Where Are They Now: Micah Heibel December 2005

Micah Heibel never made the cover of Sports Illustrated. But he was quoted there.

In the Sept. 21, 1987, issue, Rick Telander wrote a story about Nebraska's 42-33 victory against UCLA, and Heibel and his band, Brain Hammer, were featured prominently.

Heibel's quote: "We don't do 'Sex Farm,' but we do 'Hell Hole.' "

Telander included the quote parenthetically in a description of Brain Hammer as a group that "patterns itself after the parodistic heavy-metal rockers Spinal Tap."

The recollection still elicits a laugh from Heibel.

"What a thing to get in there for," he said.

Actually, what preceded the quote was probably more significant and as such, worth recalling. Telander described Heibel as "an unsung yet inspirational fullback who plows holes for the better-publicized runners." And so he was and did during his senior season.

Heibel carried 64 times for 356 yards and four touchdowns. But mostly he helped clear the way for I-back Keith Jones (1,232 yards) and quarterback Steve Taylor (659 yards).

Every option offense needs a fullback like Heibel, Telander wrote.

And every sports writer needs someone as contemplative and articulate.

Heibel can give a sense of how it was midway through the Tom Osborne era. "There was a mindset that, 'We'll take the players we can get and we'll out-work everybody,' " he said. "I still felt like we were the best football program in the country, even though there was evidence that we weren't."

Evidence to the contrary is relative, of course. During his time at Nebraska, including seasons on the freshman team and as a redshirt, the Cornhuskers had a combined record of 51-10.

But they defeated Oklahoma only once, when he was a freshman, and won only one Big Eight Conference championship outright, also that season, 1983.

They shared the title the next season, when he redshirted.

Those were the "in-between years, some good, some bad," said Heibel, who earned letters in 1986 and 1987. "We were good, but there was a sense of, maybe we were just about there."

Oklahoma was the standard by which Nebraska was measured back then. And Barry Switzer's Sooners were an annual source of frustration for Osborne's program.

In 1984, the Cornhuskers went into the Oklahoma game, the last of the regular season, ranked No. 1 and lost 17-7. In 1985, they went into the game ranked No. 2 and lost 27-7. In 1986, they went in ranked No. 5 and lost 20-17. And in 1987, they again went in ranked No. 1 and lost 17-7.

Both teams were undefeated and untied in 1987. Oklahoma was ranked No. 2, after giving up the top spot in the Associated Press poll to Nebraska that week. It was the "Game of the Century II."

The Cornhuskers scored first, near the end of the first quarter, on a 25-yard touchdown run by Jones. But Oklahoma dominated the rest of the way, despite eight fumbles, three of them lost.

A friend of one of Heibel's brothers sent a copy of the next day's newspaper in Milwaukee featuring a picture of him on the front sports page, beneath the headline: "Bore of the Century."

Those Sooners were "pretty damn good," Heibel said. "After we lost that game, I was OK with it because . . . I felt like, at least personally and as a team, we were overmatched and we got outplayed. That's a lot easier to handle than when you lose and you think you should have won."

That happened twice in the two seasons he played. Nebraska lost to Colorado in 1986, for the first time since 1967, and to Florida State in the 1988 Fiesta Bowl game.

The Florida State loss, 31-28, still irritates him, "after all this time," he said.

I-back Tyreese Knox lost a fumble on an attempt at a clinching touchdown from 2 yards out late in the fourth quarter, and the Seminoles responded with an 11-play, 97-yard touchdown drive, capped by a 15-yard, fourth-down pass from Danny McManus to Ronald Lewis with 3:09 remaining.

In many ways, Heibel represented what was best about the program during that time. A Parade All-American at Pius X High School in Lincoln (Neb.), he was recruited as a linebacker but moved to fullback early in practice on the freshman team after the No. 1 fullback, a recruited walk-on, quit.

Heibel started on the freshman-junior varsity team and then redshirted. But his career stalled in his third season, and he was relegated to playing with the freshman-junior varsity.

"It was a chance to play," he said, looking back as a senior.

His patience paid off. He alternated with Ken Kaelin, starting twice, as a junior, then became the full-time starter. He also succeeded in the classroom, earning academic all-conference recognition and second-team Academic All-America honors with a 3.59 grade-point average in secondary math education.

He didn't aspire to play in the NFL. He prepared for a teaching career. He teaches math at Lincoln's North Star High School, after spending 15 years at Lincoln High, where he also coached football for nine years, as a sophomore assistant and then junior varsity coach. The quarterback during his final season as jayvee coach was former Cornhusker wide receiver Troy Hassebroek.

His attitude toward coaching was shaped by those who coached him: Osborne; Frank Solich, his position coach at Nebraska; and the late Vince Aldrich, a legend at Pius X High. "They always called me by my first name. It's just a minor politeness to call people by their first name," said Heibel. "I never had a coach that shouted at kids. I never had a coach who would yell and scream.

"It was a bit of an eye-opener for me to get out around other coaches, to work as a coach, and to see that a lot of coaches are sort of like the stereotype. My coaches were never like that."

Osborne often spoke in clichés, which were "generally true" and which he "absolutely" believed. "He might say, 'If we lose and play the best we can,' " that's what he wanted. "I've always believed those," Heibel said. "It was a little odd to find out that not everybody views sports that way."

Heibel's feelings of self-worth didn't depend on athletic achievement. "At a certain point, I had to decide I was OK whether I ever got to play football or not," he said.

He was more than a football player, just as he was more than a singer with Brain Hammer. Osborne learned about that during a team function at the Fiesta Bowl when he was a sophomore.

"It became like a talent show," Heibel said. "I wouldn't have touched that with a 10-foot pole, but I kind of got shoved up there by people, so I had to go up there and sing."

Less than two years later, his singing drew mention in Sports Illustrated.

As he sang at a Lincoln club on the night after the UCLA game, he "looked like a man at peace with himself and the football world," an insightful Telander wrote.