Scoreless: Omaha Central–Creighton Prep and Nebraska's Greatest High School Football Game by John Dechant (review)

In October 1960, two undefeated high school football teams from Omaha, Nebraska, met in a league contest—a public school, Omaha Central, and a Catholic school, Creighton Prep—before 14,500 fans. The game pitted the state's most powerful offensive team, propelled by Gayle Sayers (of Hall of Fame pro football fame) against the state's most formidable defensive team. The result was a 0–0 score. As Sayers says in his foreword, "had either team won, the story would have been greatly diminished."

The author conducted a prodigious amount of research, interviewing just about everyone involved in the game (curiously not Gayle Sayers) and spent untold hours going through newspapers, yearbooks, and participants' memorabilia, among others. Born two decades after the game took place, he faced a hurdle in which he had to describe the daily routines and events of high school athletes from the late 1950s and early 1960s—like getting the name of the local hamburger joint right and how much a shake and a hamburger cost. The author did an admirable job in creating a rich tapestry of those times.

Dechant, of course, builds the story of the game by giving the history of both schools' programs. Creighton Prep was the dominant football power in the city and state (during 1932–59 the school amassed thirteen titular state titles). In contrast, Omaha Central's football record was mostly mediocre, but the 1960 squad was expected to do great things. His back stories for all the coaches and assistant coaches, plus many of the key players, create a memorable narrative.

From the beginnings of high school football, public and Catholic secondary schools existed in two parallel worlds, a cultural divide. In smaller cities, such as Omaha, there was an insufficient number of Catholic schools to be organized into a separate league, so Prep competed in the Omaha Intercity League with the public schools. But the cultural divide was still there—Central and Prep maintained an intense rivalry for years prior to the 1960 contest.

Part of the reason it was so intense was that Prep was a rigorous Jesuit institution that regularly beat the public schools in the city; Omaha Central had a strong academic reputation, but its athletics reputation was mediocre, never seeming to have the "athletes." They came with the Sayers brothers, Roger and Gayle (Dechant does not say the influx of African American players made the difference).

In larger cities, the big game each year was between the champions of the Catholic and public leagues. In Omaha, however, the big game was between the often champion Creighton Prep and whatever public team was the power that year. The author does not mention this public–Catholic rivalry, but it practically screams out between the lines.

Most university presses, besides publishing academic peer-reviewed books, also publish commercial books of local interest, and Scoreless appears to be of the latter. Hence, it is not animated by a thesis, not contextualized, has no index, and no endnotes (although its bibliographic essay is outstanding). Nonetheless, the book will be useful to sport historians, showing in microcosm the era when the Catholic and public schools competed athletically and culturally in parallel worlds.