Sun, Dec 3, 1922 · The Lincoln Star · Newspapers.com
It’s perhaps the most iconic image from the first half-century of Nebraska football. The Cornhusker line has opened a huge hole in the Notre Dame defense on Thanksgiving Day of 1922, and Verne Lewellen is charging through. This is how the public got its first glimpse of the photo, in the Sunday Lincoln Star three days after the Huskers’ 14-6 victory. The newspaper’s accompanying text is reproduced below.
— Photo by MacDonald
The above unique photo engraving is from a picture snapped during the Nebraska-Notre Dame game Thanksgiving day in Lincoln. The camera man was on the job at the most appropriate moment possible to demonstrate the value of an aggressive, fast charging line to a football eleven. The engraving shows halfback Verne Lewellen, elected to the Cornhusker captaincy for next year, smashing between guard and tackle through the right wing of the Notre Dame line. The “hole” made by the forwards is literally “big as a house.” Line players seldom stand forth in the spotlight due to the perfectly natural reason that the average spectator watches only the backfield men carrying the ball. The Nebraska backs unquestionably plunged wonderfully well against the Rockne aggregation — in fact, more effective plunging would be hard to imagine — yet the smashing gains of the backs would have been impossible without the cooperation of the forwards in “opening holes.”
The Nebraska line — Scherer and Schoeppel at ends, Weller and Wenke at tackles, Berquist and Bassett at guards and Peterson at center, richly merited a full share of the honors accruing to the Cornhuskers for the triumph over Notre Dame. Nebraska football has developed many great lines in 30 years of the gridiron sport at the Cornhusker institution, but never a better one than the forward wall of 1922.
The above unique photo engraving is from a picture snapped during the Nebraska-Notre Dame game Thanksgiving day in Lincoln. The camera man was on the job at the most appropriate moment possible to demonstrate the value of an aggressive, fast charging line to a football eleven. The engraving shows halfback Verne Lewellen, elected to the Cornhusker captaincy for next year, smashing between guard and tackle through the right wing of the Notre Dame line. The “hole” made by the forwards is literally “big as a house.” Line players seldom stand forth in the spotlight due to the perfectly natural reason that the average spectator watches only the backfield men carrying the ball. The Nebraska backs unquestionably plunged wonderfully well against the Rockne aggregation — in fact, more effective plunging would be hard to imagine — yet the smashing gains of the backs would have been impossible without the cooperation of the forwards in “opening holes.”
The Nebraska line — Scherer and Schoeppel at ends, Weller and Wenke at tackles, Berquist and Bassett at guards and Peterson at center, richly merited a full share of the honors accruing to the Cornhuskers for the triumph over Notre Dame. Nebraska football has developed many great lines in 30 years of the gridiron sport at the Cornhusker institution, but never a better one than the forward wall of 1922.
Sun, Dec 3, 1922 · The Lincoln Star · Newspapers.com