Nebraska football wouldn’t kick off against Michigan for another 90 minutes, but longtime friends Cathy Flores and Linda Mihm were already in their seats. Sort of.
Their seats are actually a little farther up the steep South Stadium climb, in Row 78. They like to rest for a minute a few rows down and drink a little water before making the final ascent.
“There are older people going up farther than we do,” said Flores, 68.
“On canes,” the 78-year-old Mihm said. “But we keep a-comin.’”
Flores and Mihm have been coming together since 1983, when they were first grade schoolteachers and Flores, a NU graduate, got two of 2,000 tickets in a lottery. Back then the duo was stuck in Row 97. On Saturday, they’ve moved down and over — closer to the middle of the 23,000-seat wedge that, in January 2025, will be demolished as part of a $450 million renovation.
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“I saw it on Facebook,” Mihm said of NU’s ambitious plans for South Stadium, which won’t return in its new form until the 2026 season.
Mihm said she’d heard rumblings of a major overhaul but didn’t know it would involve her getting displaced — or perhaps having no seats at all for one season.
“We fear that we’re going to be gone,” Mihm said. “We don’t know. We’re waiting to be told, I guess.”
When meeting with reporters or handling their questions in a news conference last week, Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts didn’t skirt the issue, and he asked for “grace” and “mercy” from fans on the major disruption.
South Stadium will be blown up. In its place will be a multideck end zone complex that fits more seamlessly with the East and West stadiums, allows for a massive student section, and rethinks the sometimes-laborious, breath-catching process of getting to one’s seat.
“Getting up here is a pain in the ass,” Flores said.
Indeed, South Stadium is a little different from the three other sides of Memorial Stadium.
To regard Nebraska’s football cathedral from the east side — with its six-story façade of tan concrete with brick accents — one sees a mix of 20th and 21st century design sensibilities. Old blends into new. The same is true of West Stadium and — at least from the outside — North Stadium, where fans congregate to snap a photo next to the iconic Brook Berringer statue or gawk at NU’s national championships.
The entrance and underbelly of South Stadium resembles a land that time forgot, a ramshackle storage facility, right down to the final, lingering strands of barbed wire.
Discarded benches sit in one corner, used by fans as a place to sit after grabbing concession food. Leftover fence frames are tucked into a nook. What once must have been an electrical board has a single, broken cable hanging out of it. In the entryway of one South Stadium women’s bathroom, fans are greeted by a photo of four Huskers tackling an Iowa State Cyclone. At another restroom, there’s a photo of Roy Helu hugging teammates.
Nebraska Athletics keeps its massive grill and smoker near the entry of one gate. Golf carts are parked near the base of the wedge, across a walkway from 22 Al’s Johns portable toilets that serve staff and can help supplement the restroom offerings in South Stadium. Several men’s restrooms still feature urinal troughs ringed with rust.
“We’re sorry,” Alberts said Thursday of fan comfort in South Stadium. “I’m not sure what else to say. Our son, when he was younger, went to a game in South Stadium and he still said that he has PTSD from that experience. He’s now 25.”
Alberts said he wants to make things “more intuitive” and “easier” for Husker fans to support their team.
“I look at the effort that some of our fans put in to get here every Saturday,” Alberts said, “and it is really remarkable. And we can never take that for granted.”
Emil and Nancy Horalek drove up from Humboldt for the game. They bought $5 seatback chairs that lean against the railing of a South Stadium ramp. The Horaleks — Emil is 84, Nancy is 80 — weren’t tired from the climb; they just found the spot cooler before the game than the sun-blasted stadium seats.
“We do like the seats that we have,” Nancy said. “The people around us — you sit with a good group of people and everybody has a good time. And everybody’s pleasant and polite. There aren’t any rude people.”
There just might be a little rudeness in the Husker student section. Rowdy students make an atmosphere hostile and, as Michigan players ran onto the field for pregame warmups, NU’s “Boneyard” student group — tucked into the east corner of South Stadium — let out boos and flipped a few birds.
The Wolverines couldn’t have been much intimidated. They were at least 70 yards away. NU’s students don’t even sit over the opposing team’s tunnel.
Nebraska’s new South Stadium vision allows for a dedicated student section in one end zone. No east side for seniors and far corner for freshmen.
That sounds good to University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore business majors Cole Hanson and Alex Folbrecht. They were the first two students in line for student seats in South Stadium.
“South side is a bit wild at times but it’d be fun to have them as all one whole unit,” Hanson said. An end zone section would allow students to affect the game the way Minnesota and Colorado’s student sections did when Nebraska drove into them. The Huskers threw a costly interception in Minneapolis and had a snap hit the leg of a tight end in Boulder.
Lines can get long, Folbrecht and Hanson said, for student seating. Generally, South Stadium students funnel into a handful of gates that are pinched by Avery Hall.
“Last year before the Wisconsin game I had to run back to the dorm because I had to get thicker socks and when I came back here the line was 100-200 people long and five different lines just to get in,” Hanson said. “And that was a half an hour before the game.”
Mihm said she’d like better methods of reaching her seat.
“I hope they put an escalator in or something,” Mihm said. “They could do that for the old folks.”
Provided there’s a seat to take. Flores wondered if she and Mihm might have to pay a donation fee for new South Stadium seats — right now, they pay just for the tickets.
“We’ll just have to wait and see what we can afford,” Mihm said. “With the mileage and the hotels and everything, it’s pretty pricey.”
Photos: Nebraska football takes on No. 2 Michigan, Sept. 30