Frequently offered objections

Honestly, we don't know. We looked. Fan protests tend to succeed when they want something small and specific, like Liverpool's £77 ticket,⁴⁰ and tend to fail when they want something enormous, like keeping the A's in Oakland.^{41, 42} That's why the first demand is just to publish numbers. Even if nothing changes, you got a Saturday back. That's a pretty good worst case. You've sat through worse.

We may not. Without scan data, it's TV pictures, empty rows, and your uncle's opinion. That's why publishing the numbers is the first term.

Correct, and we say so on the front page. If your ticket's been sold, it's counted. That's the distinction. The streak counts tickets. Seats are what the tickets are for. Not buying affects the official count. Not going affects the real one. An empty stadium is a step, even with a sold-out number on the press release.

Then it's No. 417, and we'll report it. We'd just like to know how: how many discounted, how many bought in bulk, how many scanned. That's the first of our terms.

Then the next step is the bowl game, if there is one. If not the bowl game, the 2027 home opener, currently Northern Illinois, though that schedule is being reworked.^{49, 51} One game was never going to do it. Here are all five steps. We'll report honestly each time, including when it doesn't work. The tracker's here.

Because it's the last home game of the year,² and the biggest. It's the one people would actually notice. A protest at Bowling Green would have been easy, and nobody would've noticed. And Ohio State is one of the two games that were reported about 10,000 tickets short in August.⁴ It's also late November in Nebraska, and you own a furnace.

Anyone deciding what to do with a ticket, a donation, or a $350 million bond. A sellout tells you tickets were sold, not whether people came, and a perfect streak can hide a fan base drifting away. If the numbers are strong, publishing them costs nothing and knocks out one of our best arguments. The full answer is here.

This is the best objection, and it could be right. Nebraska's AD has said "the most important dollar" goes toward player recruitment and resources.⁷ Nebraska pays for athletics without tax, tuition, or student fee dollars,¹² so fan money matters.

Here's our answer. If your ticket is already sold, staying home costs the department little beyond parking and concessions. Not buying one does cost it money, and that's meant to send a signal. We can't say exactly how much it matters, and it could hurt. Renewals and donations are a bigger decision, and they come later, with terms attached. A program reportedly ranked sixth in its league in player pay¹² that's 0-for-its-last-33 against ranked teams has a harder problem than one fan's check will solve. But reasonable people can disagree, and if you do, keep giving.

It's Senior Day,⁴⁴ so for some of them this is the last game at home. That's the hardest part of this ask, and we won't pretend otherwise. Most of them didn't set prices or sign the coach, and many aren't getting rich. We'd separate those guys from the highest-paid players, who can handle a tougher standard on the field. Critique the performance if you like. Never go after a kid personally. And no, a player doesn't owe you loyalty, which is rather the point: you don't owe a ticket either.

You should know this before deciding: Nov. 21 is the school's Military Appreciation Day and Senior Day.⁴⁴ Memorial Stadium honors Nebraskans who served and died in war.⁵² Staying home from a football game takes nothing from them, and we'd never treat them lightly. But if you're going to honor someone that day, a veteran, a senior, your own family, please go. We mean it.

Fewer fans could mean fewer tips or shifts for people who had no say in this. We don't have a good answer. If that's your line, respect it. And we don't ask anyone to give up a first game. If you've got a kid who's been waiting for this one, go, and have the best day of the year. No one who goes is doing anything wrong. This is a choice for adults who've been paying for a while and want to think about it.

A real cost, and they have no say over any of this. A UNL economist estimated about $5 million in offsite spending per game in 2020,³⁸ though at least one economist warns such estimates can be inflated.³⁹ So here's an easy fix: if you live within reach, go to Lincoln anyway. Watch at a local place, tip well, and order the good thing. Nothing about this asks you to stop spending money in Lincoln.

No. That's not on the list. A lot of it is sold by local stores that had nothing to do with any of this. If you're buying, buy from a local shop. Licensed gear typically still pays the school a royalty, so we won't pretend it's a protest. It's just a nice thing to do for a neighbor. Also, the sweatshirt works fine on a couch.

Probably some. Resale can fill a seat you leave empty. That's a real cost, and a reason not to sell yours if you're making this point. TV may show plenty of scarlet, but both schools claim that color, so it'll be red either way.

Loyalty isn't the same as attendance. You can love a team from your couch; millions of people do it every week. We'd also gently note that nobody else in this arrangement is using that word as a job requirement. Coaches change jobs, players transfer, and schools change conferences, all sensibly. Fans can love the team and still ask what the deal is.

A bandwagon fan shows up when it's easy and leaves when it's hard. Nebraska has been hard for ten years, and the fans this site is talking to have mostly stayed. This asks for something else: tell the team what it takes to get you back, in public, in numbers anyone can check, and then come back when it happens. A bandwagon has no terms. Also, there hasn't been much of a wagon to jump on since 2012.

You can. Those 40 years are spent, and they're yours, whatever you do next Saturday. Staying because of what you've already put in is called the sunk-cost fallacy. If you're going because you love it, then go. If it's because you'd feel guilty not to, whom exactly do you owe? Your obligations are whatever your ticket terms and written commitments say. Keep those. Beyond them, you don't owe a purchase.

We're not mocking it. Sixty-four years of showing up is remarkable, and it stays in the record book forever. Fans built it by meaning it, and plenty still do. We're only asking whether the number still means what it did when your family started counting. That's your call, not ours.

Some. Now look at who they beat. Both seasons were 5-6 against power-conference teams, and Rhule's teams are 9-0 against everyone else.²⁷ We've got the breakdown.

It might be. Three straight losses by a total of 13 points can be read as nearly there.² But the fair question is how long "nearly" gets to be the answer: 15 of the 33 ranked losses were by eight or fewer. If the moment's wrong, the fix is simple. Beat a ranked Ohio State, and Term 2 is done in an afternoon.

We don't. The old walk-on factory is shrinking under a 105-player limit.²⁰ We're not asking for 60-3. We're asking to beat one ranked team, win more than they lose against power-conference teams for a season, and finish in the final poll once. Nebraska last did the last one in 2012.²⁸ It's the rest of the arrangement that hasn't changed: fans are still asked to act as if it's 1962.

No. We aren't calling for anyone's job. Nebraska has tried changing coaches, at a cost of about $32 million by one 2022 count,¹⁸ and it hasn't obviously worked. His contract runs through 2032.¹⁴ This site is about what fans do with their own Saturdays and checkbooks.

No team's or rival's money or organization is behind this. Don't take our word for anything: check the sources.

We believe it's legal. Peaceful persuasion about where to spend your own money is generally protected speech, and so is criticism of a public university. See NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware,⁵³ a civil-rights case with far higher stakes than this. We use no university logos, sell nothing, and aren't affiliated. We don't ask anyone to break a contract or trespass. This isn't legal advice. If we've got something wrong, here's how to fix it.

Because this is an argument about football, and it doesn't need a home address attached. Don't take our word for anything. The key facts are linked, so judge them by the sources, and tell us if we got one wrong.

One private individual wrote it and pays for it, including any online ads promoting it. No ads on this site, nothing for sale, no donations, and no competing team's money. More here.