Upon arriving in Lincoln, Neb., last December, Priscilla Joseph convinced her husband to take her out on the town for dinner.
While waiting to be seated at a local restaurant, the couple sipped drinks at the bar when a Nebraska fan interrupted them and asked for a selfie. Priscilla thought it was odd—that rarely happened when husband Mickey was the wide receivers coach at LSU for five years.
When they finally followed the host to their table, a man from across the dining room stood from his seat, waved an arm in the air, pointed and exclaimed, “Hey! Mickey Joseph!”
Mickey and Priscilla would later learn the restaurant had stopped seating for dinner a half an hour before they arrived. But in their case, an exception was made—no Lincoln establishment turns down a former Huskers quarterback, especially when he’s making his homecoming.
“Welcome to Nebraska!” Priscilla says with a laugh.
Ten months later, it’s hard to believe Mickey Joseph has gone from receivers coach to interim head coach, taking over what many would argue is the most powerful seat in the state after Scott Frost was dismissed Sept. 11. Joseph is the first Black head coach at Nebraska in any sport, making history at a school that sponsors 23 sports and has fielded a football team for 132 years.
Priscilla won’t be able to convince her husband to go out on the town anymore. No way.
“Oh, you can’t go anywhere,” says Huskers defensive coordinator Bill Busch, a Nebraska native in his third stint on the football staff. “My wife can’t go anywhere without people asking her where I am and what I’m doing.”
Such is life in a state with no major professional sports franchise, a total population akin to the Nashville metro area (1.9 million people) and a terrain of mostly windmills and farm land. Nebraskans are loyal and overly hospitable, resilient and strong enough to survive those harsh winters. And, above all, they love the Huskers, the only Division I football program in the state.
But since Mickey’s playing days here from 1988 to ’91, much has changed in Lincoln. The city has grown exponentially, as strip malls and chain restaurants rose where corn fields and forested areas once stood. The storied football program has slipped into mediocrity, going from an annual championship contender to a team that hasn’t finished with a winning record since 2016.
“And still, they come,” Joseph says of the fans.
During each Saturday home game, the 90,000-seat Memorial Stadium turns into the state’s third-largest city, and the nation is reminded of Huskers fans’ undying passion for Big Red. The school has had 386 consecutive sellouts—the nation’s longest such streak—which is recognized in the football facility’s main lobby, where three metallic numbers hang on the wall and are manually updated each week. The streak is important enough that, earlier this year, donors bought more than 2,000 unsold tickets to keep it alive.
“All we have is Nebraska football,” says Eric Crouch, the former Huskers quarterback who guided the team to its last conference championship 23 years ago. “This is a part of the people here, their lifestyle and culture.”
The 54-year-old Joseph, roughly halfway through the biggest and longest job interview of his life, is in a pursuit to awaken this giant from its 20-year slumber. His résumé mostly features stops as a position coach at historically Black universities. His meandering career took him from high schools, to an NAIA job in which he presided over a staff of four people, to the SWAC, where just nine years ago he made $37,000 a year while at Alcorn State.
He has taken over what remains one of the best collegiate jobs in the country, for more reasons than just that sellout streak. This loyal fan base also shows their support monetarily. A new $160 million football operations center is in the process of being built to replace a facility that, at most places, would be more than suitable. The school also has enough cash that it elected to pay a $15 million buyout to Frost when it could have waited three more weeks for that figure to drop by half. In this era of name, image and likeness (NIL), Nebraska is believed to be one of the top 10 schools in the country when it comes to athlete pay. Their multimedia rightsholder, Playfly Sports, has pledged more than $2 million to NIL efforts and an assortment of collectives have pooled millions, according to sources.
Joseph is 2–3 as interim coach, with four more games to show he is good enough to land the permanent job. While outsiders doubt he is a legitimate contender, Joseph is heralded by many in Lincoln as having already turned the program around. Fans are excited. Players are energized. And the Huskers, despite a blowout loss against Oklahoma in Joseph’s first game at the helm, are playing better.
“You have resources like this, there’s no way you should be losing,” says Joseph, reclining in the office chair Frost occupied six weeks ago. “You’ve got to measure this program with others around the country. I know this place has just as many resources as we had at LSU.”
Joseph continues pushes toward the future, not knowing for certain he will still be here to see it.
“Everybody wants Nebraska to stay sleeping because we’ve got the resources, and they know I can get players,” Joseph says during a phone conversation from his office last week. “They don’t want this f—er to wake up.”
