Editor’s note: This is the second in a series by The Athletic looking at five pivotal upsets from the 2001 season that still resonate 20 years later.
It wasn’t the 62 points, more than any opponent had scored against Nebraska in 11 decades of playing football.
It wasn’t the 380 rushing yards, either, that Colorado accumulated, more than four times the average figure surrendered by Nebraska’s stout defense.
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No, it was the method by which Colorado beat the Cornhuskers on a cool Boulder Black Friday afternoon that sent shockwaves radiating back to Lincoln, in every direction, really, and through the sport’s power structure, ultimately contributing to the changing of the postseason formula.
The 15th-ranked Buffaloes pummelled BCS No. 1 Nebraska with simple misdirection and sheer power, winning 62-36 on Nov. 23, 2001, to claim the Big 12 North crown and end 10 years of frustration against their more successful rival.
“I think I was in shock for a long time — weeks, months, years,” said Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch, the 2001 Heisman Trophy winner and Sports Illustrated cover subject the week of the Colorado game. “I’ll never not be in shock about that one. We were a better team than Colorado. They were a better team that day. But we let that one go. It was a complete upset.”
Colorado won in a display reminiscent of the poundings delivered so often by Nebraska over the 30 years prior. The Buffs leaned on senior quarterback Bobby Pesavento, inserted midseason for injured Craig Ochs, All-America tight end Daniel Graham and a pair of sophomore running backs, Chris Brown and Bobby Purify.
Brown, an overlooked Northwestern transfer who in 2004 led the NFL in yards per carry with the Tennessee Titans, rushed for 198 yards and a school-record six touchdowns. His yardage total, at that point, was the fourth-highest ever recorded against Nebraska. And Purify, who replaced injured starter Cortlen Johnson on the Buffs’ opening drive, gained 154 yards, the 11th-highest rushing output surrendered by the Huskers.
“They took us for granted,” Brown said after the game. “They thought they could just come in and manhandle us like they do every year.”
Instead, the Colorado offensive line, featuring stars Andre Gurode and Victor Rogers, opened giant holes. Purify burst through into stunningly wide-open space for gains of 39 and 44 yards in the first quarter, with a 78-yard sprint called back on a holding call.
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Boiled down, it turned into a game of chess between Colorado offensive coordinator Shawn Watson — who later worked for five seasons at Nebraska under Bill Callahan and Bo Pelini — and the Huskers’ second-year defensive coordinator, Craig Bohl.
Watson moved all the right pieces. “We were just so far out of position,” Crouch said, “it wasn’t even funny.”
Colorado entered at 8-2 after an August loss against Fresno State and a Week 8 debacle at Texas. Nebraska, 11-0, sat atop the all-important Bowl Championship Series standings set to determine the participants in the national championship game and No. 2 in the Associated Press poll behind Miami.
To the winner went a trip to the Big 12 title game at Texas Stadium, presumably against fourth-ranked Oklahoma, which needed only to beat three-win Oklahoma State on Saturday in Norman.
Four weeks earlier, the Huskers had dramatically defeated the Sooners 20-10 in Lincoln.
Colorado, meanwhile, zeroed in on Nebraska. The Buffs hadn’t won in the series since 1990, when Gary Barnett worked as an offensive assistant under Bill McCartney, the legendary CU coach who designated Nebraska as the Buffs’ chief rival.
From 1996 to 2000, the Huskers won five games against Colorado by a total of 15 points. And after Barnett’s return from Northwestern as head coach, Nebraska had won 33-30 in overtime in 1999 as CU missed a field goal at the end of regulation and 34-32 in 2000 on Josh Brown’s 29-yard kick as time expired.
The ramifications of defeat in 2001 for Nebraska were devastating. Though it backed into the BCS championship game against Miami in the Rose Bowl, coach Frank Solich’s program never regained its prestige.
Did bitter rival Colorado dismantle Nebraska’s dynasty in a single day? The debate rages.
The Athletic interviewed key figures from the 2001 game, seeking insight into the factors that led to the Buffs’ dominant performance, Nebraska’s vulnerabilities and the long aftermath, arguably still unfolding two decades later.
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Graham: First of all, I’m from Colorado, so I knew what the rivalry was about. But my class coming in, we learned as freshmen. It was the red-letter game. The week we played Nebraska, the scout team, we’d make them practice, even stretch, on the other side of the field. They had their helmets taped up with the “N.” That’s how big it was. And just to lose the way we did those first four years, it was one thing to get your butt whooped or to just flat-out get beat, but the way we lost to Nebraska in those four years, it hurt. It was devastating. I’d rather lose by two touchdowns than by a field goal. It was something that we never forgot. And going into our last year, we all remembered. We had just as much confidence going into that game as going into any game. It made it even better that they were No. 1 coming into Boulder.
Pesavento: We were a quietly confident team. We knew that Nebraska hadn’t had to go on the road and play anybody. We had a ton of respect for them, but we felt we were pretty darn good up front and could show them something that they hadn’t seen all year. That being said, the way so many of those games ended five, 10 years prior to 2001, that senior group wanted to be the group that finally beat Nebraska and ended that drought. We knew we could beat them. But anybody on our team would be crazy to say it was going to happen the way it did.
DeMoine Adams (Nebraska junior defensive end): We beat Kansas State two weeks before. We were the No. 1 team in the country. And to be quite honest, we somewhat had our sights on the Big 12 championship. Similar to all of the other games like Kansas and Baylor, we just felt that Colorado would be another game to prep us. Mentally, as a defense, taking ownership as a Blackshirt, we had our minds set on the Big 12 championship. We did not go in thinking Colorado was going to give us that kind of a game.
Crouch: There could have been players, there might have been coaches who didn’t (treat it seriously), but there was no doubt in my mind that it was going to be a very close football game. I’d played Colorado enough in my career to know the landscape. The games that I played against Colorado were all dogfights.
George Darlington (Nebraska secondary coach, 29th season): We never looked past anybody. In all my years with Tom (Osborne) and Frank, we only lost one game to a team with a losing record, and that was because we took every game seriously, obviously an opponent like Colorado even more so than a lesser team.
Barnett: On the outside, you would look and think that was bigger because of the (previous few losses). But we made such a big deal out of the Nebraska game no matter what year it was. And there was a sense within that team that this was going to happen. We didn’t know what it was going to look like, but it was going to happen. It might be a one-point victory, but we felt we could win the game.
Twice in its previous three visits to Boulder, Nebraska had scored on its first play from scrimmage. But in 2001, the Huskers started slow, with a three-and-out and a fumble lost by I-back Dahrran Diedrick on the second play of the second possession.
Purify’s first big run put the Buffs on top, and Pesavento hit Graham for a 21-yard touchdown after the turnover. Soon, everything spiraled for Nebraska. Crouch slipped in the backfield on a fourth-and-1 option keeper at midfield, leading two plays later to another score. The Buffs led 35-3 after Chris Brown’s second touchdown run less than three minutes into the second quarter.
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Darlington: We made a strategic error. We changed the defense going into the game, because we were concerned about their size. We took a base defense — I’m afraid I was the main instigator — and we just thought we couldn’t use our (third) linebacker, because their linemen were so big. We placed another lineman in the game. The linebacker was more fluid and would have been able to make some plays that the lineman couldn’t make. That really hurt us. We outsmarted ourselves. We ended up one short.
Adams: What I can remember, they kept running the same play up the middle, I mean, for yards and yards. It was just hard to believe. It was literally the same play — simple, very basic. We just could not stop it.
Pesavento: It was one of those moments where everyone clicked and everything was right. We had four really special backs. I think Chris (Brown) was third or fourth on the depth chart going into that game. It was a combination of those guys being hard, tough runners and the guys up front being really good. That wasn’t anything we put in that week special for Nebraska; just a great combination of using some misdirection and then play-action off it. We had them on their heels. They didn’t know in that first half where it was coming from and who it was going to.
Tracey Wistrom (Nebraska senior tight end and third-team All-American): It was out of control. As an offense, we were on the sideline, prepping on the next series. You’re not too focused on what’s happening defensively. But I will say I do remember looking up and thinking, “Wow, we’re not touching them till 8, 9 yards down the field.”
Barnett: We figured out a way through a couple of different motions that we could end up without any (defenders) in the middle of the field. It gave us some good blocking angles. As the game wore on, our confidence grew and we could run anything we wanted — just because the kids felt like it didn’t make any difference, they were going to block them.
Crouch: It was a first-round knockdown. And now you’re fighting for your life.
Nebraska found its footing in the second quarter, though Colorado continued to move the ball. At halftime, the Buffs led 42-23, and the Huskers generated a defensive stop to open the third quarter. Crouch took Nebraska down the field, connecting with Wistrom for a 9-yard gain to the 1.
But on the next play, Diedrick lost another fumble, forced by cornerback Donald Strickland and recovered by defensive tackle DeAndre Fluellen.
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Crouch: The turning point was that fumble on the 1-yard line. I’m not putting the game on Dahrran. No chance at all. Our defense, our offense, we all had our mishaps. But if it’s a one-score game, I think Colorado gives up. I hate to say it like that, but the experience I had with Colorado for many years was that they were going to be the best football team we’d ever seen for two quarters, and then probably the worst football team we’d ever seen for two quarters.
Darlington: I had close friends from Colorado who, in the third quarter, felt we were going to come back and win.
Barnett: I never felt like it was out of control.
Nebraska linebacker Scott Shanle nearly buried Brown for a safety on the play after the fumble. The Buffs stalled, and Crouch scored on the next drive to cut Colorado’s lead to 42-30. Another defensive stop provided the Huskers with an opportunity late in the third quarter. But they couldn’t get a first down, opting to punt from the CU 40.
Brown carried the load as the Buffs drove 93 yards to score, widening the lead to 19 points in the fourth quarter. Nebraska did not mount another challenge, even as Crouch finished with 162 rushing yards and 198 passing to set a school record for total offense in a game.
Crouch: It’s hard when you’re down that much, running the football. But there was no doubt in my mind, at 35-3, that we were going to win that game. And as I look at myself, this is where I wish I was a better leader. I wish I had been more vocal. Maybe I did say something to the team, but I needed to dig down even deeper.
Adams: Eric was always one of the hardest workers, a strong leader by example. He did that all year long. He was the main reason that we were the No. 1 team in the country. Eric was the man. He proved himself.
Barnett: We had so much respect for Crouch and that defense. That’s why we prepared the way we did. We knew we had to have our best performance of the year. When you totally respect somebody, you just turn every stone over. You listen more intently. You’re more tuned in. That’s what we were.
Colorado staffers and security lowered the Folsom Field goal posts before ABC’s Jack Arute finished with his interview of Barnett on the field. Soon, the dominoes began to fall, too.
Oklahoma State upset Oklahoma 16-13, sending Texas to the Big 12 title game against Colorado. On Dec. 1, Tennessee beat Florida and QB Rex Grossman, Crouch’s chief Heisman competitor.
A week later, LSU beat the one-loss Volunteers in the SEC title game. Colorado got revenge against Texas, 39-37 in Irving, Texas. Crouch won the Heisman that same night, edging Grossman by 62 points. And on Sunday, Dec. 9, while the AP and coaches’ polls placed one-loss Oregon and the two-loss Buffs ahead of 11-1 Nebraska, the conglomeration of computer ratings, which accounted for 50 percent of the BCS formula, pushed the Huskers to the No. 2 spot in the decisive standings. Nebraska, somehow, was headed to Pasadena.
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Barnett: We were having our banquet. I sort of knew I was going to get a call in the middle and would be able to announce to our team what we were going to do. I got called out, and when they told me, I had made up my mind that I was a system guy. Whatever the system was, I wasn’t going to complain about it. I agreed to it. It was what it was, and you’ve just got to take it and go if it doesn’t go your way. So I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say this makes me mad or this is unfair. I didn’t say any of that. I walked back into the banquet and made the announcement that we were going to play Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl and that Nebraska was going to play Miami in the national championship game. You could have just heard a pin drop. Everybody went quiet.
Graham: This was the start of the college football people not getting the (championship game) right. There’s no way in hell Nebraska should have played in that game. How did you not win your conference and end up playing in the national championship game? We do feel like we were robbed. We feel like we were deserving.
Wistrom: I don’t blame them. I’d be feeling the same exact way. Fortunately for us, we were the chosen ones.
Crouch: The right teams lost. I can remember sitting in New York and watching it. The magic recipe happened. The magic disaster happened, for whatever reasons. It gave our team another opportunity.
Oregon beat Colorado 38-16 in the Fiesta Bowl. Barnett said he never got his players back to the emotional high they achieved against Nebraska and Texas. And Miami, a team now considered among the best in college football history, crushed Nebraska 37-14 in the championship game.
After the 2003 season, the BCS reduced the weight of the computer polls. The change, if in place in 2001, would have provided an opponent in the Rose Bowl other than Nebraska for the Hurricanes.
Brown played another season in Boulder and left early for the NFL Draft in 2003. The New England Patriots selected Graham in the first round of the 2002 draft. Barnett, after consecutive blowout losses against Nebraska and Texas in 2005, was forced to resign.
Still, they have their 2001 moment. Old CU teammates reveled in it recently when the series resumed, according to Pesavento, who handled sideline work for Colorado’s radio broadcast in the 2018 and ’19 games — both close wins for the Buffs.
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Graham: I was fortunate to play in two Super Bowls and win two Super Bowls. But that Colorado-Nebraska game sits No. 1 on my all-time list. Just to beat them the way we did, it’s still talked about 20 years later. It brings back great memories. Two, three years ago, right before we played Nebraska again, they replayed it on TV. I have that game recorded on my DVR, and I won’t delete it. I watched it with my wife, because my wife married into the CU family. She didn’t know anything about it. As we were getting ready to go to the game here in Boulder (in 2019), I said, “You have to watch this game to understand what people are saying.” I think she got up and walked away at halftime. She was like, “This wasn’t a game. Y’all kicked their butts.”
Pesavento: It’s definitely the greatest moment in my football career, and I don’t know anybody on that team who would say differently.
Nebraska, as it traveled to Boulder on Thanksgiving Day 2001, had won 11 games or more in seven of the past nine seasons and no fewer than nine games in any year since 1968. From 1969 through kickoff in Boulder 20 years ago, it went 339-60. That’s 35 more victories than any other program nationally over the same period.
The Huskers, since the day of that defeat, are 141-101, without a conference title. They’ve not won more than 10 games in a season since 2001.
After the Huskers finished 7-7 in 2002, Solich fired Bohl and Darlington, among five assistant coaches to depart. A year later, Solich was fired, too, at the close of a 9-3 regular season capped by a 31-22 win at Colorado.
So let’s ask the question as the Huskers, 20 years later, plot their rebound from five losing seasons since 2015: Was the downfall of Nebraska football set in motion on that Friday afternoon in Boulder?
Darlington: It was a devastating loss. It was a crucial game, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the demise of Nebraska football. I think that’s completely ridiculous. In my mind, it’s ludicrous. I think there are other factors that caused us to be in the situation we’re in now. The next year, the staff was basically fired during the season. That, I think, was a factor in the demise. And the big change with the demise of Nebraska football came after the 2003 season. (Solich) got fired and you brought in (Callahan), who completely dismantled how we practiced and how we prepared.
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Pesavento: If someone wants to give us credit for ruining their program, fine, we’ll take it. But I’d rather see a good Colorado program and a good Nebraska program.
Wistrom: I don’t think one loss dictates a program. Do I think it was a shot to the ego for the guys who were there and continued to go through the program? Yeah, I do. But I look at that as a reason to get better and a reason to show up the next day, the next year and make sure that doesn’t happen again. The program went downhill from there, but to pinpoint that one loss, I don’t see it.
Crouch: I would say yes. That was a very disappointing loss. And to pile on more, the loss to Miami and what happened to Frank Solich and that team two years later and then the roller coaster of coaches, I think that Colorado game was the beginning.
Barnett: It’s pretty easy to look at it and say, “That’s where it started.” Nebraska people tend to do that. But I don’t think we ever really know. It’s not usually just one thing; it’s a bunch of stuff. That’s another article, I think. You can derive that, but who knows?
The passion on both sides provides an attractive backdrop for the resumption of the rivalry. Conversation and the argument about 2001 will rage, no doubt, as Nebraska returns to Boulder in 2023. The Buffs are scheduled to visit Lincoln in 2024.
Graham: There is still hatred for me. I’m sure it’s likewise with Nebraska toward Colorado. It sucks as a fan of that game that we’re in different conferences. But there are times still that I will maybe check out Nebraska. My neighbor who lives directly across from me flies his Nebraska flag, so I am reminded. I fly my flag back at him.
(Photo of Chris Brown: Andy Cross / Denver Post via Getty Images; Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)
