The stadium primarily served as the home venue for the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team and a variety of other university and state activities.

The first person to put considerable effort into creating a football-only stadium at the University of Nebraska was Earl Eager, the school's first graduate manager of athletics.

[1] Eager had played his entire NU career at Antelope Field, which was "either as hard as a pavement or was a sea of mud" and had no seating other than a few wooden benches.

The fiery Stiehm was subject to such frequent outbursts that the school established a women's sitting section at Nebraska Field far from the home sideline.

Stiehm's departure temporarily slowed this momentum, but by the early 1920s, with "the present athletic field as inadequate now as the old one was in 1907," the university began plans to build a new stadium.