Jim Thorpe is second from left, top row, in this photo of the Carlisle team that appeared in the Omaha Bee several days before the game. It is probably the 1907 team, however.
It was a big deal when Jim Thorpe and the 1908 Carlisle Indians came to Lincoln in early December.
Though not yet an Olympic hero, Thorpe was a budding legend on the gridiron in his second season with the Pennsylvania school. The Indians were gaining a mystique by going toe to toe with the top programs of the era — and often coming out on top. In October, they battled the season’s mythical national champion, Penn, to a 6-6 tie.
In some circles, they were derided as a de-facto professional team. Nebraska’s faculty, in fact, protested the late addition of Carlisle to the schedule. “The school, the faculty charged, had gone crassly commercial,” wrote the Omaha World-Herald’s Frederick Ware in a 1940 history of NU football.
But fans weren’t about to protest. Anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 of them showed up on a cold Wednesday afternoon at Antelope Park, the Cornhuskers’ temporary home field for the season, to see how Nebraska stacked up against coach Glenn “Pop” Warner’s squad.
NOTES: About 50 American Indians from the reservations of Nebraska and South Dakota came to Lincoln to see “the vaunted redskins from the east,” the Omaha Bee reported. During the game, “many of these Indians, together with the subs of the Carlisle team, huddled together along the north side lines, wrapped in colored blankets, until it looked like a real Indian pow pow.” ... The game was the Indians’ ninth in a row away from Carlisle. Their final home game of the season was in September.
