McKinney remembers going to the press conference with his dad. Bob Devaney had been Wyoming's coach for five years and had won four Skyline Conference championships and had a record of 35-10-5. The football coach was, as he would be in Lincoln, seemingly larger than life, the man who owned every room he walked into.
"Very much a fit with Wyoming people," said McKinney, who is now Wyoming's senior associate athletic director for external operations.
It was almost 55 years ago when Devaney skipped across a state's border and immediately began changing the way Husker football is viewed.