Missouri–Nebraska football rivalry

The Missouri–Nebraska football rivalry was an American college football rivalry between the Missouri Tigers and Nebraska Cornhuskers. For over 100 years, the teams met annually as members of the WIUFA, Big Eight, and Big 12. The Missouri–Nebraska Bell (often referred to as the Victory Bell) was presented to the winner from 1927 until NU joined the Big Ten in 2010, ending its series with MU.

History

Missouri and Nebraska were founding members of the Western Interstate University Football Association in 1892 and first met on November 5 of the same year, a 1–0 forfeit win for Nebraska in Omaha after the Tigers refused to play against African-American George Flippin. Flippin later joked "I was so good I beat the University of Missouri all by myself." MU agreed to face Flippin and NU in 1893 and 1894, winning both games.

The teams joined the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (later the Big Eight Conference) in 1907 but did not begin playing annually until 1922, the first of eighty-eight consecutive seasons the Tigers and Cornhuskers met. Nebraska controlled the series until the late 1930s, when Missouri began a stretch of nineteen victories in twenty-five games that lasted until NU hired Bob Devaney in 1962.

Devaney turned Nebraska into a national powerhouse throughout the 1960s, but the Cornhuskers did not immediately gain control of the series against the Tigers. Missouri's 16–7 1962 victory in Lincoln was the first game of Nebraska's NCAA-record sellout streak. NU won the next four games against MU, but the Tigers responded with three consecutive victories and shared the Big Eight title with Nebraska in 1969, the program's most recent conference championship.

Missouri defeated Devaney's successor Tom Osborne in four of his first six seasons, including Osborne's first loss as a head coach in 1973, with Nebraska ranked in the national top five in each matchup.