‘So how do you like it, sonny boy?’

A recent news article tells of a 90-year-old Nebraska grandma who is radical about her Cornhuskers.
She is less than politically correct when talking about opponents. She hates ‘em.  All of ‘em. For her money, Nebraska can’t score enough points.  
She appears regularly on a sports talk show out of Omaha, depicting her team as the righteous, the opposition as heathens deserving of crucifixion.      
I’ve seen her picture. She was much younger then, but I’m fairly sure that on Sept. 20, 1980, I had a seat next to hers.   
On that day, Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium was the site of a slaughter that, for a quarter or two, resembled football.  I was there to see the Iowa Hawkeyes, there with a ticket given me by a Lincoln native who thought the game would not be worth watching.  
He was right.  
In my black and gold I was a tiny dot in a sea of gory red, watching as Nebraska ran up two touchdowns in the first quarter, three more in the second, and led 35-0 at the half.  
Jarvis Redwine was running free and Iowa couldn’t slow him down.  Neither could they slow down anyone else.  
The woman next to me was screaming for more. She pummeled my back with every first down, every big play, every score.  
“How do you like it, sonny boy?”  she shouted, and shouted again.
To keep her throat from drying out she required regular nips from a flask of something medicinal.
She was good-natured about her jibes, but by the third quarter I’d had enough.  
My impulse was to leave, get out before the traffic, but I endured, hoping there’d be a bright spot, that our new coach from Texas would send in a play that’d silence, at least for a bit, the rabid woman on my left.        
The moment of the game that stands out sharpest in my memory took place as the teams were lining up for the start of the fourth quarter.  
The game, then 42-0, had been decided much earlier.  The only question was the final score.  
The woman in red, red from her socks to her ruddy nose, kicked off her shoes and stood on her seat. Her arm went up, her hand a fist. The thumb protruded and she turned it downward. Others followed her lead. The wave, a thumbs-down wave, went around the coliseum. No mercy. Off with their heads.  
On the field her team obliged by piling it on, adding 15 unnecessary points to drub Iowa 57-0.
“How do you like it, sonny boy?”   From that day until this I’ve pulled for Nebraska to lose, regardless of who they play.  Irrational, I suppose, but satisfying.     
And now Nebraska has deserted the Big 12, looking for more revenue and less Texas.  They’ll get what they want, along with a dose of Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State, and an Iowa team that might be a little better than the one they ran up the score on in 1980.  We’ll see how they like it.  
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be reached at news@redoakexpress.com.