October 8th, 1977.
I'd watched or listened to parts of many Nebraska games with my dad starting with the Game of The Century in 1971, but this one was different.
We lived in Denver at the time and the game wasn't on TV. Nebraska vs Kansas State wasn't going to float many people's boats, but my dad and I had it on the radio while we changed the oil and rebuilt the carburetor on his '64 Chevelle. The sun was out and it was a nice, warm fall day. Listening to the game was something I always did when it wasn't on TV, but this might have been our first together and it was just different. I was still learning about cars and my dad was still learning about football.
It wasn't a great game by any stretch of the imagination, and we were in the middle of something else, but it was the first game we really dug into together. I think the oil change and carb rebuild took much longer than it should have because of our continued conversation back and forth about the ins and outs of the game, who did what, IM Hipp and his 200+ yard game. I was barely a teenager back then and we listened to or watched many games together after this one, but it was really a game that played as the background to a day that changed our relationship and understanding of each other.
I'll likely never forget some of the mental images from that day.