With no fans and empty stadiums, NU will have to bring its own 'juice'

When Nebraska finally takes the field for its first game in nearly 11 months, the atmosphere inside the normally daunting Ohio Stadium will be unlike any player, on either team, has ever experienced in organized football.

Due to COVID-19 precautions, the Big Ten Conference announced that no tickets would be sold to the public for any of its games this season.

While there will still be a select number of family members allowed in the stands, the massive stadiums around the league will otherwise be empty – including the Horseshoe in Columbus, which has hosted crowds of more than 110,000.

Football is an emotional sport almost just as much as it is physical, as few events have players feeding off the energy of fans like gladiators the way it does, particularly at the college level.

So how are the Huskers preparing to play a fall season in empty stadiums? As NU defensive coordinator Erik Chinander put it, it will be up to them to provide their own “juice” all year.

“It’ll be bring-your-own-juice a little bit, bring your own energy,” Chinander said. “So we need to get that going now. Not just our guys, but the whole conference, they’re not going to be used to playing in front of an empty stadium.

“In the Big Ten, and especially at Nebraska, whether we’re at home or on the road, we have the best fans in the country, period, and there’s always a lot of juice coming from the stands. There’s not going to be, so we’re going to have to bring our own a little bit.”

The process of getting the team used to creating its own energy has already begun for Nebraska, as the coaching staff has been prodding its players – especially their top vocal leaders – to pick up the chatter at every opportunity.

Chinander said the team would practice in an empty Memorial Stadium with zero simulated crowd noise this month to try and replicate what they’ll see at Ohio State on Oct. 24. While he’s “been chasing guys around a little bit” during individual drills to help keep the energy up, Chinander has seen a good response from the Huskers thus far.

Senior safety Deontai Williams said it eventually had to get to a point where the players didn’t need all of that encouragement from the coaches to bring their own “juice.”

“The only way that’s going to happen is energy,” Williams said. “Everybody. Energy from the sideline; energy on the field. Coach has been emphasizing energy this whole offseason. That’s what we need this year, just energy.”

Chinander said it would continue to be a task of trying to find the right balance between keeping things lively and fun in practice while also staying focused enough to accomplish all that the Huskers need to do within a very limited window to get ready to play one of the best teams in all of college football.

There’s already more than enough on Nebraska’s plate in trying to get ready for Ohio State (not to mention following games vs. Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Penn State). But in a year where the college football world got turned upside down, having to play with passion and fire in cavernous empty stadiums is just another item on the list.

“I want to have fun out there,” Chinander said. “I want to be demanding, I want to be full speed, I want to get everything we can out of everybody. But I want to have fun, too. Football’s a fun game, and when you’re playing really fast and you know what you’re doing - once they let us get pads on and we’re hitting people, once that stuff all comes together, that’s when the fun comes…

“It’s been said since the beginning of time: good teams are led by the coaches and great teams are led by the players. Some of those guys that have a lot of experience for us need to take the next step and give us some great energy, some great leadership… We have to feed off each other’s energy.”