LINCOLN — Late in the first quarter of Nebraska football’s season-opening 49-21 win over Ohio, Ike Ackerman came flying around the edge, discarded the blocker in his path and spilled the quarterback onto the Memorial Stadium turf.
Something Ackerman, an Omaha Central grad, dreamed of growing up. Like most kids in this football-crazed state.
Except it wasn’t for the Huskers.
It was against them.
“It was kind of a revenge moment for me,” Ackerman told The World-Herald.
NU heavily recruited Ackerman, now in his second season at Ohio. The three-star defensive end was the No. 4 in-state prospect in the 2025 cycle, according to 247Sports. But the Huskers ultimately never offered.
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“I took that personally,” said Ackerman, who had four tackles and two sacks. “I just tried to go out there and prove why they should’ve offered me.”
Ackerman bulldozed Ainsworth grad Carter Nelson on his way to Husker quarterback Anthony Colandrea — the first-quarter sack a moment between a prolific local player Nebraska landed and one it could’ve had.
Afterward, Ackerman turned toward NU’s student section and threw the bones, followed by an emphatic double thumb-down.
He’d been planning that for a while.
The idea came to mind more than two years ago when former Ohio coach Tim Albin, now at Charlotte, pitched Ackerman on returning home to play Nebraska.
Then, with the matchup closer than ever, Ackerman showed his parents the celebration this summer.
Saturday, he made that plan come to fruition.
“I had a one-on-one with the tight end, and I knew I wasn’t gonna lose that. I can’t let a tight end block me. And then it just all kind of happened,” Ackerman said. “That was what I’ve been losing sleep over the past couple of nights.”
Ackerman took a while to get going last season, partly because mononucleosis set him back a few months and largely because he redshirted.
But he made the most of his time on the field.
His freshman year ended with a good enough glimpse that he’s now Ohio’s starting defensive end. Ackerman — the 2025 Class A shot put champion and all-class record-holder — had five tackles, two for loss, and a sack in the Bobcats’ bowl victory over UNLV.
The quarterback he dropped? That’d be Colandrea.
Ohio coach John Hauser said Ackerman took a “huge” step forward this offseason. Hauser attributed that to Ackerman finally being able to delve into learning his position after years as a three-sport athlete.
“He’s really been bought into it,” Hauser said. “He’s got a very, very high ceiling.”
Ackerman got to Colandrea again on the second play of the third quarter, pressuring the Husker quarterback to the point that he heaved the football out of bounds. Colandrea was flagged for intentional grounding, and Ackerman was credited with the sack.
Except that one, which led to an unsuccessful field-goal attempt that would’ve put Ohio ahead 16-13, didn’t have the same juice as the first.
Already amped by his months-long plan, Ackerman was initially taken aback, then hyped, when he went out for the opening kickoff and saw a Big Red sea of 85,577 in the stands.
“I was like, ‘Wow,’” he said. “‘I’m here and I’m ready.’”
Postgame, on his way off the field, Ackerman was greeted by a bunch of people decked out in Omaha Central gear. He stopped by the railing, hugged friends and family, high-fived fans and posed for selfies.
“That definitely meant more than the sack did,” Ackerman said.
