96. George Flippin
Wrestling, Football, Track & Field, Baseball / Stromsburg / 1868-1929
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Nebraska
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Flippin's teams at Nebraska included guard W.W. Wilson and quarterback E.O. Pace.
Best moment as an athlete: Records are sketchy, but Nebraska's 6-0 victory over Illinois in 1892 stands out. In NU's first game against a "big-time" opponent, Flippin had a 25-yard run, recovered a fumble and later scored the only touchdown.
In University of Nebraska football history, the 1-0 win over Missouri in 1892 is accompanied by an asterisk. The Tigers forfeited, refusing to come to Omaha.
The reason? NU had a black player, halfback George Flippin.
Nebraska had played just two seasons -- and six games -- when Flippin started his three-year career in 1892. At the time, he was only the fifth black athlete nationally at a predominantly white university. NU would later ban blacks from athletic competition from 1917 until the late 1940s.
In addition to playing football and basketball, Flippin set NU school records in track and field (shot put, hammer throw) and won championships as a wrestler. He was big for his time in football, a 6-foot-2, 200-pounder coming out of the backfield.
Flippin was once described by Lincoln Star sports editor Cy Sherman as a "charged bull, into which was bred the tenacity of the bulldog, the ferocity of the tiger and the gameness of the man who knows no fear."
Flippin was born in Port Isabelle, Ohio, before the family moved to Stromsburg, Neb. Flippin would return to Stromsburg in 1907 as a physician and, along with his father, opened the town's first hospital.
He was voted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974, 45 years after his death.
-- Rich Kaipust
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Nebraska
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Flippin's teams at Nebraska included guard W.W. Wilson and quarterback E.O. Pace.
Best moment as an athlete: Records are sketchy, but Nebraska's 6-0 victory over Illinois in 1892 stands out. In NU's first game against a "big-time" opponent, Flippin had a 25-yard run, recovered a fumble and later scored the only touchdown.
