Nebraska Bowl Game History: Appearances, Wins and Results

Updated September 4, 2026. Results through the 2025 Las Vegas Bowl.

Nebraska has played 55 bowl games and is 27 and 28 in them, with 17 Orange Bowl trips, the most of any program outside the state of Florida, and an NCAA record 35 consecutive bowl appearances from 1969 through 2003. The postseason resume is really three stories: a dominant run under Bob Devaney, a long stretch of frustrating January losses under Tom Osborne, and then three national championship game wins in four years that ended it.

Complete Bowl Results

Shaded rows are national championship seasons or designated title games. Season listed is the regular season year; the bowl was played that December or the following January.

Record by Bowl

The Story in Four Parts

The 1915 invitation. Nebraska was asked to play Washington State in the second Rose Bowl ever, in January 1916, and the university turned it down over the cost of sending the team to Pasadena. The program did not play a bowl until the 1941 Rose Bowl, a loss to Stanford, and did not win one until 1962.

Devaney gets it started. Bob Devaney’s first team beat Miami 36 to 34 in the 1962 Gotham Bowl at Yankee Stadium, the first bowl win in school history. His 1965 team played Alabama in the first Orange Bowl that doubled as a de facto title game and lost 39 to 28. Then came the run: four straight bowl wins from the 1969 through 1972 seasons, including the two national championships, capped by a 40 to 6 rout of Notre Dame in Devaney’s final game. Osborne made it five straight with the 1974 Cotton Bowl win over Texas.

Osborne’s January problem. Between the 1987 and 1993 seasons Nebraska lost seven straight bowls, most of them lopsided, to Florida State and Miami three times each and Georgia Tech. The 1984 Orange Bowl loss to Miami, when Osborne went for two and the win instead of the tie that would have clinched a title, is still ranked among the greatest games ever played. The 1994 Orange Bowl loss to Florida State, 18 to 16 on a late field goal after two controversial calls, was the closest of them.

Three in four years. The 1995 Orange Bowl win over Miami ended it. Tommie Frazier came back from blood clots to start, Cory Schlesinger scored twice in the fourth quarter, and Osborne had his first consensus title. A year later Nebraska beat Florida 62 to 24 in the Fiesta Bowl, still the most points ever scored in a designated title game, and in Osborne’s final game the 1998 Orange Bowl win over Tennessee, 42 to 17, produced a share of a third title. Nebraska won four straight New Year’s Day bowls from the 1994 through 1997 seasons.

Since Osborne. The 35 year streak ended after the 2003 Alamo Bowl. Nebraska went 5 and 6 in bowls from 2005 through 2016, then missed the postseason seven straight years under Mike Riley and Scott Frost. Matt Rhule’s 2024 team won the Pinstripe Bowl over Boston College, the first bowl win since 2015, and the 2025 team lost the program’s first Las Vegas Bowl to Utah.

Bowl Records Worth Knowing

The 35 straight bowl appearances from 1969 to 2003 is the NCAA record; Florida State reached 36 straight but one of them was vacated. Nebraska’s 62 points against Florida in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl remain the most in a national championship game. The Cornhuskers are 3 and 1 in games designated as national title games under the Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance and BCS, 1 and 2 against Alabama in bowls, and 2 and 4 against Miami. Nebraska has never played in the College Football Playoff.

Related Reading

Nebraska national championships covers the five title seasons, Nebraska rivals covers the Miami and Oklahoma bowl history, and most bowl appearances ranks every program. Other bowl histories: Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida.