Nebraska football is an interesting experience – an event that Nebraskans pledge their faith to and pay large sums of money to be a part of.
According to one professor, it is nothing less than a religious experience.
At the Great Plains Art Museum yesterday, Michael Hoff, a professor of art and art history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, presented a lecture titled “Nebraska Football and the Spectacle of Roman Religion.”
“This is meant to be entertainment, really, but there are some irrefutable components to this,” Hoff said.
Throughout the presentation, Hoff compared major elements of the ancient Roman practices to largely celebrated traditions Husker fans experience.
One of the first correlations he pointed out had to do with the Roman Emperor Augustus and former Husker quarterback Brook Berringer, a back-up quarterback for Tommie Frazier in the 1994 season. He started seven games that season while Frazier was out with blood clots in his leg but stepped back to allow Frazier to play in the national championship game later that season.
“Roman emperors, specifically Augustus, were hardly ever deified while they were alive,” Hoff said. “Much in the same way, Brook Berringer was a great football player, but it was not until after his untimely death that Nebraska fans realized him for the hero he was.”
Another similarity Hoff brought up dealt with animism. Animism is the belief that souls exist in things like inanimate objects and natural phenomena, as well as in humans. Roman religion was highly animistic in the same way that Nebraska football is animistic, in that just being near people of prominence, their aura can come off and affect the followers.
“Not just children, but adults line up after the game just to get near enough to the players to get an autograph,” Hoff said.
Religious music was also a major point in the presentation.
“No religion is without formal, sacred music,” Hoff said. “It’s done in the same way over and over again to be awe-inspiring. You have the marching band play the same songs over and over again at the beginning of the game in the exact same order. It represents tradition.”
Among his other comparisons were the sacrificial offerings of ancient religious people being quite like the symbol of cross bones that Husker fans all know and love. Also, the fact that the referee signal for a touchdown is strikingly similar to the ancient prayer method of raising one’s arms to the sky indicates a religious connection. Furthermore, Italians were largely followers of Roman religion in ancient times, and coach Bo Pelini just happens to be of Italian ancestry.
Devon Kathol, a sophomore art major, found some of the comparisons to be startlingly accurate.
“The honoring of the significant players really stuck out to me,” Kathol said about the comparison between Augustus and Berringer. “That’s definitely one of our traditions in Husker football.”
So what spurred Hoff to come up with this lecture?
“It was clearly the camaraderie, the fellowship people experience related to both Roman religion and Nebraska football. In Turkey, those people may have never gone to Rome, but here they were building a temple to show that they were a part of Roman Religion,” Hoff said. “In Scottsbluff, those people may never have set foot in Memorial Stadium, but they still watch the game and wear their team’s colors.
“Go to Florida, one of the most important football states in the nation, and there will not be people in Jacksonville wearing the colors of the University of Miami. You just don’t get our fervor in other football programs.”
kayahgausman@dailynebraskan.com
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