LINCOLN, Neb. — Sometimes younger fans enter the Best of Big Red store near Nebraska’s campus and ask the owner, Mike Osborne, why, amid all the Cornhuskers apparel and tchotchkes — earrings and garden gnomes and beer cozies that look like corncobs — there is a football helmet in a glass case with one side painted in Nebraska’s colors and the other in Oklahoma’s.
“Old-timers like me look at it and get it,” said Osborne, 51, a lanky, soft-spoken man who gives off a Mr. Rogers vibe. “Others are like, ‘Why do you have an Oklahoma helmet?’”
The helmet is a silent reminder of one of college football’s great rivalries — one now dormant, and one whose passion might take some explaining to fans under 40.