November 3, 1962: The University of Nebraska loses its Homecoming game, to Missouri, 16-7, at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. The attendance is 36,501, a sellout. Despite Memorial Stadium now officially seating 85,458, the Cornhuskers sold out every home game for the next 57 years.
The Nebraska home crowd is known as the Red Sea. With no major league teams in the State -- the highest-ranking professional team is the Omaha Storm Chasers of Class AAA baseball -- Cornhusker football is it in the Cornhusker State. This is true for many States were there is no major league team, including Alabama, Arkansas and West Virginia.
The Nebraska fan base is devoted. How devoted is it? On December 4, 1982, 16,000 Nebraska fans showed up for a game against the University of Hawaii -- in Honolulu, a game they couldn't drive to. Nebraska won, 37-16, against a Hawaii team that were 6-4 going in, so it's not like they were a bad team.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions preventing fans from attending games in the 2020 season, Nebraska hosted 3 games there, with a combined attendance of exactly zero. The NCAA has chosen to exempt those games from the streak.
In 2021, despite a 3-9 season, one of the worst in Nebraska's modern history, the Cornhuskers played 6 home games, each with an attendance of at least 85,663. As of October 29, 2022, Nebraska's home sellout streak is officially 387 straight games. Since any other school with a sellout streak would also have seen it snapped in 2020, for the same reason, if you consider the 372 straight games from 1962 to 2019 to be the record and now over, that record is unlikely ever to be broken -- at least, not until the 2078 season.
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November 3, 1962 was a Saturday. Among the other college football games played that day were these:
* Number 1 Northwestern beat Indiana, 26-21 at Seventeenth Street Stadium (now Memorial Stadium) in Bloomington, Indiana. Yes, Northwestern were ranked Number 1 in November. But they lost their next 2 games, to Wisconsin and Michigan State. They did go to the Orange Bowl stadium, but that was for a scheduled game with the University of Miami, which they won.
* Number 2 Alabama beat Mississippi State, 20-0 at Scott Field (now Davis Wade Stadium) in Starkville, Mississippi. Alabama blew its chances at the Southeastern Conference and National Championships by losing to Georgia Tech 2 weeks later. They were still invited to the Orange Bowl.
* Number 3 Southern California beat Number 9 Washington, 14-0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USC won the title of the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU, a precursor to the Pacific-Twelve Conference).
* Number 4 Louisiana State were beaten by Number 6 Mississippi, 15-7 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This was LSU's only loss of the season, although they had also been tied by Rice University. "Ole Miss" won the SEC Championship.
* Number 5 Texas beat Southern Methodist (SMU), 6-0 at Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. Texas won the Southwest Conference title, but lost the Cotton Bowl to LSU.
* Number 7 Michigan State were upset by Minnesota, 28-7 at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan.
* Number 8 Arkansas beat Texas A&M, 17-7 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. Arkansas had already lost their shot at the SWC title by losing to Texas, but were invited to the Sugar Bowl, where they lost to Ole Miss.
* Number 10 Auburn were upset by Florida, 22-3 at Florida Field in Gainesville.
* Wisconsin, then unranked, beat Michigan, 34-12 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Wisconsin won the Big Ten Conference title, but lost the Rose Bowl to USC, making USC the National Champions.
* Oklahoma, then unranked, beat Colorado, 62-0 at Folsom Field in the Denver suburb of Boulder, Colorado. Oklahoma won the Big Eight Conference title, then beat Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
* Among the service academies, Army beat Boston University, 26-0 at Nickerson Field in Boston; Navy lost to Notre Dame, 20-12 at Municipal Stadium (later John F. Kennedy Stadium) in Philadelphia; and Air Force beat Wyoming, 35-14 at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs.
* And among New Jersey teams, Rutgers beat Lafayette, 40-0 at the old Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway; and Princeton beat Brown, 28-12 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
There were 4 games played in the NBA that day:
* The Boston Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons, 125-11 at the Boston Garden.
* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Cincinnati Royals, 130-111 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York. This would be the last season for the Nationals: The next season, 1963-64, they moved, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers.
* The St. Louis Hawks beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 114-109 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. The next season, the Zephyrs moved, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Francisco Warriors, 127-115, despite Wilt Chamberlain scoring 72 points -- yes, seventy-two -- for the Warriors, in their 1st season in the San Francisco Bay Area, having previously been the Philadelphia Warriors.
And there were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played to a tie, 3-3 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 7-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.
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