Memorial Stadium has hosted its share of fairy tales and funerals. Saturday at noon, with the defending national champions walking into Lincoln, it gets the chance to host both in the same afternoon.
Indiana arrives 5-0, ranked No. 7, riding a 21-game winning streak and the memory of a 27-21 title-game win over Miami last January. Fernando Mendoza is gone to the Raiders as the No. 1 pick. The standard Curt Cignetti built is not. Nebraska is also 5-0, undefeated in Matt Rhule’s fourth year, and suddenly staring at the first real measuring stick of the season. The spread sits around seven and a half. David has a slingshot. Goliath still has the army.
A win would be the loudest thing this program has done in a decade. Nebraska’s last victory over a ranked team came in 2016 against an Oregon squad that later collapsed. Nothing since. A home upset of the reigning champs, a 6-0 start, and a statement that the rebuild has crossed from “competitive” into “dangerous” would rewrite the conversation around the program overnight. It would not make Nebraska a title contender by itself. It would prove the gap that has defined the last ten years can finally be closed in a single Saturday.
The other outcomes tell different stories. A close loss is still progress. Hang within a score of a team that just won it all, move the ball, force Cignetti’s group to sweat in a hostile building, and the optimism survives. You can sell “we belong” after a 31-24 or 28-24. You cannot sell it after the other version.
That version already has a name and a date. November 5, 2016. Mike Riley’s Huskers, ranked and riding high, walked into Ohio Stadium and left on the wrong end of a 62-3 demolition. Fifty-nine points. The gut-wrenching kind of afternoon that does not get explained away as “they were just better.” In fact, it provided the evidence that the whole thing was still fragile.
The difference between those two Saturdays may sit under center.
Anthony Colandrea already knows the man on the other sideline. In 2023, as a true freshman at Virginia, he stepped in against Cignetti’s James Madison team and threw for 377 yards and two touchdowns on 20-of-26 passing in a 36-35 loss. Cignetti has not forgotten. This week he called Colandrea savvy, mobile, and capable of beating you with his arm or his legs. Three years and a stop at UNLV later, the quarterback is playing the best football of his career. Through five games he has completed 65.7 percent of his passes for 1,142 yards, 13 touchdowns, and only two interceptions, with a 160 rating. He has added 249 rushing yards at 6.6 per carry and two more scores, including a career-high 108 on the ground in the win over Maryland. Dana Holgorsen’s public assignment for him this week was simple: calm down, breathe, execute the next play. If he does, Nebraska has a quarterback who can stress a defense that has otherwise been suffocating.
Indiana’s defense is the reason this is still an upset. The Hoosiers are allowing roughly 64 rushing yards per game and just over two yards per carry, sitting near the top of the country in total defense and points allowed. They do not let teams run. Nebraska’s ground game has been the engine of the 5-0 start; if that engine stalls against the front seven, Colandrea’s legs become the emergency valve. He will have to create when the first read is covered, protect the football the way he has so far, and keep Indiana’s pass rush from turning third-and-long into a track meet the other way.
The Hoosiers are not a one-man show without Mendoza either. Josh Hoover, the TCU transfer, has thrown for more than 1,100 yards and 15 touchdowns without an interception. Behind him sit two backs who have already produced like future pros: Turbo Richard (587 yards, five scores) and Lee Beebe Jr. (520 yards, four scores). Charlie Becker and Nick Marsh give Hoover a pair of receivers who can win outside and in the middle. The skill talent did not leave with the Heisman winner. Nebraska’s defense will have to tackle in space, limit explosive runs, and make Hoover uncomfortable the way it has not yet been forced to against lesser opponents.
The practical keys are not complicated, which does not make them easy. Nebraska has to stay out of the penalty trouble that has already marked it as one of the most flagged teams in the Big Ten. It has to find some version of the run game, even if that version is Colandrea on zone reads and scrambles rather than traditional between-the-tackles work. It has to pressure Hoover without losing contain. And it has to play four quarters in a building that will be loud early. Indiana has been stress-tested only once, a tighter win over Northwestern. Memorial Stadium on a noon kick against an undefeated home team is a different kind of test.
David has a real chance. Not a probable one, though. The Hoosiers are deeper, more proven, and built by a coach who has already shown he can win the games that used to expose programs like this. But Colandrea’s dual-threat ability, the familiarity with Cignetti, a home crowd that has waited years for a ranked scalp, and an offense that has scored in bunches give Nebraska a path that did not exist in the Riley years or the early Rhule ones. Win it and the program steps into a different decade. Lose it close and the climb continues. Lose it the way 2016 lost it, and Saturday becomes the reminder instead of the breakthrough.
The slingshot is loaded. Saturday decides whether it flies.
