1910 season at the request of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (later the Big Eight Conference), despite Nebraska's baseball team competing as an independent. The MVIAA claimed that several of Nebraska's players had played for, and received payment from, minor league teams over the summer, violating the amateur status required of college athletes. After a year without a baseball team of any sort, the program was briefly revived in 1912, playing three games, before shuttering entirely. The ending of World War I and subsequent influx of male students, along with the University of Nebraska's departure from the MVIAA, meant the school's baseball team could be revived under the guidance of Paul J. Schissler in 1919. Schissler led NU's baseball and basketball programs until his departure for Lombard College in 1921; he later served as head coach of the National Football League's Chicago Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers and is credited with helping establish the Pro Bowl. After a second hiatus, Nebraska's baseball program was again revived in 1929 under the guidance of state native John Rhodes. By this time the University of Nebraska had re-joined the MVIAA (which had changed its name to the Big Six Conference); NU won the Bix Six championship in its first-ever season of conference competition. Rhodes left for Wyoming in 1930 and Nebraska struggled through the next decade, never finishing higher than third in the Big Six. Sharpe and Sanders stability In 1947, following a three-year stoppage for World War II, NU hired Tony Sharpe to lead its baseball program. Sharpe quickly turned the Huskers into a conference contender, winning the Big Seven (the Big Six added Colorado in 1947) in 1948 and 1950. In both of these seasons Nebraska appeared in the NCAA District Playoffs, the predecessor of the NCAA Super Regionals as they exist today. Bob Cerv became Nebraska's first baseball All-American in 1950; Cerv also played basketball and was the school's first four-year varsity letterwinner in multiple sports. Richard Geier threw the first perfect game in Nebraska baseball history on April 20, 1954. Geier struck out ten on his way to retiring twenty-seven consecutive batters in a 1–0 Cornhuskers victory over Kansas. Despite the early successes, Sharpe's program stagnated and did not win another conference title for the rest of his thirty-one year tenure as head coach. He earned his 300th victory at Nebraska on March 28, 1972, a 4–3 victory over