You can set your watch to it.
Every Nebraska home game, most everyone in the stands and a good chunk of Husker players temporarily turn into drummers when “In the Air Tonight†by Phil Collins blares over the massive bank of speakers atop North Stadium.
You’ve probably done it, too, banging the invisible set in front of you when the song’s famed drum fill kicks in.
It’s all part of the experience of attending a Nebraska home game, where nary a second goes by without Memorial Stadium’s sound system filling 90,000 pairs of eardrums.
Things started simply enough.
When the Nebraska football team became the first college program in the country to install video boards in its stadium in 1994, the maiden version of the Tunnel Walk on the HuskerVision screens featured a white flash of light on a black screen, and the song “Sirius†by The Alan Parsons Project, which had risen to fame a few years earlier when the NBA’s Chicago Bulls were using it to introduce their title-winning teams led by Michael Jordan.
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Since then, music has become so ingrained in the wall-to-wall experience of watching a game (often stretching past three hours in length) that it’s hard to imagine a time when the tunes came only from the school band.
These days, Memorial Stadium’s music is handled by Ethan Rowley, a former director of marketing in the NU Athletic Department who now serves as the director of membership at the Nebraska Alumni Association.
“The metaphor I always use is, I used to DJ at weddings, and it’s all about keeping your bride happy,†Rowley said with a laugh.
Rowley is entering his third season as Memorial Stadium’s music man. At any given home game, he has around 700 songs at his disposal on a computer for any situation that might arise.
There are the standards that have become familiar to the people who populate the Memorial Stadium bleachers — "Sirius," of course, and “In the Air Tonightâ€; “Back in Black†by AC/DC for the first time the Nebraska defense takes the field. “Stand up and Shout†when the crowd needs a jolt. A steady group of 10 to 12 songs will be played at every game no matter what, Rowley said.
It’s all a click of the mouse away for Rowley, who works from a room in East Stadium in conjunction with dozens of others, from HuskerVision, to fan experience, to band directors and student assistants.
There’s a script written out for each game, noting when certain videos might play on the screens in the stadium or when someone might be honored on the field.
But Rowley also has to be ready to respond on a moment’s notice for anything that might arise. He’s in "constant communication" with HuskerVision and fan experience to make sure a song used in a video doesn’t get played at another point in the game. Two weeks before NU’s home opener against Fordham, he’ll set up shop in the stadium to make sure everything is working. One week out, he’ll get the first draft of the game script to see where and when he’ll have openings to fill with tunes.
That’s not to mention the hours he spends every week just listening to music, looking for anything he might be able to add to the rotation.
Rowley will build playlists on Spotify, or browse through Pandora. As the season gets closer, he’ll dig into Billboard Top 100 radio playlists. Maybe he’ll hear something catchy in a commercial and try to figure out what the song is.
A typical gameday for Rowley starts four hours before kickoff, when he arrives at the stadium along with the HuskerVision staff and other staffers to test out equipment. He has about 30 minutes to play whatever he likes before the first students file in, at which point he does his best to keep them entertained.
Not long after that, he’ll dip into playlists put together by Nebraska’s players as they go through warmups. He’ll also keep an eye on what kind of crowd is coming in. More families? That might mean playing more kid-friendly pop music. A high-profile matchup when the crowd is rabid? Perhaps Rowley will go to more ’70s rock to appease the diehards.
“I would say it’s more art than science. I would say the science is more the — no matter what the genre is, my personal opinion is, as long as it has a good beat and a good hook of some sort, I don’t care if it’s ’80s or disco or country or whatever it might be, I think that’s where the sciences comes into play, is just finding those good hooks, beats, things like that,†Rowley said.
“Then the art comes into just feeding into what the crowd’s already doing, what the crowd’s feeling, anticipating, just being prepared with all that stuff that you gathered.â€
In recent years, DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat†has found a spot in the rotation when the Huskers have it rolling.
How did that song make it into the rotation? You can thank Rowley.
“I’ll be honest, I can’t remember who we were playing. But we just needed something to hit that was a little bit different,†said Rowley of the game in 2012 or 2013.
Rowley turned to HuskerVision’s Amanda Holzwarth, who was running the Memorial Stadium music at that time, and suggested the song.
“That song hit, and the student section in particular was so into it. And I’m guessing probably half of them had no idea what that song was or had even heard of it. But they were just bouncing to it, and the football players were, too,†Rowley said.
“So it was just the right thing at the right time. That was kind of surprising to see that reaction.â€
“Nolia Clap†by UTP has also become a consistent part of the early pregame music the team listens to while warming up, part of a handful of songs chosen by the players that blast through the speakers as the stadium fills up with fans. That song came to Lincoln with Scott Frost after his Central Florida squads used it for the two seasons he was in Orlando.
Rowley has tabs full of songs for any and every scenario.
That music is chosen based on some variables. For example, an on-field review would get a different musical selection from an injury timeout. If the timeout is scheduled by, say, the end of a quarter or after a punt, there's a script to be followed.
In short, there’s a lot of work that goes into deciding when to play all those clips, some that might only last a few seconds.
“Without a doubt it’s 100% fun, but it’s also 100% nerves,†Rowley said. “The game’s not going to swing on what I play by any means. … That’s the biggest kick is actually seeing the players on the field responding to what you’re playing.â€
Contact the writer at cbasnett@journalstar.com or 402-473-7436. On Twitter @HuskerExtraCB.