Colorado University Athletics
62-36 Still A Black And Gold Standard For Colorado Buffaloes Fans
May 07, 2020 | Football, Alumni C Club, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — Nearly two decades later, the game remains firmly entrenched in the minds of Colorado football fans. It has become a touchstone for Buffaloes faithful, a moment that seemed bigger than life when it happened and a moment that has only grown in legendary stature since.
Old-timers who had followed Colorado football for decades reveled in the outcome, taking particular pleasure in the Buffaloes' dominance that day. It was payback of sorts, as long stretches of struggles against the visiting team were erased in one glorious November afternoon at Folsom Field.
Younger fans were equally excited, knowing they had witnessed an event that shook the college football world, a cataclysm of sorts that was almost inconceivable to anyone who knew the game. Even youngsters who had yet to develop anything close to a sense of history instinctively knew that something special had happened, something they would remember and cherish for years to come.
By now, you know exactly what we are discussing here.
62-36.
If you are a Colorado football fan, those numbers need no explanation. No words are necessary. Even today, those numbers grace license plates, are used as passwords and are part of countless social media handles. They are iconic not just because of what happened that day, but also because of what has happened since.
For the record: Colorado 62, Nebraska 36, on Nov. 23, 2001, in Boulder.
"Looking back, the surreal thing is just how it happened — how it all went down, how the game played out," Bobby Pesavento, CU's quarterback that day, recalled this week. "We were very confident going into that game, but no one in our room expected it to turn out the way it did. It was one of those crazy days when whatever was dialed up worked. We just had their number from start to finish."
Indeed, it wasn't "just" the fact that the No. 14 team in the nation defeated the unbeaten and No. 2 team (first in the BCS standings at the time). What turned heads from coast to coast was the way Gary Barnett's Buffaloes dominated the Huskers.
With 12:21 still to play in the second quarter, Colorado had rolled to an almost unfathomable 35-3 lead. It left the ABC television crew of Brent Musburger, Gary Danielson and Jack Arute nearly speechless as they told fans who may have just tuned in not to adjust their sets — that was indeed the correct score.
While Nebraska did mount a semblance of a comeback, closing the gap to 42-30 late in the third quarter, that was as close as the Cornhuskers could come. The Buffaloes delivered a knockout punch in the fourth quarter, racking up three more touchdowns before NU tallied one more meaningless score to end the game.
CU's numbers were eye-popping. Running behind an offensive line that pounded NU's vaunted defense all day, Buffs tailback Chris Brown galloped for 198 yards and six touchdowns. Backfield mate Bobby Purify ran for 154 yards and one score — and had a 78-yard touchdown run called back on CU's third possession of the game. Pesavento, meanwhile, was an extremely efficient 9-for-16 for 202 yards and a touchdown.
Meanwhile, Colorado's defense forced four Nebraska turnovers — two fumble recoveries and two interceptions. The first fumble recovery led to Colorado's second touchdown of the day; the second ended a Huskers threat at the Colorado 1-yard line. Then came two interceptions of Eric Crouch in the fourth quarter (by Michael Lewis and Joey Johnson) that both led to CU touchdowns to cement the victory.
The 62 points were the most ever scored against the Cornhuskers in their proud history.
After the game, coaches and players in both locker rooms found it difficult to explain what had just transpired.
"You never think it will go like this, obviously," CU's Barnett said. "But every once in a while, it all works. Sixty-two points. That's almost too overwhelming for me. It's going to take a while to sink in."
Nebraska coach Frank Solich, meanwhile, knew that his team's goal of an unbeaten season and national title had just been crushed.
"We had played so well during the course of the year that I did not see this game getting out of hand," Solich said. "I thought it would be a great football game. We had more than our share of turnovers."
The win was especially sweet for Barnett, who had endured heartbreaking back-to-back losses to NU in his first two years as Colorado's head coach. The first was a 33-30 overtime loss in Boulder in 1999, followed by a 34-32 defeat in Lincoln a year later — both part of a five-game stretch that saw CU lose all five by a total of 15 points.
The 62-36 decision also set the stage for a bizarre series of events down the stretch of the season. Colorado went on to win the Big 12 North, then avenged a regular season loss to Texas to claim a victory over the Longhorns in the Big 12 title game. (That made Pesavento the first — and still only — CU quarterback to win a conference championship game.)
Meanwhile, thanks to a convoluted BCS computer ranking system, Nebraska somehow still went on to play in the BCS national title game, despite not even winning a division title. The Huskers, however, were throttled, 37-14, by Miami in the title game, giving Nebraska its first back-to-back losses in more than a decade.
"Looking back, as the years go on, it becomes almost more surreal because of the way that game played out," Pesavento said. "The crazy thing is with age, you look back at the situation and the experience — I feel like that Nebraska team, as good as they were, hadn't been challenged all year. Once they got hit in the mouth, they didn't know how to react or how to respond. We were definitely able to take advantage of that and just keep putting it on them that first and second quarter."
Indeed, the Huskers hadn't been seriously challenged all season, winning their first 11 games by an average of 26 points per game, with no opponent coming closer than 10.
But while the loss was hard for Nebraska faithful to swallow that day, they could not have known what the future held. That 2001 loss to Colorado proved to be the end of one of the proudest dynasties in college football.
What the future held:
— That season, the Cornhuskers still finished with a winning record, their 40th straight winning season. The streak technically came to an just a year later, when they finished just 7-7.
— Two years later, NU finished with its first losing season in 43 years, a 5-6 record.
— Since wrapping up their 40th straight winning season in 2001, Nebraska has endured six losing records in the last 18 years.
— The Cornhuskers have not won a league title in the 18 years since the 2001 game, after winning 22 in the previous 40 seasons.
— That 2001 season proved to be the last time Nebraska finished in the top 10 in the nation (fourth). Since then, NU has three top-20 finishes and none since 2012.
— Beginning with the 2001 game, Colorado has won six of the last 12 games against Nebraska. That includes back-to-back wins in 2018 and '19, the first meetings between the two programs since both left the Big 12 in 2011.
— Nebraska has not beaten a top five team since Oct. 27, 2001, a month before the 62-36 loss. (Colorado has one win over a top-five team in the same stretch, a 27-24 win over No. 3 Oklahoma in 2007.)
"That was a devastating loss for that team and that program," Pesavento said. "The way it happened, the points we scored on them, what they were expecting to do. I think it was the beginning of the end. They thought they were going to win another national title, they had the Heisman winner (Crouch). They never responded, they never came back. They've never been the same."
Since then, more than one college football observer has suggested that while the 62-36 loss didn't cause NU's downfall, it did "pull back the curtain" on a program that was trending in the wrong direction.
"I think we might have shown a lot of other people who might have been intimidated that they could play with Nebraska," Pesavento said. "They learned they could compete with them. We just had a coach and a group of guys who, quite frankly, didn't give a (bleep) who was coming into our stadium that day. I think maybe we exposed how to play Nebraska. Give them a dose of their own medicine. Run it right at them and be physical with them. I definitely think we started the process. I know there are a lot of other things that happened to put them where they are today, but I do believe we kicked it off."
Colorado's 62-36 win over Nebraska in 2001 will be aired by the Pac-12 Network on Saturday, May 9, at 7 p.m. Check out the football social media channels to engage with us during the broadcast. Sean Tufts will host former players live on twitter and David Plati will be conducting a chat on the football Facebook page, plus much more.
