Joel Klatt explains why Colorado vs. Nebraska needs to be played every season

College football is a game built on traditions. It’s also a game that, through changes like conference realignment, has lost some of its traditional rivalry games. That includes the once annual Colorado Buffaloes vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers game.

It’s a game that former Colorado player and current analyst Joel Klatt knows well. It’s also a game he loves and advocated for being played every season once again on The Joel Klatt Show.

“Bias of proximity, heartstrings, Colorado-Nebraska,” Joel Klatt said. “This is the game, this is the rivalry that I grew up on. This is the rivalry that made me personally fall in love with college football. We should have Colorado-Nebraska every single year.”

Colorado and Nebraska would only play sporadically from 1898 through 1907 before taking a long hiatus. They’d reunite in 1948 when Colorado joined the Big Six, making it the Big Seven Conference. They’d previously been in the Mountain States Conference. From there, they’d play annually through 2010. The two would combine for six national championships during that time. During that same stretch, Nebraska won 25 conference championships while Colorado won six conference championships.

“There were so many years, if you look from the middle of the 80s until about 2005, this matchup likely either decided the Big Eight Champion or the Big 12 North division champion. Now, Kansas State, obviously, had their say in that for a couple of years,” Klatt said. “But that’s a great rivalry with a ton of history, and we should have that every single year. They’ve tried to bring it back here and there. Again, that should be an annual scheduling agreement.”

Colorado and Nebraska have met four times since 2018, including in the 2023 and 2024 seasons. That was after they previously last played in 2010 when conference realignment brought Nebraska to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac-12. In that recent series of games, the Buffaloes have won three out of four, but it was the Cornhuskers who won their most recent game, 28-10 in 2024.

All-time, Nebraska has dominated the series and has a record of 50-21-2. That, at one point, included an 18-game winning streak. For comparison, the longest winning streak for Colorado is three games, which they’ve done multiple times.

Despite all of that, Nebraska and Colorado don’t have any future games currently scheduled. The Cornhuskers also have all three of their non-conference games filled through the 2028 season. Colorado only has one open non-conference game through the 2031 season.