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Nebraska Had a 17-Year-Old Quarterback Nobody Seems to Remember

Decades before Tommie Frazier, Cody Green, Adrian Martinez and Dylan Raiola arrived on the scene, Ted Kenfield was the starter as a true freshman for Husker football.

Joe Hudson

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Who was Ted Kenfield, and why might he belong in the same conversation as Dylan Raiola?

Raiola, of course, is the highly touted true freshman who will start at quarterback for Nebraska when the Huskers take the field Aug. 31 against UTEP.

To be sure, it is a rare occurrence. We have been told that just three others have started at quarterback for Nebraska football as true freshmen: Tommie Frazier (1992), Cody Green (2009) and Adrian Martinez (2018).

Just three others? “You’d better check that,” Ted Kenfield might be saying from the grave.

Theodore Stephen Kenfield was an all-state quarterback at Columbus (Neb.) High School during his senior season in 1942. The following spring, he left school early and enrolled at Stanford, but he returned to his home state several months later when the California school suspended its football program. His enrollment at Nebraska was welcome news.

It didn’t take him long to become QB1 in Lincoln. A search of newspaper archives finds that Kenfield started five games at quarterback for the Huskers in 1943, including the Oct. 2 season opener at Minnesota. (Under wartime rules, freshmen could play on the varsity.)

That Minnesota game was ugly — a 54-0 road loss — but the Nebraska State Journal’s game story pointed to the 17-year-old Kenfield as a bright spot. He “accounted for most of the Husker yardage and was given an ovation when he left the field toward the end of the battle,” the newspaper’s Walt Dobbins wrote.

After being injured during Game 2 against Indiana, Kenfield didn't play against the next two opponents, Iowa State and Kansas. On Oct. 30, a day after his 18th birthday, he was back in action as a backup against Missouri. He then returned to his starting QB role for the rest of the season: at Kansas State and at home against Iowa and Oklahoma.

The Huskers took their lumps in 1943, finishing 2-6 and surrendering 50-plus points three times. In the games Kenfield started at quarterback, Nebraska was 1-4.

That turned out to be Kenfield’s only season with Nebraska football. He moved again to California, where his family had relocated, and he played three years at Cal as an undersized and “free-wheeling” fullback, according to this 2003 obituary.

“He didn’t always run the play the way it was drawn up,” recalled a Cal teammate, quarterback Dick Erickson, “but he always gained yardage.”

Perhaps it’s understandable that Kenfield’s place in Nebraska football history has slipped through the cracks. Record-keeping, after all, tends to be hit-and-miss once you go any further back than the 1950s.

For Kenfield, however, it gets worse. Even though he earned second-team all-conference honors from the Associated Press in 1943, he’s nowhere to be found on Nebraska's official list of football lettermen.

UPDATE: At least four other true freshmen started at quarterback for the Huskers during the WWII years. Details here.

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Joe Hudson

JOE HUDSON

Joe Hudson has operated a Husker-related website since 1995 and joined forces with David Max to form HuskerPedia (later renamed HuskerMax) in 1999. It began as a hobby during his 35 years as a newspaper editor and reporter, a career that included stints at the Lincoln Star, Omaha World-Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer and Denver Post. In Denver, Joe was chief of the copy desk during his final 16 years at the Post. He is proud to have been involved in Pulitzer Prize-winning projects in both Philadelphia and Denver. Joe has been a Nebraska football fan since the mid-1960s during his childhood in Omaha. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in journalism and economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1976. He resides a few freeway exits north of Colorado Springs and enjoys bicycling and walking his dogs in his spare time. You can reach him at joeroyhud@outlook.com.

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