Dave Feit’s Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 88 – Guy Ingles

Dave Feit is counting down the days until the start of the 2025 season by naming the best Husker to wear each uniform number, as well as one of his personal favorites at that number.

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Greatest Husker to wear 88: Guy Ingles, Split End, 1968 1970 Honorable Mention: Mike Croel, Sheldon Jackson Also worn by: Eric Alford, RuQuan Buckley, Mark Dufresne, Ross Dzuris, Tyler Evans, Levi Falck, Tyler Hoppes, Trevor Johnson, Scott Kimball, Preston Love, Larry Mushinskie, Jerry Patton, Clayton Sievers, Rod Smith, Mike Vedral Daves Fave: Rod Smith, Split End, 1984 1987 Bob Devaney once said that Nebraska fans are understanding in defeat, but I would not want to put them to a serious test.

Well, in 1967 and 1968, he put Husker fans to a test.

Two straight 6-4 seasons, finishing fourth and fifth in the Big Eight.

Back then, there were only 10 bowls, so a six-win team had no shot at postseason play.* And the cherry on top: a 47-0 drubbing by Oklahoma in the 1968 finale.

Fans were starting to get restless.

*Barry Alvarez who was a linebacker on the 1967 team before becoming the longtime head coach and athletic director at Wisconsin has claimed that Nebraska was invited to a bowl game .

According to Alvarez, the Huskers would have faced Georgia, but the Board of Regents rejected the offer.

In 1967, Georgia (7-3) lost to North Carolina State (8-2).

To my knowledge, this claim has never been verified.

Nebraskas offense was a big culprit in the back-to-back 6-4 seasons.

In 1967, the Huskers averaged just 13 points per game.

In 1968, the average jumped up to 16 points per game, but the Huskers were outscored on the season 161-155.

Two of NUs final three games in 1968 were shutout losses a 12-0 dud to Kansas State* and the blowout at Oklahoma.

* The last time Nebraska was shut out at home was the Nov.

9, 1968, game against Kansas State.

In the offseason, Devaney turned the offensive over to a young guy who had started out on his staff as a graduate assistant, with his only pay coming in the form of free room and board.

This assistant then spent a few years splitting time between football and being a university instructor teaching a course in Educational Psychology.

His name was Tom Osborne.* * After the blowout loss to OU in 1968, Osborne wondered if he was cut out for coaching, saying I seriously considered resigning as a Devaney assistant after that game.

Im not sure who or what changed his mind .

Osborne scrapped Devaneys run-heavy T formation and installed a more balanced offense out of the I formation.

The results were immediate.

In 1969, Nebraska had more rushing yards (with a better yards-per-carry average) than the year before.

Passing yards increased by 66%.

Scoring offense increased by a touchdown per game.

Most importantly: The 1969 team went 9-2, winning a share of the Big Eight title.

In 1968, Nebraska lost to Oklahoma by 47 points.

In 1969, NU won by 30.

Thats a 77-point swing in one season.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the new Nebraska offense was a diminutive end from Omaha Westside High, Guy Ingles.

As a sophomore in 1968, Ingles caught 14 passes for 146 yards.

In Osbornes 1969 offense, Ingles broke out with 26 catches, 408 yards* and three touchdowns.

Against Oklahoma State, Ingles had a (then) school record 163 receiving yards on just five catches.

*I get it...

Those yardage numbers look really small by 21st century standards.

But consider: Nebraskas single-season receiving record at the time was 519 yards.

With 408 yards, Ingles finished tied for eighth-most receiving yards in the Big Eight (with teammate Larry Frost).

The 1969 team had three players (Jeff Kinney, Ingles, Frost) over 400 receiving yards, with a fourth Jim McFarland at 381.

Ingles also has one of the great nicknames in Cornhusker history: Guy the Fly.

It perfectly captured his speed, elusiveness and size (Ingles was listed at 59 and just 158 pounds).

Im guessing defenses found him to be a pest as well.

In 1970, Ingles had 34 catches for 603 yards and a team-high eight touchdowns.

Halfway through the season, he became Nebraskas all-time leading receiver, and the first Husker to surpass 1,000 receiving yards in a career.

*Ingles would not wear the all-time crown for long.

Teammate Johnny Rodgers surpassed his record of 1,157 yards just 371 days later.

Guy The Fly Ingles was a second-team All-Big Eight pick in 1970 and won the Guy Chamberlin Trophy, given to an outstanding senior.

Ingles was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

As for Nebraska, their offense was about ready to really take off.

Ive attended somewhere close to 250 Nebraska football games in my life.

Admittedly, there are several games some from recent seasons where I have little to no recollection of what happened.

But one of my earliest games cast an indelible memory on me.

It was foundational in my becoming the fan I am today.

Rod Smith, a split end from Thornton, Colorado is a big part of that day.

When I was kid in the 1980s, Nebraska was not on TV often maybe three or four times a year.* *Our house, out in the country, did not have cable or one of those gigantic satellite dishes.

So, if the Huskers were not on one of the four channels we got (ABC, CBS, NBC or PBS), I wouldnt see it.

My dad would get tickets to one Husker game each year from a friend of his.

Wed drive to Lincoln and make a day of it.

Wed walk around downtown Lincoln, check out the campus, stop in the University Bookstore, and more.

It was a huge thrill and something I looked forward to every year.

Usually, my dad got the tickets his friend didnt want.

That meant we saw teams like New Mexico, Utah State and the weaker Big Eight opponents.

But I didnt care.

I loved seeing the team, the stadium, the band, the people, the Sea of Red and more.

The whole experience was amazing and electric for a small-town Nebraska kid.

In 1987, we had tickets for No.

2 Nebraska vs.

No.

3 UCLA .

This was easily the biggest game I ever went to as a kid.

Heck, its one of the biggest games Ive been to, period.

Looking back, Im not sure how my dad got tickets.

I know I didnt appreciate the magnitude of the game at the time.

Early in the third quarter, Nebraska took a 21-10 lead.

The Blackshirts stopped the Troy Aikman-led offense, and the Huskers had first-and-10 from the Bruin 48, going toward the north end zone.

From our seats high up in the south end zone, I used Dads binoculars to watch the Huskers in the huddle.

As they broke the huddle, I saw quarterback Steve Taylor give Rod Smith a pat on the rear.

Knowing absolutely nothing about anything, I announced to our row, I think theyre going to #88.

It didnt matter that I was an unathletic tween who had not yet played a down of organized football.

Surely, that pat on the butt meant something was coming.

NU lined up in the I formation.

Taylor took the snap, faked a dive handoff to the fullback and rolled back six yards.

He threw a beautiful spiral that went over a leaping Bruin defender and right into Rod Smiths arms.

Smith ran the final 12 yards into the end zone for the score.

It was Taylors third of what would be a school-record five passing touchdowns.

By this point in my life, I already considered myself a big Husker fan.

But this moment cemented it.

I was one of the few people in the crowd of 76,000 who knew what was about to happen.

The game was broadcast on ESPN, but nobody watching at home saw that moment (as they come back from commercial, the broadcast briefly shows the NU huddle but cuts to a shot of Neil Smith and LeRoy Etienne on the bench, then a cheerleader).

But I saw it.

Looking back, this is the moment when I first knew Id much rather watch games in person than see them on TV or listen to them on the radio.

This has led to me being able to count the number of home games Ive missed in the last 30-plus seasons on one hand.

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