81. Eugene "Red" Littler
Track & Field, Football / Mitchell / 1918-2008
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Mitchell High and Nebraska Cornhuskers
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Mitchell High School teammate Rusty Bradford or Scottsbluff's Roy Petsch, who went on to quarterback Nebraska in the 1941 Rose Bowl against Stanford. He also ran at Nebraska with Madison miler Bobby Ginn, who was the NCAA mile champion in 1942. Their coach was Ed Weir.
Best moment as an athlete: It was Littler's senior year at Nebraska, and the Husker track team had won three straight Big Six titles and was working on a fourth in 1942. All Nebraska had to do was win the mile relay, but found itself trailing Missouri in the event. Littler, however, came through with a 46.5-second anchor leg to beat the Tigers and win the title.
Eugene "Red" Littler used his speed and toughness at Nebraska to win five Big Six titles in the 60 and 440 in the 1930s and early '40s.
A 1937 graduate of Mitchell High School, Littler helped his school to three straight Class B state track and field titles from 1935 through 1937, and won the 100, 220 and anchored the winning relay team his senior year.
Littler's football team lost only one game (to Scottsbluff) over three years.
In 1940 while at Nebraska, Littler ran the 300 in 31.2 at the Illinois Relays, equaling the United States indoor mark. In the 1941 NCAA meet, he ran the 440 in 46.9, finishing fourth, but his time stood as a conference record for years. He also ran a 21.0 220 in a dual against Utah in Salt Lake City.
Later, as a Navy pilot, he survived lengthy action in the Pacific and did another turn during the Korean War before retiring from the Navy in 1954.
Littler, who went on to a successful coaching stint at Beatrice, moved to Tenafly High School in New Jersey. He spent 18 years there as a coach and athletic director before retiring in 1982 and moving to Deland, Fla.
He died in 2008 at the age of 89.
-- Joe Clark
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Mitchell High and Nebraska Cornhuskers
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Mitchell High School teammate Rusty Bradford or Scottsbluff's Roy Petsch, who went on to quarterback Nebraska in the 1941 Rose Bowl against Stanford. He also ran at Nebraska with Madison miler Bobby Ginn, who was the NCAA mile champion in 1942. Their coach was Ed Weir.
Best moment as an athlete: It was Littler's senior year at Nebraska, and the Husker track team had won three straight Big Six titles and was working on a fourth in 1942. All Nebraska had to do was win the mile relay, but found itself trailing Missouri in the event. Littler, however, came through with a 46.5-second anchor leg to beat the Tigers and win the title.
