It took a while for Nebraska linebacker Blake Lawrence, left, to step out of brother Tyler Lawrence's shadow. Tyler, right, will be on the opposite sideline of his younger brother Blake when KU and Nebraska face off on Saturday.

To understand truly the relationship between brothers Tyler and Blake Lawrence, it is probably best to go back to the Golden Gun incident.

This occurred sometime while they were in elementary school, age 11 or 12. The exact year is unknown, although, the brothers say, the Nintendo 64 had just come out, which meant that the immensely popular first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 game had just come out, which meant that the brothers were spending quite a bit of their free time attempting to master it. Which, really, is how the whole Golden Gun incident came about in the first place.

It is important to note here that, in bedrooms across America during the mid-1990s, the Golden Gun was the source of more than a few prepubescent feuds. In a game in which characters attempt to stock up on ammunition and then track down and kill opposing players, the problem was that the weapon provided an advantage that – with the possible exception of Bo Jackson in Nintendo’s Tecmo Super Bowl – had never before been seen in the world of gaming. One well-aimed shot from the Golden Gun would successfully render an opponent dead, unlike the more traditional weapons, like the silenced PP7 or the AR-33 assault rifle, which required multiple blows.

Some households outlawed the Golden Gun altogether, invoking a gentlemen’s agreement that the weapon would go unused in an effort to keep things fair and just.

This, according to Blake, is what occurred in the Lawrence home.

And so it was that, on this particular day, Tyler, who was accustomed to regularly taking advantage of his younger brother, obtained the controversial weapon and used it to cause all sorts of virtual mayhem. Before much time had passed, he’d racked up over 100 kills, which, if you know anything about anything, is a shockingly large number of kills to have racked up.

This did not sit well with young Blake.

Despite being separated in age by only a year, there was no question who the alpha male was between the two. Tyler was the unequivocal leader, outgoing and hyper-competitive. Blake, by all accounts, was the opposite – soft-spoken and content, for the most part, to concede the floor to his older brother. On more than one occasion, he had purposely thrown a game of Mario Kart or one-on-one in an effort to avoid one of Tyler’s notorious temper tantrums.

But there was something about this whole Golden Gun situation – this blatant disregard for video game etiquette, this perceived lack of competitive honor – that got Blake’s blood boiling.

And so, in front of a group of the brothers’ friends that were gathered in the room, Blake unloaded a not-so-friendly diatribe delivered with such vigor that, when it ended, left the older brother slack-jawed.

“I remember the moment very, very clearly,” says Tyler, now a backup quarterback at Kansas University. “It was one of the first times, as a little brother, he’d kind of called me out.”

It was at this moment, perhaps more than any other, that goes a long way in explaining how Blake Lawrence, now a linebacker at Nebraska, started to become his own person. And, perhaps more importantly why, when Kansas travels to Nebraska on Saturday for a 1:30 p.m. matchup with multiple postseason implications, the brothers will be on opposite sidelines.

‘He wouldn’t let me talk, man’

“When I was growing up, he wouldn’t let me talk, man,” Blake is saying, following a Monday evening practice in Lincoln, Neb. “When I was first learning to talk – and this is a true story – I would go up to my mom and be like, ‘Mom, I uh… I uh..’ and Tyler would hear me talking and he’d storm into the room and be like ‘Mom, he just wants some crackers!’ He’d finish every sentence for me. He was always in front of me, just one step ahead. … He didn’t want me to have the attention.”

Told of this accusation, Tyler smiles. He is not willing to admit that this gag order was ever actually issued, although he won’t say that it wasn’t, either.

This much can be verified, courtesy of their father Mike: One of Blake’s first full sentence – aimed at Tyler – was “Let me say my words!”

For much of their youths, Blake took a backseat to Tyler. On the rare occasion that Blake would appear to be getting the better of his older brother, the backlash was steep, and as a result, competitions between the two brothers were often shut down before they’d reached their conclusion.

Once, while the two were engaged in a particularly heated game of basement basketball in which Blake had taken the lead, Mike called a timeout, took Blake aside and made a friendly suggestion.

Says Blake, “He made sure I understood that maybe it’s not worth winning and seeing Tyler throw a tantrum for the rest of the day.”

The little-brother conundrum was especially evident by the time both brothers reached high school. Entering his freshman year at Shawnee Mission West High, Blake had always assumed he’d play quarterback. Problem was, there was a sophomore lefty named Tyler who was in line to take over duties as the team’s varsity signal-caller.

So Blake, who had played very little defense throughout little league and middle school, became a linebacker in an effort to get on the field.

And during the next two years, as Tyler tore through opponents on Friday nights in the fall, emerging as one of the state’s top prep football players, Blake watched it all unfold from the background, because that is what little brothers do.

Out of the shadows

When Tyler graduated in 2006, accepting an offer to play quarterback at Kansas, it allowed Blake to finally take over under center for the Vikings, although, by that time, he’d begun to develop a liking for the defensive side of the ball.

Out from under Tyler’s lofty shadow, he shined on both sides of the ball. In addition to starring at linebacker, he threw for 1,329 yards and 15 touchdowns (compared to just three interceptions) and rushed for another 483 yards and 15 scores – stats that compared favorably to big brother’s.

Throughout his senior year, he was the top-rated recruit in the state of Kansas, according to the rivals.com, and drew even more college attention than he had as a junior, when he earned all-metro and all-state honors.

For his part, Tyler, who was in his red-shirt season at Kansas at the time, became Blake’s ultimate fan. Nearly every weekend, he would make the 45-minute drive back to Shawnee Mission West to watch Blake hold down his old post as the school’s starting quarterback.

On the rare occasions Tyler couldn’t make it to a game, the family would burn the game film onto a DVD and deliver it to Tyler following Kansas’ game the next day, at which point he’d retreat to his room to pore through film of his little brother’s most recent performance.

When Blake helped propel Shawnee Mission West to the 2006 state title game – a trip made possible, local high school football fans might remember, by West’s 31-14 victory over previously unbeaten Free State High in the state semifinals a week earlier – Tyler was so amped to get there that he got a speeding ticket on the way.

“I didn’t want to miss anything,” he says now. “Not pre-game or anything.”

When it came time for Blake to decide on a college, there was not a lot of suspense. Everyone kind of figured that, in the end, he’d follow Tyler to Kansas.

Blazing a new trail

Thanks to the success he’d enjoyed as a junior, Blake had earned scholarship offers from a dozen or so major Division I schools, including Missouri, which wanted him to play quarterback.

Eventually, however, his choices were narrowed to Kansas and Nebraska, and one prevailing thought tugged at his mind: Should he jump at the chance to play alongside his brother for a home-state program? Or was this an opportunity for him to forge his own path for the first time in his life?

“Growing up, I was always behind my brother,” says Blake. “I was always ‘Tyler’s little brother,’ and everywhere I went that kind of stuck with me. And then I had this opportunity to go to a place that has an amazing football tradition and be part of something bigger than myself and kind of be my own person. Not be ‘Little Lawrence’ or ‘Tyler’s brother.’ And that option weighed on me a lot.”

It weighed on him so much, in fact, that when it came down to it, he found himself choosing the Huskers – a move that, up to this point, has seemed to work out grandly.

As a true freshman last season, he managed to work his way into the lineup, seeing significant time as a reserve linebacker, and this season, he’s recorded eight tackles for the 5-4 Huskers, who are attempting to qualify for a bowl game under first-year coach Bo Pelini.

“It was a difficult decision for him,” says Tyler. “I know that. As far as what happened and KU, where I was, and Nebraska, where he loved the tradition and the coaches. It just came down to where he thought he would be best.”

Not counting the occasional curiosity of what it might be like to be playing alongside his brother in college, Blake hasn’t regretted his decision for a moment, happy with the independence that comes with 200 miles and the ability to speak at will.

As Blake puts it, “Tyler’s not here at Nebraska to finish my sentences anymore.”

The perfect scenario

Most likely, it will take some finagling by the football gods for the brothers to find themselves on the field at the same time Saturday. Blake, who missed last year’s game with an ankle injury, is expected to play; Tyler, however, is in the unfortunate position of backing up arguably the best quarterbacks in Kansas history in Todd Reesing. While he has made it into three games this season in mop-up duty, an opportunity this week will most likely require a large Kansas lead – or deficit.

This hasn’t stopped the two brothers from dreaming, though. Whenever they are together, they spend a great deal of their time running through possible scenarios. The perfect one would go something like this: A fourth-quarter, game-on-the-line goal-line stand-off that features both of them at the center of the action – Tyler trying to push the ball into the end zone, Blake trying to keep him out of it.

There are varying opinions to how this situation might play out in reality. There is little question, however, about what would happen after the play had been whistled dead.

As both players pull themselves from the turf, Blake will make his way over to his fallen brother, and upon reaching him, will instigate the ultimate show of brotherhood.

“He’s always saying,” says Tyler, “that he’ll give me a wet willy while I’m down on the ground.”