1928 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team The 1928 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team was the representative of the University of Nebraska in the 1928 college football season . The team was coached by Ernest Bearg and played their home games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln , Nebraska . Before the season . Coach Bearg ' s Cornhuskers had accomplished many feats , but had yet to put up a conference title banner during his tenure . The Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association had split up following the 1927 season , with the smaller schools ( Drake , Grinnell , Oklahoma A & M , and Washington ( MO ) ) forming a new league , the similarly named Missouri Valley Conference . The schools which remained in the MVIAA ( Iowa State , Kansas , Kansas State , Missouri , Nebraska , and Oklahoma ) were henceforth commonly referred to as the Big Six Conference , although the league ' s name technically was not changed . The result was that the league no longer had teams from smaller schools which were typically easily overwhelmed by Nebraska . Securing a league title was now more difficult than ever . Game notes . Iowa State . Iowa State allowed the Cornhuskers just one touchdown in the first half , which was earned through fierce competition . After the break , the Cyclones continued to thwart Nebraska and made big gains of their own , yet somehow failed to turn any of their advances into points on the board . The Cornhuskers found the end zone one more time and finished the scoring , opening the conference slate in the new Big 6 with a shutout victory and pulling farther ahead of Iowa State in the series , 18 - 4 - 1 . Montana State . The Cornhuskers started off slowly in the home opener , managing to lead the Bobcats 13 - 6 at the half , but it was all Nebraska when the teams returned to the field . Montana State allowed several big key plays which handed all of the momentum to the Cornhuskers , who rolled off another 13 points and took the win in the first meeting of these teams . Syracuse . Syracuse , long a source of frustration for the Cornhuskers , arrived in Lincoln to open Nebraska ' s non - conference slate . Both teams utilized extensive forward passes in a game of aerial attacks . Nebraska ' s first touchdown was countered not too long after by Syracuse before the half . Both teams fought back and forth in the second half but never found the scoreboard , and the game was ultimately decided by the successful Nebraska 1 - point place kick in the first quarter , as the kick after the Orangemen ' s lone touchdown had failed . Nebraska at last had evened up the series at 3 - 3 against Syracuse all - time . Missouri . In recognition of the established rivalry that had emerged between these teams in the recent years , the programs agreed to trade possession of a trophy , to be held by the current victor . An old bell ( later to be known as the Victory Bell ) was secured for this purpose , and was engraved with the score of the 1927 7 - 6 Missouri triumph . Not long before the kickoff , Missouri was presented with the bell . It was an intense atmosphere as Missouri was unbeaten on the year , and still wearing the badge of three straight Cornhusker defeats . In front of a stadium and conference record crowd in Lincoln , at the Nebraska ' s homecoming game , the Cornhuskers took command of their destiny and made a strong push for the conference title by shutting the Tigers completely down . With only a 7 - 0 lead by the half , it looked to be a game , but as the game wore on the Cornhuskers rolled without opposition . Missouri ' s three - game win streak over Nebraska was snapped , and the Cornhuskers improved to 15 - 6 - 1 over the Tigers . The bell was then carried back across the field and turned over to Nebraska until such time that Missouri could secure a future win against the Cornhuskers . Kansas . Nebraska was 4 - 0 and had outscored the season ' s opponents 69 - 12 so far , and the contest in Lawrence was more of the same . It mattered little that Kansas , like Missouri before them , was unbeaten so far this year , as the Cornhuskers held Kansas back to start off , and then overpowered them on the way to a shutout victory in front of the Jayhawks ' homecoming crowd . Nebraska had not yet allowed any conference foes to score a single point on them this season , and Kansas fell to 9 - 24 - 2 against the Cornhuskers all - time . Oklahoma . For the third straight game , Nebraska met an undefeated conference foe , and for the second straight game , it was the opponents ' homecoming event . This game was different , however , in that the Sooners became the only Big 6 team to score on the Cornhuskers for the entire 1928 season . Unfortunately for Oklahoma , those 6 points were swept away by the Nebraska onslaught which racked up 44 points before time expired . With the victory , Nebraska advanced to 6 - 1 - 1 in the series . Pittsburgh . The Cornhuskers hoped to avenge the defeat handed to them by Pittsburgh last year , but the win would elude both teams on the muddy field that day . Nebraska was on its heels for much of the contest , failing to even get a first down in the course of the game as the plan of attack was primarily about defense . The Panthers , unable to score all day , were forced to settle for the scoreless tie . The series between these squads was left evenly - matched at 1 - 1 - 1 . Army . The Cornhuskers traveled to West Point for the first ever meeting of the Cadets with any Big 6 team . The Army squad was an eastern team to be feared , carrrying only one loss on their season to date , and it looked to be a major event as Nebraska itself was rolling along with just the scoreless tie of last week making any blemish on the record . The teams seemed evenly matched to start , and it wasn ' t until the 2nd quarter than Nebraska put the first points on the board . Settling back to hold the three point lead , the Cornhuskers went into a strong defensive mode , but the Army squad found the end zone in the third quarter anyway . Night fell , and play was complicated by the darkness on the unlit field , yet Army managed one more late touchdown to firmly seal the game and hand the Cornhuskers their first and only loss of 1928 . Kansas State . Nebraska faced conference foe Kansas State in the final game of the year , closing out the season in a Lincoln snowstorm at Memorial Stadium . Nebraska made the first strike early in the first quarter and went on the prevent the Aggies from ever finding the scoreboard to catch up . As Kansas State eventually began to fold later in the game , the Cornhuskers tacked on a late safety to seal the outcome and push their commanding history over the Aggies to 12 - 0 - 1 . With the win , Nebraska was unbeaten in conference play and clinched the league title . After the season . Coach Bearg finally obtained the league title after four previous attempts fell short , and when his squad finally did bring the banner home it was against a much tougher league than the MVIAA had been before evolving into the Big 6 . Bearg , having secured the title , was offered the head coaching position at Washburn , his alma mater , and departed the Nebraska program after improving his final record in Lincoln to 23 - 7 - 3 ( . 742 ) . Coach Bearg also left Nebraska ' s overall record improved at 220 - 74 - 20 ( . 732 ) and his perfect conference slate for 1928 helped improve Nebraska ' s league record to 54 - 8 - 5 ( . 843 ) . Nebraska then set about the task of searching for their eighteenth head football coach .