Kansas had 7,500 people at their Spring Game...what about us?

The story grew some legs and ran. It ran to the front page of the Yahoo Sports Web site. It ran to a 15-second segment on CNN Headline News.

“In Nebraska, tickets are going as high as $95 for a practice!” announced the news anchor. “Now those are fans.”

Allen Iverson would not understand this, not at all. “I mean, listen, we’re sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game.”
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We’re talking about a sellout, about 80,000 people coming to watch a football practice where the quarterbacks can’t be tackled.

Call it crazy. Call it nuts. Call it a monster of a recruiting tool.

Memorial Stadium will be packed with fans for Saturday’s Spring Game and plenty of recruits want in on the action, too.

Jeff Jamrog, assistant athletic director for football operations, said there will be more than 100 recruits on hand for the weekend’s festivities. Many of them are from the Midwest, but some are coming from as far as Louisiana.

“The more the better,” Husker coach Bo Pelini said.

Recruits will walk the field during pre-game warm-ups, getting a view of something Jamrog knows will be hard to find on any other recruiting visit this spring.

“They’ll get a glimpse firsthand of what game day is like at Nebraska,” Jamrog said. “We can say, ‘What you saw is very similar to what it will be like in the fall.’ You look around and a lot of other stadiums around the country are a third- to half-full for their spring games.”

Stadiums at other places just don’t fill up for spring games — perhaps Alabama and Ohio State excluded.

Alabama drew 78,200 fans to its spring game last weekend after setting a college record for spring attendance with 92,138 in 2007.

But if you look around at other school’s attendance figures, and Jamrog has been, the numbers can’t compare to what Nebraska will have Saturday.

Pelini’s former school, Louisiana State, drew roughly 33,000 to its spring game. Oklahoma drew about 23,000. And Kansas? Coming off a one-loss season, the Jayhawks had only about 7,500 fans at their game Monday despite offering free admission and a free T-shirt.

Who’s to say how much a full stadium in April affects a recruit’s thinking, but Jamrog’s thinking is the passion sure can’t hurt.

“No doubt it sends a strong message to everyone,” he said. “Not to only recruits, but also the current players that everyone is supportive, behind them. Any edge you can get in recruiting is extremely helpful.”

On the invitation list this weekend are all the signees and walk-ons from the 2008 class. Joining them will be potential prospects for the next recruiting class, some of them having already been offered scholarships by NU.

Players will gather Friday night for a meeting, and on Saturday morning will meet to tour the facilities. Before the scrimmage, they’ll hear from Pelini and athletic director Tom Osborne. Then they’ll walk the field while the stadium fills with red.

It might be a practice, but the Husker camp is going to get everything it can out of it. Jamrog said he hopes Saturday might be the “springboard” for a program trying to distance itself from last season’s struggles.

On Monday, Pelini was asked what he thought about all this — those Husker fans attempting to sell tickets on certain Internet sites for more than $100 apiece.

Apparently, the first-year head coach has already grown used to the extreme fandom that exists here, because he said it wasn’t surprising.

“I hope to see the place full,” Pelini said. “It should be a heck of an atmosphere for our guys. Once again, to see all the support, it hopefully will put some juice in them and make them want to work that much harder through the summer.”

Courtesy Brian Chistopherson at the Journal Star

::Ferdinand's Mom::