Hlas column: The reddest of the Red-hot Big Ten football fans are one state to Iowa's left

Saturday marks the oasis in the midst of eight full months of no college football games, when we see what a powerful hold a team has over its fans' hearts.

I'm talking about Nebraska, of course.

Yes, there are spring-football finales open to the public Saturday at Iowa and Iowa State, too. Iowa's had an announced crowd of 23,502 last year. Iowa State's was said to be 10,000. Which means there were no more than 23,501 and 9,999, respectively. Sports-information people never underestimate crowd-sizes for free events.

But get this: Nebraska's Red-White game isn't free. There are actual tickets printed for the event, and they sell for $10 (Students get in free.). The notion of paying 10 bucks for an intrasquad game/scrimmage is foreign to most college fans. At Nebraska, they could probably double or triple the prices without anyone whimpering.

Last year's crowd was 77,936. That wasn't an aberration, but rather, the norm. This is your new Big Ten partner, Hawkeye fans.

Tom Shatel of the Omaha World-Herald wrote this recently: “Some corners of the Big Ten may find that Nebraskans are a little intense about their football. Or maybe the others are laid back.”

Laid back? Whoa! Now there's a slap to the face with a white (and red) glove. Come on, man, Iowa has 10 straight home sellouts. OK, Nebraska has 311 dating to 1962, but who's counting?

Iowa will come up with some sort of number like 23,502 for its public spring scrimmage today that is free to the public, while Nebraska will have yet another crowd in the 80,000-range for Big Red. If you want to use dicey weather as an excuse today, fine, but the 23,502 came on a nice enough day a year ago.

I'd say it's because Nebraska has an advantage in population, but Iowa has 1.2 million more people than its neighbor to the west. I'd say it's because Nebraska has been a historically dominant football program, but Iowa won 85 games in the last 10 seasons to Nebraska's 84.

I'd say it's because the Cornhuskers have a long line of Big 12 Conference-championship banners flying on the Nebraska prairie, but the Huskers haven't won a league-title since 1999. Iowa has two Big Ten title-shares since then.

You know what? Nebraska fans might just be (gasp!) a bit more passionate than Iowa fans, or any fans north or west of Alabama. I mean, they aren't just paying $10 for spring-game tickets, they're buying them in advance.

Reserved seats for today's Red-White game went on sale Feb. 2, and 57,000 of them had been purchased as of the middle of this week. If you went to StubHub.com on Thursday, you saw that someone was dangling lower sideline tickets for $55, and someone else had end zone seats for $30. Scalpers will be hard at work in Lincoln on Saturday morning. For a spring game!

Parking at the game is $5 in university lots, and a Red-White Game souvenir program will be on sale for $5.

It doesn't hurt that Cornhuskers Coach Bo Pelini treats the spring game like a football game. He has his seniors pick the squads, and the teams are evenly matched.

I guess the thinking is that if Nebraska players can perform adequately against other Nebraska players before 78,000 fans, they ought to be able to cope against Indiana or Minnesota.

But none of the above matters compared to this: Nebraska comes waltzing into the Big Ten calling itself the Cornhuskers. According to the USDA, Nebraska produced 1.469 billion bushels of corn in 2010. Iowa produced 2.153 billion bushels

So have fun today with that little football exhibition that means so much to you, Nebraskans. We're kind of busy over here, feeding the world and all.