LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska last won a football game with bowl eligibility at stake on Oct. 15, 2016.

Observers of that 27-22 win at Indiana for the 10th-ranked Huskers paid no mind to the fact Nebraska qualified for the postseason. After all, it would mark a ninth consecutive bowl bid and 46th in 48 seasons.

Nebraska finished with nine wins in 2016 for coach Mike Riley and lost 38-24 against Tennessee in the Music City Bowl. For the Volunteers, Joshua Dobbs accounted for 409 yards and four touchdowns.

Dobbs is now 29 and playing for his eighth NFL franchise. Nebraska’s starting quarterback in that bowl game, Ryker Fyfe, is 30.

The eight-year absence for Nebraska from the college football postseason is the longest among Power 4 teams and tied for second longest among programs that have played at the FBS level since 2016. (Of note, Colorado had not achieved bowl eligibility since 2016 until this year, but the Buffaloes elected to play in a bowl game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season; Nebraska did not.)

Alabama has appeared in the College Football Playoff six times since Nebraska last played in a bowl game.

Only UMass and Louisiana-Monroe, absent from the postseason since 2012, are riding longer droughts. And watch out because the Warhawks are 5-2 ahead of a trip to Marshall (4-3) this week.

Nebraska sits at 5-3 as two-win UCLA visits Memorial Stadium on Saturday for a 2:30 p.m. CT clash. The most recent of 13 games between the Huskers and Bruins also marks Nebraska’s last bowl victory — 37-29 in the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl.

Since 2017, the Huskers are 0-7 in games that could have earned them a sixth victory and a bowl bid. They’re 0-6, in fact, under second-year coach Matt Rhule, including losses in the past two weeks at Ohio State and Indiana.

Nebraska players recognize that another win would achieve a milestone.

“It would mean a lot,” freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola said.

But Rhule isn’t talking to his team this week about the shot to get bowl eligible. He said he thought the Huskers last year in November, in losing four consecutive games by a combined 16 points, were “chasing something.”

It added pressure. A similar mindset contributed to their lack of aggressiveness two weeks ago in the stunning 56-7 loss at Indiana. But against Ohio State last week, in falling 21-17, Rhule saw a change. The Huskers were “playing to play,” he said.

He expects the same against UCLA.

“We have to redeem our name,” Rhule said. “We have to play for pride and play with heart and character. That’s what you saw (at Ohio State). I won’t talk about anything other than that this week.”

Here’s a list of the five highest moments and the five lowest for Nebraska since it last played in a bowl game.

The high moments

1. The hirings of Scott Frost and Matt Rhule. Athletic director Bill Moos unveiled the news about Frost on Dec. 2, 2017, eight days after Riley’s final game, a 56-14 loss at Iowa. It was much hyped over the previous month as Frost rose to national prominence at UCF in 2017. The return to Nebraska of its former championship-winning QB rated a joyous moment for Husker Nation.

Nebraska publicly introduced Rhule on Nov. 28, 2022, two days after the school announced his hire during ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Thanksgiving weekend. The event to welcome Rhule, an eloquent speaker on that Monday, was held on the practice field at the Hawks Championship Center. It inspired hope among long-suffering fans.

2. The 2022 win at Iowa. It wasn’t for bowl eligibility, but victory felt even sweeter for Nebraska as it beat Iowa 24-17 to deny the Hawkeyes a Big Ten West title and snap a seven-game skid in the series. Casey Thompson and Trey Palmer teamed up to torch the Iowa secondary, and Nebraska held off a furious comeback attempt as interim coach Mickey Joseph, the former Nebraska QB who took over for Frost, finished on a celebratory note.

3. The 2024 win against Colorado. Amid high hopes at the start of this season, Nebraska played above expectations in beating the rival Buffs for the first time since 2010. A sense of pent-up anger filled all of Lincoln before kickoff. The nature of the 28-10 win turned Memorial Stadium into a party venue when Tommi Hill intercepted Shedeur Sanders and walked into the end zone for a pick six as Nebraska built a four-touchdown lead in the first half.

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4. The 2018 opener that never happened. A high moment until the rain and thunder refused to leave. Nebraska was set to host Akron on Sept. 1 in the highly anticipated debut for Frost as the Huskers’ head coach. The electric atmosphere rivaled the feeling inside Memorial Stadium before Nebraska played Miami in 2014. But after the opening kickoff, both teams left the field and never returned. The game was canceled. The night started with such big-event excitement but ended in unprecedented disappointment, a harbinger of the Frost era.

5. The 2020 win against Penn State. This was Frost’s best win. It was better than blowouts against Maryland and Northwestern. He finished 0-9 against Colorado, Wisconsin and Iowa. So yeah, this 30-23 win in the eerie, pandemic-season quiet at Memorial Stadium represented a high point. The Nittany Lions entered winless and lacked precision. Nebraska, in Luke McCaffrey’s finest moment in Lincoln, built a 27-6 lead and held off a comeback attempt led by QB Will Levis.

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The low moments

1. The 2022 Georgia Southern debacle. Visions of Kyle Vantrease abusing the Nebraska defense will live indefinitely in the minds of fans who attended this September mess. That is, the fans who stopped chanting “Fire Frost” long enough to watch the GSU quarterback throw for 409 yards. The Eagles rushed for five touchdowns and accumulated 642 yards, a record against Nebraska, in winning 45-42. Before the night ended, athletic director Trev Alberts rallied financial support to fire Frost. Made official one day later, the coaching move cost Nebraska some $7 million more than if Alberts had waited 20 days. But after that showing, there was no waiting left to do.

2. The 2017 Northern Illinois loss. This one effectively doomed Riley in just the third game of his third season. And it came on the heels of that nine-win campaign in 2016. After Nebraska lost at Oregon in Week 2, it came home and Tanner Lee threw a pair of first-quarter pick sixes. The Huskers bounced back to win three Big Ten games. But Riley, hired by previous AD Shawn Eichorst, could not recover from the first Nebraska loss since 2004 against a non-power conference program or major independent. Moos dropped the hammer when the season ended in November.

3. The Colorado losses in 2018 and 2019. They stung for different reasons. First, the Buffs were in no shape to beat a decent team in either year. In what turned out to be Frost’s debut in 2018 after the Akron cancellation, Nebraska led late but wilted in the 33-28 defeat when freshman QB Adrian Martinez was injured. A year later in Boulder, the Buffs won 34-31 in overtime after the Huskers built a 17-0 lead at halftime. These one-score losses stood out as extra painful among the 22 that Frost lost in 27 games decided by eight points or fewer.

4. The onside kick. Under pressure from Alberts, Frost surrendered offensive play calling ahead of the 2022 season. The coach was unhappy about it. And in the opener against Northwestern, set at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, he called for an onside kick after the Huskers took a 28-17 lead in the third quarter. His bid to bury the Wildcats backfired. Northwestern, which went winless after the opener, capitalized on the short field to score a touchdown. It rallied to win 31-28. The glaring mistake, in Week 0 on an international stage, further eroded confidence in Frost. He lost his job two weeks later.

5. The 2024 blowout at Indiana. This one’s fresh. Rhule and the Huskers took momentum out of a bye week after their 5-1 start. Nebraska stood a chance to snap its 25-game losing streak against AP-ranked foes. Instead, it lost by 49 points, the third-largest margin in school history. First-year IU coach Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers outmaneuvered Nebraska repeatedly in an embarrassing defeat against a program that hadn’t won more than eight games since 1967. These Hoosiers are 8-0, though, as they play at Michigan State on Saturday.

(Photo: Dylan Widger / Imagn Images)

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – This Election Day, Nebraskans will have the opportunity to weigh in on two historic and conflicting ballot measures regarding abortion access in the state.

VOTER’S GUIDE: 2024 Nebraska General Election

Initiative 434 aims to put the existing 12-week abortion ban into the state’s constitution, while Initiative 439 is trying expand abortion access up to the point of fetal viability. This is the first time that Nebraska is having two competing ballot measures.

“There’s nothing about these that can be reconciled. So whichever one of these gets the most votes is likely to become the initiative that gets adopted into the Nebraska constitution,” Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen said in April.

The Nebraska Legislature passed a 12-week abortion ban in 2023, and Initiative 434 would enshrine that into the state’s constitution but allow for abortion when necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy stems from sexual assault or incest.

Protect Women and Children is campaigning for Initiative 434.

“Initiative 434 protects laws that require parental consent before a girl under 18 can get an abortion, allowing parents to be their for our daughters. This is just common sense,” Rebecca Schwend, who supports 434, said.

Hannah Dumais, a field organizer campaigning for the conflicting Initiative 439, said the current ban is hurting women across the state.

“I personally was a woman who ended up miscarrying at 16.5 weeks and I started to miscarry, and I was sent home and had to wait until I was hemorrhaging and almost dead before I had to come back. And so I know the type of impact that it has on women from a personal standpoint,” Dumais said.

Advocates of 434 look to this as a moral necessity.

“Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent child. That is not healthcare. How can it be called healthcare when the procedure ends in death,” Kate Leising who supports 434 said.

The initiatives will be the last thing you see on your ballot, and 434 is the first of six to vote on.

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After suffering two losses in a row, there has been mounting criticism of the Nebraska Cornhuskers offense and specifically offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield. However, freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola believes that criticism is unfair.

While being asked about the offense’s lack of explosive plays, Raiola shared that he’s confident the Cornhuskers can find more big plays. He also took the time to point out that he feels Satterfield is giving them opportunities but the issue has been execution.

“I feel confident. I think it’s just a matter of execution, now,” Dylan Raiola said. “You know, Coach Satt gives us the plays to go do it and as players we have to go out there and execute it. I know Coach Satt’s getting a lot of heat right now on his plays that he’s calling and I think that’s unfair to him.”

The numbers on offense haven’t been great for Nebraska this season. It’s been three weeks since the Cornhuskers scored more than 17 points in a game and Nebraska only scored more than 30 points twice, both of which were non-conference games.

For the season, Nebraska is 93rd in the country in total offense, averaging 358.1 yards per game. Then, the Cornhuskers are 96th in scoring offense this season, averaging 24 points per game.

“He can’t go out there and make plays and do everything that he’s coaching us to do,” Raiola said. “So, as players and as the quarterback of this offense, I take the responsibility for that and for us to go out there and execute. That’s not his fault. Yeah, I think we can push the ball down the field and I think we will.”

That relationship between Dylan Raiola and Marcus Satterfield is, of course, vital to the Cornhuskers moving forward. Still a freshman, Raiola is growing as a quarterback and that growth is largely going to be thanks to the work that Satterfield does.

For the season, Raiola has completed 66.1 percent of his passes for 1,744 yards and nine touchdowns to go with seven interceptions. That’s 218 passing yards per game. However, in Nebraska’s last three games, Raiola hasn’t thrown a touchdown and has four interceptions. Twice in those three games, he’s thrown for less than 200 yards in the game.

Nebraska is currently 5-3, looking to snap a two-game losing streak and get to bowl eligibility for the season. If they do, it would be the program’s first time getting to a bowl since 2016. Standing in Nebraska’s way is a UCLA team coming off its first Big Ten win.