People who weren't alive or were too young to remember the days when you had limited nationally televised games per year might not understand how strange that '83 season was. Nebraska was televised before the season began in the first ever Kickoff Classic against Penn State, and then they were on TV again against UCLA. The Oklahoma game would always be televised (except when Oklahoma had a TV ban as part of one of their many NCAA probations), and the bowl game would be televised, so Nebraska would have been one of the few teams in the country to be on nationally televised TV for 4 games. ESPN wasn't yet a player in the market of televised games, so all that remained were any regionally televised games that networks would pick up. In the days of antenna TV, televised college football was solely the property rights of ABC, so the local ABC stations in the Upper Midwest were often bombarded with requests for televising Nebraska games. Since every game in Lincoln was a sellout, it wasn't an issue as far as taking away fans from the game, but it meant that Nebraska fans at home didn't get to see them score 84 against Minnesota in the Metrodome, which was mostly filled with red-clad fans. For God only knows what reason, the ABC execs and local affiliates decided to broadcast the Kansas game. My dad said, "Oh, no, they'll score a hundred, and they won't broadcast any more games." Nebraska's offense was such a phenomenon at the time that people were interested in watching, even if it was a blowout, so 100-0 wouldn't necessarily be a bad game for TV viewers.
The regionally-televised Kansas game in 1983 drew 75,503 to Memorial Stadium. Those who were slow getting to their seats might have missed the first of Rozier’s touchdowns. On Nebraska’s fifth play from scrimmage, he took a pitch from Gill and ran 49 yards 1:55 into the first quarter.
Three-and-a-half minutes into the second quarter, Rozier scored his fourth touchdown, on a 17-yard run, and the Huskers led 27-0, on the way to a 41-0 halftime lead.
They would add another touchdown, on Jeff Smith’s 63-yard punt return, for a 47-0 lead 3:08 into the second half before Kansas would finally get on the scoreboard.
It was ugly. The announcers didn't know how to dress it up either. They didn't cut away from games at that time, but the announcers began openly discussing it sometime after the starters left the game in the 2nd quarter, and they couldn't identify all of the Nebraska substitute players because so many numbers were doubled up. There were limits for the traveling squad, which was why the Minnesota game was such a blowout, but Nebraska could suit up so many more walk-ons then that the sideline looked like a couple of armies of red-clad football players. At halftime they said that they were going to cut away, and I think it was shortly after Smith scored again at the start of the 2nd half that they went to some other meaningless regional game that nobody cared about, then or now. My dad, who hadn't wanted that game to be broadcast at all, was annoyed when they cut away. I asked him why. "With all of those subs playing, I think Kansas might score."
https://hailvarsity.com/s/4880/toms-time-the-song-that-predicted-nebraska-kansas-in-1983
