Nebraska's athletic programs have won thirty-two national championships: eleven in bowling, eight in men's gymnastics, five each in football and volleyball, and three in women's track and field.

Sharpe and his successor John Sanders combined to lead NU for fifty-one seasons, making just three NCAA Division I tournament appearances between them.

Nebraska hired Dave Van Horn in 1998 and he quickly turned the Huskers into a national power, reaching the College World Series in 2001 and 2002.

Mike Anderson took over for Van Horn and in 2005 led NU to a school-record fifty-seven wins and another College World Series berth.

In 2002, the Huskers moved from the aging Buck Beltzer Stadium to Hawks Field at Haymarket Park, considered among the best collegiate baseball facilities in the country at the time.

Nebraska's lengthiest period of success came in the first years of the sport's existence; the retroactive Premo-Porretta Power Poll ranked the Cornhuskers in the top ten three times between 1897 and 1903.

Men Women Nebraska competes as part of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, representing the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the Big Ten Conference.

[16][17] Nebraska's three Heisman Trophy winners – Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier, and Eric Crouch – join twenty-four other Cornhuskers in the College Football Hall of Fame.

[19] Despite a span of twenty-one conference championships in thirty-three seasons, the Cornhuskers did not experience major national success until Bob Devaney was hired in 1962.

Devaney won two national championships and eight conference titles in eleven seasons as head coach, but perhaps his most lasting achievement was the hiring of Tom Osborne as offensive coordinator in 1969.

[20] Osborne was named Devaney's successor in 1973, and over the next twenty-five years established himself as one of the best coaches in college football history with his trademark I-formation offense and revolutionary strength, conditioning, and nutrition programs.

The team's greatest successes came under longtime head coach Larry Romjue, who took NU to all four of its NCAA Division I Championship appearances.

The team practices and hosts meets at the ten-point indoor firing range in NU's Military and Naval Sciences Building (ROTC).

Since the NCAA sanctioned softball in 1983, the Cornhuskers have made eight appearances in the Women's College World Series and won the tenth-most games of any program.

The program's greatest successes came under head coach Wayne Daigle shortly after the tournament's creation, culminating in a national runner-up finish in 1985 (though it was quickly vacated by the NCAA Committee on Infractions).

In 2016, the NCAA began sponsoring a beach volleyball tournament (previously the sport was run by the AVCA), but Nebraska did not attempt to qualify.

Nebraska runs one of the only beach volleyball programs in the Midwest and plays the bulk of its season during a spring break trip to California or Hawaii.

Despite modest success in the program's early years, NU has been a mainstay in the national top ten since Tim Neumann was hired in 1985.

[32] The first individual to hold the title "athletic director" was E. J. Stewart, who served from 1916 to 1919, while also coaching men's basketball and football during parts of his tenure.

These included basketball, baseball, and swimming, but the majority of dual-role administrators were football coaches: Stewart, Fred Dawson, Dana X. Bible, Biff Jones, Glenn Presnell, Adolph J. Lewandowski, George Clark, and Bob Devaney.

[35] Home venues Additional facilities The University of Nebraska Athletic Hall of Fame was established in 2015, located just northeast of Memorial Stadium.

Merlene Ottey is Nebraska's most decorated Olympian in terms of medals won, winning three silver and seven six bronze across seven Olympic Games, a record for track and field competitors.

[38] South African swimmer Penelope Heyns – the only Cornhusker with multiple gold medals – is the only woman to ever win the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke events at the same Olympic Games.

After just a few years, the university sought a more "representative" mascot and debuted Huskie the Husker, a farmer who stood ten feet tall and wore overalls with a straw hat on top of a fiberglass head.

Harry's head was so large it couldn't fit on the team's traveling bus and was so heavy the student wearing the costume had to be switched every forty-five minutes.

[41] The physical demands of the Harry costume meant the university was soon looking for another mascot, and in 1974 NU acquired the rights to Herbie Husker, based on the design of Lubbock, Texas artist Dirk West.

[43] Historically, Herbie had blond hair and dressed in denim overalls (with an ear of corn in the pocket), a white undershirt, and a red cowboy hat.

Lil' Red was so popular that then-athletic director Bill Byrne considered discontinuing Herbie entirely, but later decided the mascots would coexist.

[46] Decades of high attendance and well-traveling crowds across all sports have earned Nebraska fans a reputation for being fiercely loyal and dedicated.

Nebraska's five-set loss to Wisconsin in the 2021 national championship match broke college volleyball records for both attendance and viewership.