During my junior year of undergraduate education at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, I participated in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. To be honest, before that time I was hard-pressed to find Nebraska on a map. Furthermore, I did not know how much of an impact this opportunity was going to have in my life and how it was going to intertwine with my academic career at Â鶹ԭ´´.

As I prepared to leave home for the summer, I started learning more about Nebraska and its university. It was 1995, the Huskers football team had just won the 1994 NCAA national championship defeating Miami for the title, and the expectations were high for another championship run. As it turned out, they did go on to be national champions again, crushing Florida for back-to-back championships.

I returned to UPRM to complete my degree in sociology and after graduation joined the graduate sociology program at UNL. In 1997, Nebraska was again in the hunt for a national championship. Aided by a strong defense, a transfer student from Stanford took over the quarterback position to lead the Huskers to the team’s fifth national championship. His name: Scott Frost.

Years passed and I joined the Â鶹ԭ´´ faculty as an assistant professor of sociology. I still followed the Nebraska football team and had experienced no conflict in doing so while cheering on the Â鶹ԭ´´ Knights. In reality, both teams were worlds apart: different conferences, regions of the country, etc. The only remembrance was a 1997 game in Lincoln, when the then “Golden Knights” under quarterback Dante Culpepper played toe-to-toe against the Huskers before losing 38-24. Outside of the rare baseball or basketball games against Nebraska, both my college athletic programs were worlds apart.

Forward to 2015, the Knights football program had come full circle under Coach George O’ Leary, from 0-11 in 2004 to 0-12 in 2015 and the need for a change. At the conclusion of the 2015 season the announcement came out: A young offensive coordinator from the University of Oregon became the head coach of the Knights. His name: Scott Frost. Slowly – and for the better – my worlds started to collide.

Coach Frost was new to many at Â鶹ԭ´´, but I knew great things were bound to happen under his leadership. In his first season, he was able to put the Knights back in the winning column and the expectations for his second season were high, but nobody could forecast what transpired.

Coach Frost guided the Knights to an undefeated regular season and a New Year’s Peach Bowl victory against Auburn. Referred to as National Champions by some, Frost had elevated the course of the Knights football program to new heights.

But as we know, there wouldn’t be another Â鶹ԭ´´ season with him at the helm. Days earlier, after the Knights won the American Athletic Conference championship, news headlines came in: Scott Frost was named head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football program.

Just like that, my worlds collided again. Nebraska and Frost were no longer foreign concepts to the Knights nation and I could no longer separate the two. In a strange twist of fate, my academic homes, my athletic programs had intertwined, forever tied to each other under one name: Scott Frost.

I am not a psychic and cannot predict the future. I can only hope that both the Knights and Huskers continue to be outstanding college athletic programs and academic institutions.

For me, cheering for the Huskers under Coach Frost will inevitably be connected to Â鶹ԭ´´.

Now the question remains: Go Huskers or Go Knights? If you read closely, the answer is both: Go Big Red and Go Black and Gold. Charge On!

Fernando I. Rivera is an associate professor in Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s Department of Sociology. He can be reached at Fernando.Rivera@ucf.edu.

Outside of a few childhood trips to Disney World, I had never spent significant time away from the island. It was not until my years as an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez that I had my first exposure to the term Latino.

The summer of my junior year in 1995, I participated in an undergraduate research experience sponsored by the National Science Foundation and hosted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For the first time in my life I had to identify with a group, to pick a side.

The popular imagination in Puerto Rico leads you to believe that, as a U.S. citizen, when you come to the mainland you should be perceived as an American. As I strolled the hallways of UNL, that was far from the truth. People asked me where I was from and when I responded Puerto Rico, some did not quite know how to react to it. “Is that close to Mexico?” was one actual response. “Oh, so you are Latino, right?”

For the first time my identity was in question. It was clear to me that something quite magical happened as soon as I stepped onto the mainland. My evolution towards “Latinoness” began.

After obtaining my undergraduate degree in Puerto Rico, I went back to Nebraska to do my graduate studies. My journey on becoming Latino continued.

I clearly remembered sitting in a public-health course having a discussion of health care services around the world and the professor turned to me and asked: “Fernando, can you tell us about health care in Mexico?”

I said, “No, but I can tell you about Puerto Rico!” The professor apologized and I did not make a big deal about it, but it was clear that the perception of my identity had changed. I started to understand that old Thomas theorem in sociology: If perceptions are defined as real, they are real in their consequences.

Like or not, I was becoming Latino.

It has taken years for me to come to grasp with the term, its definition and what it entails. I now understand the usefulness of the term and how it can be conveyed to address the issues and struggles of a collection of people from different Latin American and Spanish Caribbean countries. How it provides a space for generations to have a term that captures their complicated reality of being American, but also part of another cultural and social heritage. How it can provide a platform for collective action and change.

At the same time, I understand its shortcomings and how it can mask subgroup differences in important societal outcomes such as education, health and others. I see how it can transform traditional cultures into something not quite understandable outside of the U.S. context.

My identity as Puerto Rican remains strong, but that identity has become stronger as a member of the Latino community. Being Latino has allowed me to work with different groups in the community and it has opened doors to numerous opportunities, such as serving as council member and advisory board member for the American Sociological Association’s Latina/o Sociology Section and the Minority Fellowship Program.

It took a while, but my journey to “become” Latino has allowed me to understand how differences can unite and how important are labels and perceptions in our everyday lives.

Spanish, Latino, Hispanic, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican and other labels bestowed upon me are part of my trajectory. As Latino, I embrace them all and I am glad that I can proudly say that I have become Latino in the United States of America.

Fernando I. Rivera is an associate professor in Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s Department of Sociology. He can be reached at Fernando.Rivera@ucf.edu.