As Bill Callahan walked into the tunnel toward the locker room, his players huddled in the southeast corner of Memorial Stadium, raising their helmets to the sky and singing the school's fight song with the student body.
Why didn't Nebraska's fourth-year head coach stay to celebrate with his team?
"It's their day," Callahan said.
And he's exactly right.
This blowout, in a year when the Cornhuskers too often have been on the wrong side of a whooping, was about the players.
In Nebraska's last two home losses, lopsided affairs against Oklahoma State and Texas A&M, fans left early. Some booed.
But this game was different. The Huskers were the ones delivering the beating. On this day, Nebraska was 42 points better than Kansas State.
When NU players finished the school song and ran off the field, cheers rained down on them. They weren't cheers for the coaching or the game plan or the offensive schemes. They were for the players.
Forget the fact that the Huskers came into Saturday's contest in the midst of the program's longest losing streak since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.
"The last month has just been terrible; it really has been," NU senior safety Ben Eisenhart said of the five-game skid. "But there's nothing you can say. It's just one of those things that happens."
Saturday's win was a feel-good one for the players, especially the 29 seniors who suited up for their final home game. During a season in which many records have been broken for the worse, the Huskers were making history for the better. Their 73 points were the most since 1997. The seven touchdown passes were a school record. Their 702 total yards of offense were the most since 1995.
Then there was the spectacular performance of quarterback Joe Ganz. In only his second career start at Nebraska, the junior set a school record with 528 total yards of offense.
"It's one of those days where everything just clicked," Ganz said. "That's a credit to the offensive line, backs, receivers and tight ends just preparing as hard as they can and not letting outside distractions get in their head."
Ganz wasn't the only difference-maker.
Unlike past weeks, when it was difficult to pick out even one player who stood out in a positive way, there were plenty on Saturday.
Cortney Grixby returned a kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown. Maurice Purify snagged six catches for 108 yards. Frantz Hardy hauled in three touchdown catches. Steve Octavien recorded a team-high nine tackles, including three tackles for loss, a sack and a pass breakup. And the list goes on.
NU senior defensive end Thomas Rice said Grixby's touchdown, which knotted the score at 7-7, sparked the Huskers.
"We fed off that emotion and then we kept going," Rice said. "We kind of became a machine, and once we got going it was hard to stop us."
Now the Huskers find themselves in what seemed just one week ago the improbable position of possible bowl qualification. All they need to do is beat a Colorado squad also fighting for bowl eligibility in both teams' season finales on Nov. 23.
A win could salvage at least the final chapter of what will be remembered as a tumultuous, if not disastrous, season. A loss would end Nebraska's season without a bowl appearance for only the second time in the last 39 years.
"We have a lot of things to prove," NU junior offensive lineman Matt Slauson said. "Getting into a bowl after what we have been through the last five weeks would be huge for us, and that's what we're playing for now."
What they aren't playing for is the job security of their coaches, some of whom probably won't be around much longer. They should ignore talk of contract buyouts or firings or coaching changes.
Saturday's performance was what college football should be about. It was about the players.
BEN GOULDSMITH IS A SENIOR NEWS-EDITORIAL MAJOR. REACH HIM AT
BENGOULDSMITH@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
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