81 Days Until Gameday - #13 Cass County, Nebraska

82 Days Until Gameday - #12 Butler County, Nebraska - Forums

We have 82 days until our first game of the 2026-2027 football season against the Ohio Bobcats on 9/5/2026. Yesterday we looked at Burt County, Nebraska. https://www.on3.com/boards/threads/83-days-until-gameday-11-burt-county-nebraska.8862677/ Butler County, Nebraska Population ~8,500...

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• Population ~27,700 (2025)
• License Plate prefix #20
• Plattsmouth is the county seat and the largest city in the county.
• Established in 1854 and named after General Lewis Cass, War of 1812. Also served as Secretary of State under President James Buchanan and Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson.
• Approximately 566 square miles.
• East boundary line is also the state boundary line which is the Missouri River.
• Mahoney State Park lies in Cass County.

• Alfonzo Sturzenegger – FB 1909, South Bend, NE.
• Sam Burtch – WR 2012-2013, Murdock, NE.
• Bryce Miller – RE 1996, Elmwood, NE.
• Wally Winter – OT 1968-1970, Eagle, NE.
• Jerry Adam – G 1930-1931, Plattsmouth, NE.
• Ross Dzuris – DE 2015-2016, Plattsmouth, NE.
• Edward Gradoville – HB 1944-1945, Plattsmouth, NE.
• Ric Lindquist – CB 1979-1981, Plattsmouth, NE.
• John Robbins Jr. – C 1896, Plattsmouth, NE.
• Duane Sack – G 1945, Plattsmouth, NE.
• Dave Schneider – PK 1983, Plattsmouth, NE.

• Harry Smith – Former MLB pitcher who pitched 1 game professionally. 1.80 ERA for the game with 1 strikeout while earning the W. From Union.
• George Sheldon – 14th Governor of Nebraska. From Nehawka.
• Bess Streeter Aldrich – Author/novelist. Member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
• Hazel Abel – 2nd woman elected to the Senate in Nebraska (in 1854) and the shortest serving senator from Nebraska (54 days)
• Raymond Chandler – Novelist and screenwriter, primarily focusing on detective fiction writing. Spent his early years in Plattsmouth.
• Oscar Graham – Former MLB pitcher who spent 17 years playing major and minor league baseball. Went 4-9 in the MLB with a 3.98 ERA and 44 strikeouts.
• Paul Newlan – Film and TV actor, known for playing Captain Grey on NBC series Police Squad. From Plattsmouth.

• Former walk-on turned scholarship starter from Plattsmouth, NE.
• Played for Nebraska from 1977 to 1981, with the 1977 season spent on the freshman team and redshirted the 1978 season.
• Wore #15 and played cornerback.
• 3x Academic All-Big Eight
• 2x Academic All-American
• 1981 All-Big Eight Cornerback
• Finished his career with 100 tackles, 9 INTs, 10 PBUs.
• Tied for the record at Nebraska for most interceptions in a game (3, vs Kansas State 1979)
• Inducted in the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 2022.

Anon1752115983 said:

Excuse me if I end up high jacking your post. I am a Cass County historian and cannot resist the urge to chime in.
Plattsmouth is also the hometown of Max Linder, the 1968 Nebraska High School Athlete of the Year. Max was a superstar in football, basketball and track. The 1967 Plattsmouth game vs Blair, in which he was unstoppable, is widely considered to be one of the best HS games ever played in this state. Recruited by Bear Bryant to play QB before deciding on NU. When he got to campus in the fall of '68, the doctors discovered that he had two bulging discs in his back. He had surgery to fuse them (which would never be done anymore) and delayed his enrollment until the fall of '69. He played well for the frosh team that fall, but Tagge and Brownson were getting established with the varsity and Humm would join the next year. Max was real fast so he moved to receiver and was on the squads for the 70 and 71 seasons. He got his rings but didn't play enough to letter. Ah, what might have been. He did just fine though, becoming a preeminent eye surgeon in Lincoln. Recently retired.

Cass County also produced Perry "Kid" Graves from Rock Bluff, which was directly east of where the Beaver Lake dam is today. Graves was 1914 Welterweight Champion. He won and lost the title three times over his career. He lived in Plattsmouth until his 1963 death and used to give kids a nickel to run down to the bar and get him a bottle of beer. He let them keep the penny in change.

Ed Gradoville, who you mention, lettered at NU his freshman and sophomore seasons. He then heard the call of duty and transferred to the US Military Academy at West Point, where he was teammates with two Heisman winners, Blanchard and Davis. His punting against Illinois in 1947 preserved a tie for Army. He had a distinguished military career, serving on active duty from 1950-78.

Mason Wescott of Plattsmouth was a good HS football player in 1920. He went on to become a brilliant mathematician and statistician. He taught at Northwestern and Rutgers before spending many years at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. The statistics laboratory on that campus is named in his honor.

Allan White of the Plattsmouth HS Class of 1940, also a good football player, graduated from the US Naval Academy and became a career officer. During the Vietnam War he commanded the destroyer USS Dahlgren.

Damien Flynn was a halfback at Plattsmouth HS in 1925. After graduation he started acting at the Omaha Playhouse, was a natural, and within just a couple of years was on Broadway. Using the name Damien O'Flynn, his credits are mostly "B," but he appeared in Batman, Green Acres, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Petticoat Junction and other 1960s era shows. He starred in the World War II movie, Winged Victory as himself, Corporal Damien O'Flynn.

I know Falls City lays claim to him, but artist John Falter was born in Plattsmouth and spent his first 6-7 years there. He donated a number of his Saturday Evening Post covers to the Cass County Historical Society. He was a cousin to Alice and Ethel Dovey, two Plattsmouth girls who became famous actresses in the early days of "talkies." Alice Dovey was so popular that she had a private audience with President Woodrow Wilson.

Jerry Adam, who you also mention, was the head wrestling coach at NU from 1933-47 following his football career. He later was a guard commander at the penitentiary in Lincoln. People I know say he was the toughest emeffer they ever met

I'll stop after Ted Hadraba of Plattsmouth, yet another good football player in the 1920s. He eventually worked in the US Foreign Service and was posted in Poland at the time Hitler annexed it in 1939. Barely got out with his life.

Apologies.

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