The past few weeks many college programs have held their spring football games. Although these games are a scrimmage the popularity of the spring game has grown in the last 15 years. At Florida’s spring game coach Urban Meyer offered a scholarship to any student who could beat his 3 fastest receivers in the 40 yard dash. Of course no student won but it was a pretty neat gimmick. Last year Alabama’s spring game was a sell-out, 92,000+showed up to watch their new coach Nick Saban. My school, Nebraska, had a sell-out at their annual Red-White game this year because of new coach Bo Pelini. Many Husker fans are hoping that Pelini can restore the Huskers back to greatness and the anticipation showed with the spring game attendance.
My freshman year at Nebraska was 1995, that year’s Nebraska team is regarded by many to be the greatest college football team of all time. They dominated in all facets of the game, the offense was prolific and the defense gave up nothing. In the championship game against Florida they crushed the Gators, 62-24, and became the first team since Oklahoma to win back to back titles. The spring game was going to be a celebration of the back to back champions. Former backup QB Brook Berringer was going to play with country band Sawyer Brown and the two Sears National championship trophies were going to be on display. It turned out to be a memorable spring game for an entirely different reason.
Brook Berringer had led Nebraska for most of the 1994 season after starter Tommie Frazier went out with blood clots in his leg. He was a better passer than Frazier but Frazier ran the Nebraska option attack much better. Frazier made it back for the Orange Bowl against Miami and led the Huskers to a come from behind win and enabled coach Tom Osborne to win his first national title after many near misses. In 1995, Frazier was healthy and Berringer went back to being the backup with no complaints. He still managed a lot of playing time because Nebraska was usually up by 4 touchdowns before halftime. In the championship game against Florida he scored the last of many Nebraska touchdowns. Berringer was thought to be a decent pro prospect and was going to be drafted in the ‘96 draft, which happened to fall on the same weekend as the spring game.
On April 18, 1996, two days before the NFL draft, Brook Berringer and his friend died in a crash of Berringer’s Piper Cub plane. I remember hearing about it from a friend of mine as I was walking back from the cafeteria. The whole campus was in shock and the celebration before the spring game was now going to be a memorial to Brook. Of the 4 spring games I attended at Nebraska this was the best one, not because of the game but of the celebration of Brook Berringer’s life and the close to 50,000 people who came to Memorial Stadium to pay tribute to him. It was very emotional and there was not a dry eye in Memorial Stadium that Saturday morning. This memory of the 1996 spring game is always the first thing that pops in my mind when analysts start breaking down spring games on college campuses throughout the country.
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