The word tradition is thrown around too much. Nebraska played OU maybe 5 or 6 times on that Friday and it was developing a decent following, but then the Big 8 changed to the Big 12 and the OU-UNL game was no longer an annual occurrence, so the conference replaced what used to be a very stellar Colorado team with OU, as it was at the time the de facto championship game for the Big 12 North. Nebraska-OU was truly one of the greatest college football rivalries ever, but when it got destroyed, the Big 12 tried to claim there was some new tradition with Colorado (which quickly took a dump and fell off the college FB landscape) and now Iowa has to play that game as the new designated conference rival of Nebraska. To me, it is a travesty as Iowa should either have some rotation or get Minnesota or Wisconsin in the final weekend, but the conference has to create a new fake rivalry that is a shell of the old UNL-OU rivalry.
God, I really hate all this realignment. Sorry for the rant, but I can't consider something that began 25 or so years ago a tradition unless it retained that truly great UNL-OU rivalry that was designed to put a marquee game on TV on Black Friday.