Nebraska football season opener canceled after mass confusion

LINCOLN, NE - NOVEMBER 24: A fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers holds a sign in support of coaching prospect Scott Frost (not shown) during the game against the Iowa Hawkeyes at Memorial Stadium on November 24, 2017 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)
LINCOLN, NE - NOVEMBER 24: A fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers holds a sign in support of coaching prospect Scott Frost (not shown) during the game against the Iowa Hawkeyes at Memorial Stadium on November 24, 2017 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)

Fans waited for the start of the Nebraska football game against Akron for an extra 2 hours and 40 minutes before it was canceled.

The Nebraska football season opener has been canceled. After fans and viewers sat through more than two hours of lightning delays, severe thunderstorms rolling through Lincoln forced a postponement.

Shortly after the announcement, the game wouldn’t be played, there was talk they would try and get the game in on Sunday. Those talks apparently got far enough that Fox Sports announced the new game time of 10:30 AM on Sunday.

That announcement had followed several people saying they had sources that were working towards that resolution. When the announcement started scrolling across the bottom of the screen, people started planning for the first Sunday Husker game since 1994.

Then, just like that, Fox took its announcement of a new game time down. Tim Brando, the man who would have called the game tweeted out that the broadcast crew had no idea what was happening and that nothing was final.

Oddly enough, it was UNL police that appeared to finally break the real news. The game had been officially canceled. The athletic department’s official Twitter account confirmed just minutes later the game was not going to be played this weekend at the very least.

Details of the potential for a reschedule later in the year have not been released, but there isn’t a week for the rest of the season where the two teams both have an open date. The only possibility of this game being played in 2018 is if both teams are eliminated from their conference championship game early enough to have it after their regular seasons would normally end.

What is interesting is that a scenario can be painted where one of both teams would need this game to have a chance at six wins. Moving on … the official Nebraska football season opener will be next week against former conference rival Colorado.