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Nebraska had quite the turnout for its Friday Night Lights event

Connor O'Gara

By Connor O'Gara

Published:

Spend enough time in Lincoln, and you’ll hear someone say the following phrase.

“There’s no place like Nebraska.”

With a sellout streak that dates back to 1962, the support from the Nebraska fanbase is as loyal as it gets. So when the Huskers host their annual “Friday Night Lights” camp for potential recruits, plenty of fans show up.

After putting it through a trial run last year, there was some increased hype in Lincoln this time around. The official attendance count for the event on Friday night was 6,817, which was only the number of fans that were counted at 7:30.

Apparently it looked more like 10,000 people.

According to Rivals.com’s Sean Callahan, the Friday Night Lights turnout was greater than the attendance of 94 FBS spring games in 2017. Keep in mind, this is just a camp where high school recruits do drills without pads.

So what were the fans there to see? Well, they got to watch a whole lot of blue-chip recruits in action. In total, 14 recruits rated as four or five stars were at Memorial Stadium.

High-profile Nebraska commitments Joshua Moore and Brendan Radley-Hiles received ovations from the Memorial Stadium crowd.

Radley-Hiles had a couple moments that riled up the Husker faithful (H/T Hype Sports):

Radley-Hiles and his fellow Nebraska commits turned their attention to some of the highly-regarded recruits that were in attendance.

Four-star Oklahoma running back commit TJ Pledger had his name chanted by Nebraska fans. Four-star IMG Academy cornerback Houston Griffith also made the trip, as did five-star defensive end Micah Parsons.

When fans chanted Parsons’ name, he showed his appreciation by throwing up the bones:

And just for good measure, the former Penn State commit decided to line up at receiver and show off his freakish speed for a defensive end. He burned four-star cornerback Christian Tutt:

The 247sports crystal ball had Parsons, the No. 1 defensive end in the country, predicted at 67 percent to Ohio State and 33 percent to Penn State.

But perhaps his experience at Friday Night Lights made a lasting impression:

https://twitter.com/Micah_parsons23/status/878435802044346368

Former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ryan Clark was also in attendance with his son Jordan, a 2019 Nebraska target.

Clark agreed with Parsons’ assessment:

Even Mike Riley was a bit blown away by the event as a whole.

“I didn’t know what to really expect,” Riley said via Rivals.com. “I think it was awesome. What a great, electric atmosphere. We really appreciate it. That’s a pretty good picture for some of these guys that are both coming (to Nebraska) and thinking about coming tonight.

“They got a pretty good glimpse of how our fans think of our team, and maybe our future team.”

Connor O'Gara

Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.