Nebraska's conference record under Elliott slipped to 146-58-12 (.704) while the overall program record fell to 351-189-34 (.641). Backfield Coach Bill Jennings was subsequently named as Elliott's successor and assumed control over the struggling Cornhusker football program.