National Champions

At the beginning of the 1970 football season, Nebraska team was ranked ninth in the AP polls. By the end, they were unbeaten and crowned the 1970 football champions by receiving thirty-nine votes. This was the first national title Nebraska had ever won and came under the coaching of the legendary Robert “Bob” Devaney. There were three different “if” situations that needed to happen and they all did. Both Texas and Ohio State lost in their bowl games and Nebraska was able to pull off a victory by defeating LSU in the Orange Bowl. Nebraska trailed 10-12 at the half, but went on to win the game 17-12 and receive the title of National Champions. This also led to President Nixon coming to town (Huskers Win National Football Crown).

The Game of the Century

During the 1971 football season, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were looking for their second consecutive national title. To accomplish this, they needed to defeat the Oklahoma Sooners. The catch, however, was that Nebraska was number one and Oklahoma was number two in the rankings for the majority of the season. The regular season game the two would play would be more important than either of the bowl games they would go play in during the post-season. The hype before the game was intense; Devaney had to schedule closed practices because there were too many people attending the players practices leading up to the game. Both Nebraska (NU) and Oklahoma (OU) had regular season games with Colorado, another national title contender; and in each of those games NU and OU were able to come out with fairly easy wins, adding hype to the NU-OU match-up. There was also the “Snake Pit Jinx.” Up until 1969, the Nebraska Cornhusker team had only ever won one other time in Norman, Oklahoma; this curse was known as the Snake Pit Jinx. The 1971 Nebraska squad going into Norman, however, was undiscouraged by the supposed Jinx and felt that if there really was one, the 1969 team had broken it. The game was extremely intense with both teams having the lead at different points of the game. Nebraska’s last score, however, sealed the deal and the Huskers pulled off a win, 35-31 (Not Just Another Game…).

Coed Visitation

During the summer of 1971, there was a proposal to the Board of Regents that the dormitory coed visitation be liberalized. At the time it was against the rules to have someone of the opposite gender in the student’s dorm room. President Soshnik claimed that it was because a survey they had taken of the opinions of the students parents showed that their opinion “ ‘falls far short of overwhelming support for the policy’” (Regents Reject). The students were not at all happy with this decision and many planned to boycott it. The situation made relationships between the students and regents stressed and tense. Essentially the whole argument came down to whether the University was going to be the parent of the students or not. Also the lowering of the voting age added to the idea that eighteen and nineteen year-olds were able adults who could make decisions about who should be allowed in their dorm room or not.

War Protests

On May 4, 1970, there was a peace march that ended with the arrests of thirteen people, twelve of whom were University of Nebraska-Lincoln students. The rally began on the steps of the Union and then fifty students walked to the Terminal Building to ask the draft board to shut down for the day. After the draft board refused, policemen declared that what the students were doing was illegal and that they needed to leave. After the arrests, one hundred-fifty more students walked down and silently protested across the street from the Terminal Building. That night students decided to camp out in the Military and Naval Science Building where they remained until 10:00 am the next day, May 5 (ROTC Building Occupied).While in the Military Building, students gave President Joseph Soshnik a list of six demands: amnesty for the students arrested at draft board or who may be arrested at the ROTC, the University board to back the National Student Association strike on classes, for the ROTC to be suspended, the campus police to not carry guns on the campuses, the Regents' meetings open to the public, and that free University classes would receive one hour of credit toward a student’s degree (Dvorak).The sit-in at the Military and Naval Science building did not lead to any arrests, but it lead to the dismissal of the teacher, Stephan L. Rozman (Knoll, 154-155).

Rozman Protests

There were also student protests over Professor Stephen L. Rozman's dismissal. At the beginning of the 1970-1971 school year, ASUN, the Student Senate called a meeting to decide what action to take about the fired Rozman; the decision to not renew his contract had taken place over the summer. Another group of students decided to participate in a two-day fast in Love Library at the President Soshnik's office. The same Monday the fast began, fifty students marched over to Chancellor D.B. Varner's office and protested Rozman's dismissal (Seacrest). The Chancellor attempted to tell them that even the Regent's were divided on the Rozman issue. The students held the claim that what the Regents were doing was repressive plus the students had no say in the affairs, but were affected by the decisions of the Regents. The students wanted more of democratic society for the University. The fasting protestors in Soshnik's office eventually were convinced to become a group of three that was a physical representation of the repression of University policy. One of the three representatives was a teacher who, as an untenured teacher, wanted to find out if the Regents could or would remove him the same way they removed Rozman. As far as Soshnik was concerned, he didn't mind the protestors as long as they were undisruptive (Rozman Dismissal Prompts 2-day Fast).

Love Library was going through some hard times at the beginning of the 1970's. The head of the library claimed that the funding to the library was inadequate (Love Funds). Later, though, when Governor Exon was proposing University budget cuts (Budget Cuts), there were plans to expand the Library. There were also high points for the library during this time period. In 1971, the Library acquired a  rare volume of the "Works of Geoffrey Chaucer" that had been published in 1542. The "Works" were eventually found to be the Library's one millionth volume. At the end of 1971 a Lincoln minister died and his cousin from Massachusetts donated two hundred volumes and other manuscripts from the minister's personal library (Classics).