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What are the Nebraska Blackshirts? Explaining Huskers' defense nickname

Craig Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORKNovember 1, 2025 at 7:06 AM

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This weekend, the normally red-clad confines of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium will be covered in black.

The Cornhuskers’ game against USC on Saturday, Nov. 1 is a designated “blackout” game, with coach Matt Rhule’s team set to wear black jerseys on a field with black end zones and in front of tens of thousands of fans decked out in black clothing.

Blackouts are nothing particularly new in college or professional sports, with the concept gaining popularity in the 2000s, even for teams that don’t have black as one of their primary colors.

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For Nebraska, the hue has a different and cherished meaning.

The "Blackshirts," a reference to the Huskers’ defense, is a central part of the Nebraska football lore, something that helped the Huskers win five national championships and become one of the most storied programs in college football history.

Here’s a closer look at the history of the Blackshirts:

Nebraska Blackshirts

Under coaches Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne, Nebraska football became a powerhouse, a program that regularly competed for championships.

From 1970 through 1997, the Huskers won five national titles and 16 conference championships while racking up 17 seasons with at least 10 wins and competing in bowls that are now a part of the New Year’s Six lineup 24 times.

One of the many forces behind that decorated run was a ferocious defense. It was a unit that not only kept opponents out of the end zone and off the scoreboard, but one that had a mythology develop around it.

After the 1963 season, the NCAA ended the one-platoon system, meaning that teams had unlimited substitutions and were able to create dedicated offensive, defensive and special teams units. Though Devaney played most of his starters on both offense and defense in Nebraska’s 1964 season opener, a 56-0 victory against South Dakota, he announced in the days leading up to a Sept. 26 game at Minnesota that he would be using separate offensive and defensive units.

The move presented an organizational challenge, with the coaches needing a way to distinguish between offensive and defensive players during practice that week. As the story goes, Huskers assistant Mike Corgan went to a local sporting goods store to look for pullovers for players to wear in practice. The frugal Corgan noticed an abundance of black jerseys, which he purchased for the Nebraska defense.

"I told Mike the only reason they had black ones was because they didn't sell,” Nebraska defensive line coach George Kelly once said.

Defensive players weren’t guaranteed to wear a black pullover. According to Kelly, Huskers defenders had previously worn gray pullovers, but when the switch to offensive and defensive units was made, black pullovers were given only to starters, something that was used as a motivational tactic.

The idea of the “Black Shirt” quickly caught on in the local media, with newspapers in Lincoln and Omaha making reference to the shirts in stories. It didn’t hurt that those Nebraska defenses in the early days of the black pullovers were particularly stout. In that fateful 1964 season, the Huskers had the nation’s No. 2 total defense. Three years later, in 1967, they were No. 1.

Even as coaches and players changed, the “Blackshirt” moniker (which eventually became a single word) persisted.

Facets of it were altered. Players’ numbers and names were added to the jerseys. They were no longer handed out before practice and collected afterward. During Osborne’s legendary 25-year run as coach, members of the top defensive unit during preseason training camp would receive Blackshirts the week before the team’s first game.

Over time, Blackshirts described not only the Nebraska starters, but the Huskers’ entire defense — and even came to define the entire program itself.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What are the Nebraska Blackshirts? Huskers' defense nickname explained

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