How winning the 2005 Alamo Bowl sparked success for Nebraska Football

The ending of the 2005 Alamo Bowl is undoubtedly one of the wilder what-ifs you’ll ever see to a game. However, since Nebraska went on to win it, the outcome was able to set them up for another season of success in the following year.

On3’s Andy Staples and HuskerOnline’s Sean Callahan remembered that 32-28 win for Nebraska over Michigan in San Antonio on Friday. Staples began by setting the scene with a description of a nearly all-time game-winning play for the Wolverines.

“That’s where this game goes completely off the rails. It’s what Scott Van Pelt calls pitchy woo-woo,” Staples said. “Had this worked, it would have been up there with Cal–Stanford and the band is on the field. It would be one of those that is replayed in any highlight package involving college football ever.”

Callahan, who was present inside the Alamodome, certainly got quite the memory from it too. From all the laterals to a non-thrown penalty for the sideline taking the field too early, he knows that he witnessed what was nearly a once-in-a-sport kind of moment.

“Yeah, just an ultimate rugby play. There were about two or three moments where you’re like, ‘Okay, it’s over’. And the fact that Michigan just kept it alive? Everybody was in disbelief. I mean the Nebraska players were in disbelief. I mean Nebraska should have been penalized,” Callahan said. “All he had to do was make one more pitch back and they win the game…Just to see that all play out? Because, literally, you’re right. We’d be talking about this play for 100 years if Michigan just makes one more pitch.”

“You know how it is. You’re down on the sideline at that point. So, like, you’re almost kind of like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute!’. It was almost disbelief. You’re like, ‘They’re almost going to do this’. Then when Nebraska gets out of the situation there, you’re like, ‘Wow. Like, that almost just happened.’ Probably what Auburn and Alabama fans felt like on The Kick Six – a disbelief moment where you’re like, ‘There’s no way,'” said Callahan. “I mean one in a thousand this thing happens and it almost happened in that situation.”

In the season to follow, though, Nebraska took that momentum and used it in a stretch that saw them win nine or more games in eight of the next nine years through 2014. That included the 2006 team that brought back plenty of contributors and competed well in reaching the Big 12 Championship and Cotton Bowl although losing both.

“That win at that moment? So, going into ’06, they had a really, really good team,” Callahan said. “I mean lots of NFL talent. I mean their defensive front returned Adam Carriker, Jay Moore, and Stewart Bradley – all three of those guys played in The Senior Bowl that year so, like, high-level NFL draft picks. They returned Zack Bowman at corner. They had a number of really good linebackers coming back. Corey McKeon was All-Big 12 at that time, Bo Ruud. They were loaded across the board on that defense. Zac Taylor comes back. They add Maurice Purify, the best junior college receiver.”

“They blew a huge lead at Oklahoma State, they blew the Texas game…The only team that really handedly beat that Nebraska team that year was USC,” said Callahan. “That was a Nebraska team the next year that easily could’ve and should have won the Big 12…That ’05 game really set up a year in ’06 where Zac Taylor was the Big 12 Player of the Year, Nebraska won the north. They easily could have been in one of those BCS bowl spots back then.”

Who knows what happens if Tyler Ecker runs that final lateral all the way back from the opposite 24-yard line? Or who knows what takes place if the officials throw a flag on the Huskers celebrating their win to only add to the madness?

That all adds to what makes it so unforgettable, even if it didn’t end up winning the bowl in the end.