Despite the 2026 season moving ever closer, no one would ever accuse Nebraska football media of never looking back at the “good old days” when the Huskers were the cream of the college football crop. Add in that everyone misses when the rest of the country respected and feared the Cornhuskers, that this summer is the first time since 1994 that the World Cup was hosted by the US, and it’s the perfect time to remember the decade NU dominated.
More specifically, The Athletic’s Mitch Sherman looked back at the 1990s and wrote about who he thinks is the absolute defining player of that decade in the sport. Sherman was not wrong when he picked Tommie Frazier, and his selection of the should-have-been-Heisman-winner had absolutely nothing to do with Sherman covering the Husker beat as his regular gig.
Readers didn’t even need to take Sherman’s word for it. The writer talked to one of Frazier’s former teammates, Jeff Makovicka, who broke down how easy it was to explain just how the Huskers were so good.
“I always start with this,” Mackovicka told Sherman. “Let me tell you the story about the greatest college football player never to win the Heisman Trophy. I tell everyone, all the time, with what he meant for the program and how good he was, it’s a travesty that he didn’t win it.”
Nebraska football legend Tommie Frazier still owns the sport’s biggest Heisman gripe
That’s the thing that’s most prevalent about just how good Frazier was. Anyone with a pulse and eyes knows that he should have won the Heisman trophy. Even if his numbers weren’t all that impressive, he was very clearly the best player in the sport. As good a running back as Eddie George was, he wasn’t the guy who the entire world stopped to watch when he had the ball in his hands.
Sports Illustrated named Frazier to its 85-man All-Century Team. Despite stats that would pale in comparison to the big-game numbers players put up today, it’s a testament to the best Nebraska quarterback in the program's history that people outside the state understand just how good he was.
Mackovicka also summed up why Tommie Frazier was so good whenever he was healthy enough to step onto the field.
“What’s so special is that he wasn’t just a competitor,” one of the best fullbacks to ever come through Nebraska said. “He was an apex competitor.”
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