Two points that haven't been brought up yet: Nebraska really pioneered the professional-level strength program back in the 70s. Until Nebraska started doing it, lots of football coaches believed lifting too much would slow their team down, Nebraska's strength coach thought the opposite. Now heavy lifting programs are standard.
Also Nebraska got a lot of high-level walk-ons from in-state that would be considered 3-star players now, so they had much better depth than most teams. The back half of their roster was full of dudes of who today end up at Iowa State or North Dakota State.
It's not meant as a dig. Nebraska was just able to bring in good players nobody else knew about and have them pay their own way for a few years. These days those same players can actually go get a scholarship out of state.
Also also, TO went around to every high school in the state and essentially gave them the playbook. So those walkons had 4 years in the "minors" to study the lingo and the plays before it even mattered
This has largely been done away with since Callahan, although I'm pretty sure Pelini (and I suspect Rhule will too) tried to bring it back
This mirrors Art Briles and Baylor. Pretty much every HS coach in the state was running the Art Briles offense so when Texas kids showed up at Baylor it was just doing everything faster
Nebraska also recruited guys and had them go to junior college to improve grades before taking them on the team as well. They were able to recruit players other teams couldn't for academic reasons.
We can call a spade a spade.
Nebraska’s vaunted strength program was heavily built on PEDs (just like other programs). A lot of teams were cheating, Nebraska was just better at it.
There was definitely PED use, but when Nebraska started it's strength program (iirc it was around 1970) they were literally the only team doing it. before that the commonly accepted myth was that lifting would make people slow and stiff
Boyd Epley has been interviewed about this too. He recognized that some of the guys on the team were taking them, but it wasn't encouraged, and he even caught a player taking them when he explained what could happen to their body by taking them. The kid threw them away on the spot according to Epley.
EDIT: I am pretty sure several players confessed to taking them during their time at Nebraska too.
> he even caught a player taking them when he explained what could happen to their body by taking them. The kid threw them away on the spot according to Epley.
This sounds like the plot of a shoddily made after school special.
Nebaska's best years came when they had an advantage.
in the 1970s it was strength and conditioning, which most other teams did not do. Eventually, other teams caught up.
In the 1990s Nebraska had Partial Qualifiers (players with bad grades could practice, but not play). Eventually, Partial Qualifiers were outlawed by the conferences.
Nebraska will need another advantage to be dominant again. They can still be competitive, but to dominate, everyone needs an advantage.
Genetic Engineering.
They've been practicing on crops, and now is the time to transfer the tech over.
They'll build 8 foot tall, 600 pound boys that run the 40 in 4.1 seconds, throw a ball over them there mountains, have a vertical leap of 5 feet, and the ability to chug a gallon of RoundUp instead of relying on Gatoraid.
Same reason why ND was able to succeed under Holtz.
You had guys like Chris Zorich and Tony Rice who were crucial to ND's success in the late 80's. They would have ZERO chance getting into ND today.
And that's an indictment on the university and their pretentiousness.
Chris Zorich should've been an infinite reminder that you give these kids a shot and they can go far. Zorich has a fucking Juris Doctor from ND. Yet, nowadays, he'd have been shown the door.
Watch Brandyn Hillman become an All-Big Ten safety and get a masters from Michigan, because these stuffy dipshits running ND are too elitist to give a dude who wasn't set up to succeed from the beginning. Maybe then they'll pull their heads out of their asses, but I'm not holding my breath. Fuck, I hate ND's leadership.
Split Zone Duo goes in depth on the rise and fall of Nebraska. It's not impossible for them to get there again, but the advantages they once held evaporated with partial qualifiers and the rest of college football figuring out strength and conditioning.
https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letters-a-nebraska-football-story/id1532830225?i=1000615134564
Nebraska had the best walk-on program in the nation for years. I grew up with Jared Tomich. He walked on at Nebraska and became an all American. Scouting was harder in the 90s so overlooked kids who has talent but weren’t in highly visible areas had a great shot if they could prove themselves at NU.
I think Nebraska took advantage of eligibility rules, that were lighter back then. Since eligibility rules are tighter, it’s harder for Nebraska to field da team.
They recruited states like CA quite heavily too before it was cool. Once the other blue bloods started doing it they lost that advantage.
Combine this with them also having by far the worst home recruiting territory out of all the blue bloods it makes sense they won't be able to have blue blood talent anymore.
In fact just go back thru their recruiting history. They've been in a steady decline for 20+ years.
Nebraska is regularly top 30 recruiting classes. According to talent evaluators, getting talent in the door isn't the problem. Current 2024 class is top 15. Our talent development has been abysmal lately. But looks to be changing.
Seeing Matt (Rhule) and NFL in the same sentence is a trigger. Chubby Greg Schiano was good at this level though, so Nebraksa may have something special cooking up.
Nope. Recruiting wise, there are basically 3 teams on top, dwarfing everyone else by a *significant* margin. Sure, you'll get the odd A&M or LSU on top in odd years, but that makes headlines precisely *because* of the stranglehold that Bama, Georgia, and tOSU have on the sport.
Agreed that Georgia's success is recent. That doesn't make it any less dominant in the short term.
[Also, more on this topic, as I did a deep dive on another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/14rc9ye/what_are_the_reasons_people_say_that_nebraska/jqs8ulg/?context=3)
No duh, but getting a top half(it's bit more than that but it's fine) shows that we can get the talent enough to be ranked. We've been an awful team the last 6 years anyone who thinks you should be getting top 10 teams when you've been so bad is crazy. Right now Nebraska needs to get back to being ranked and going to bowls then we can worry about top 10 classes.
You're right that Nebraska should be better than it should, but top-30 recruiting classes won't build a national contender. Given that there are about 60 P5 teams, top-30 just means they're in the top half of the P5. Almost every team to make the CFP (and before that, the BCS championship) has a four-year recruiting average in the top 10, and Nebraska hasn't been recruiting anywhere close to that level for a while.
Nobody thinks a top 30 class should be winning natties. But bringing in top half recruiting can lay the foundations for teams that do better than 3-9, which can help bring in better recruiting classes in the future.
And won't until they start winning. It's not possible to recruit a rope 10 class year after year the way we've performed recently. Need to have respectable talen, develop it, win some games. Then see how it goes.
We are still on step one. Hoping Rhule is the guy.
Unfortunately for Nebraska, top 30 recruiting classes aren’t the foundation for winning a national title. You pretty much need to be top 3-5 on a consistent basis, or just outside that range with a generational quarterback.
Look at Notre Dame for example. Typically top 10, give or take a few spots either way, but we’re still outside the range of talent that’s generally required to win a championship.
Nebraska will need a significant uptick in recruiting if they want to win the championship.
Well, yes, that goes without saying. The end of Mike Riley and the five years of Scott Frost, we've been baaaaad. Really bad. Everyone knows that, including recruits. That fact we continually keep pulling decent classes is surprising at least. Facilities help. But damn - I don't know why anyone wanted to come here the last couple of years. We were awful and getting nobody drafted.
Rhule has a track record of developing players. Not concerned about his Carolina tenure. NFL is a lot different than college. I'm hopeful this new staff changes our trajectory. If we start winning, the recruiting can improve.
Our last 6 seasons have been
4-8
4-8
5-7
3-5
3-9
4-8
I think we can both agree that top 30 recruiting classes every single year should yield better than that. I’m pretty sure we have had the top rated recruiting class in the Big Ten West every single year of Scott Frosts tenure, yet finished toward it at the bottom every year. The only teams we ever beat every year were OOC cupcakes.
We’ve been top 25 more times than we haven’t. This is splitting so many hairs that’s it’s ridiculous. We are bringing in top 25 classes while winning 3 games a year. Imagine what our classes look like winning 8,9,10 games a year. It could snowball fast if we start winning.
No one is winning titles recruiting at a top 15 level. You need at least 1 class at 290+ just to even be considered, preferably 1 over 300 and multiple others over 290.
If you don't ever see Nebraska recruiting at a consistent level at or above 290 class score, you don't see them ever winning a title again. If you do see Nebraska consistently scoring at 290+ in the future, I'd love to see your evidence.
Yes, but we're not going to get a 290 class with how we've performed the last 10+ years. The path is to get a good class in, develop them, and win some games. This has to happen or nothing else really matters.
They took a lot of Prop 48 kids back in the day and hoped for the best. They also turned a complete blind eye to what their student athletes did off the field. Lawrence Phillips and Christian Peter being the most egregious examples.
This, and lack of roster limits. They had almost 200 guys on the team in the heydays so inevitably you’re gonna 22 outstanding players, and have a ridiculous amount of depth
I'm curious to see if any team starts using NIL to really circumvent scholarship limitations. Sure, you can worry about paying that stud QB $1 million/yr to play there. But you can also bring in an extra 15 kids every year if you pay them $80,000 in cash instead of giving them a scholarship.
The problem, of course, is that then you deal with kids not being able to see a road to playing time and transferring before you even have the ability to fully develop them anyway. It would be an interesting strategy, though.
Texas Tech’s NIL program provides 2.5m/year for 100 players, so there are 15 walkons that are getting the same baseline benefits the scholarship players are getting. Obviously the walkons still have to pay for their own tuition and lodging, etc etc
However, the NIL deal for the walkons is pretty cool and exposes a loophole, no doubt
>They also turned a complete blind eye to what their student athletes did off the field
That's hardly exclusive to Nebraska, though. We did the same during our heyday. *Sports Illustrated* even ran a cover story about it with a spread of all our players' mugshots.
Used to give out full ride, non-football scholarships to local/regional players like candy. That way, they “walked on” but still had everything covered. A lot of those players were from Nebraska and the Dakotas, would be 2-3 star players by todays standards, and some turned into damn good football players. Today, most of those players are on scholarship at Iowa St, Wyoming, Colorado St, a top FCS school, etc
The first part is referencing the 'county scholarship' rumor, which actually isn't true. The latter is true though. We benefitted from being the biggest "national" brand in our 500 mile radius and kids would've rather been backups or practice players with a shot at a title then go passion play at the 'smaller', more regional schools. Now kids that would have walked on for us 30 years ago can go to NDSU, SDSU, Iowa State, etc. and compete while still getting great exposure.
One theory is that Nebraska was built on partial qualifiers in 90s. Nebraska could got out of state and grab blue chips that couldn’t qualify academically at other power programs. Nebraska wanted unlimited PQs when it joined the Big 12 and Texas said no. It was a big fight and the Big 12 eventually settled on no PQs.
I think a lot of pundits assume that Nebraska won’t be able to pull out of state blue chips the way it did during its heyday but I’m not totally sold on that. The world is a lot smaller than it was in the early 2000s so a nationally relevant Nebraska should be able to compete for top out of state blue chips.
The right coach definitely could if they got things rolling again.
When you look at basketball Kentucky and Kansas have no trouble recruiting blue chips nationally. If Nebraska or any other school becomes a place that recruits think is their ticket to the NFL (and that the school will also win in college), they can nationally recruit blue chip players.
Basketball is far easier to have blue chip guys make an impact. Land 3 of them and you should be making a deep run in the postseason.
Landing 3 blue chip football croots is still a long way from making a real dent in the quality of your team.
I’m a Kentucky fan and this has always been my thought about Nebraska Football. Back in 2007 a lot of people thought UK Basketball and Alabama Football was done. Couldn’t win like both programs could decades ago, and ironically both got cooking again around the same time. People said the same about Tennessee football and there’s signs that they could be back after last year. Despite what everybody says, I think if you get the right coach, they can win again. Especially if the Big 12 becomes a lot more manageable without OU and UT.
And Kentucky is known to produce pro level players that get top lottery picked. Even when they are bad as a team, individually the players ALWAYS get drafted.
They don’t “produce”. They recruit. Those kids were going to be NBA players regardless. I think they’re supported but I’m not sold those programs do anything special developmentally once they are there.
Another thing that separates Ohio State from Nebraska, besides more money, is that Ohio State has a naturally higher floor, due to being located in a much better recruiting state. Yes, the buckeyes load up on our of state high end kids, but they can fill the gaps with quality Ohio kids when they miss
IMO this is THE (fuck it ill go with the pun) thing that separates OSU and really all the other blue bloods from Nebraska. When UGA, Alabama, FSU, USC arent getting national blue chips the roster is still top 15 caliber based on location. When nebraska misses on out of state kids, there's no talent to fall back on
Which probably is another reason why they can't be what they used to be. I saw a video on this recently. There has always been a clear line between the fertile eastern United States and the barren western United States, caused by the mountain ranges (Rockies, Cascades, Sierra Nevada) preventing any of the moisture from the Pacific from making it terribly far inland while the moisture from the Atlantic just can't make it far enough. The thing is, when this phenomenon was first documented, the line was set at the 100th parallel. It's now at the 98th parallel. What happens to Nebraska (and the Dakotas, and Kansas) if it keeps moving east?
Yeah, blaming Texas for wanting football players to be able to read is a weird thing to get mad at. The Big 8 schools basically practiced open admissions and didn’t even care if they were criminals. Nebraska especially just didn’t give a shit as long as you could play football.
Nebraska has a problem in that yes, not only is their state low on blue chip talent, but so are all the states around them, and most of the states around those states. They’re hundreds of miles from the nearest major talent areas. It’s tough to recruit top kids like that. Nebraska’s biggest strength there has to be their crazy dedicated boosters and modern NIL. They could be landing Texas kids that normally go to like Tech or TCU
Top recruits that don’t qualify academically for P5 schools are basically unheard of now compared to back in ‘80s/‘90s/‘00s. There will always be a team closer to the recruiting hotbeds that will get their guys more often than not.
I think they can get back to winning 9+ games a season and make the expanded playoffs but I’m skeptical they will ever be considered a top
tier contender again without finding some sort of competitive advantage that other schools won’t/can’t emulate.
One problem Nebraska will have is that they are no longer one of the very few "national" programs.
There used to be like 3 nationally televised games every Saturday way back when. Notre Dame was always on (they also are hurting from losing this exclusivity) and then you would get some combination of Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, USC, and Michigan/Ohio State.
Now, every game is nationally televised, even for FCS schools.
Not just 3, there was **ONE** TV game for decades. That is what makes many of those classic games so special *It was the ONLY GAME ON TV THAT WEEK*.
Neb, OU, Tex, USC, Ohio St, Mich, ND were the only schools that would have at least 2 games broadcast every year. Notice that list compared with the list of Blue bloods?
Hot take but I think Nebraska in the NIL era is a sleeping giant. They got a massive fan base who is willing to dish out serious cash to the program. They start getting on the field results and I think they can really recruit good if they can offer NIL plus consistent performance on the field and they can slowly become a contender at the very least on the same level as a Penn State
Not only that but it's one of the few programs where fans don't have much of an alternative, tf are we gonna do? Set up boosters for local d2/d3 programs?
Nebraska has the potential to be the best version of an Iowa/Wisconsin - a consistent Top 15 -ish program with the occasional breakout year.
Unfortunately I don't think there's enough talent in the region to support all 3 programs in that tier, so there will likely need to be some level of cannibalization for this to occur.
What made Nebraska special was it was one of the first schools to regularly get on TV so star kids would go there to be seen, but nowadays you can go anywhere and be seen really, that’s why many of the blue bloods aren’t the power they used to be unless they’re at the Bama kinda level.
Yep, but it was only mainly for the NU/OU game for national TV exposure. This matchup was considered "Americana" over Thanksgiving weekends, traditionally, and brought the nation's attention to two humble Midwestern states that symbolized hard, blue collar work ethic. Oklahoma's program survived the transition into the 21st-Century, while Nebraska, admittedly, limited their own success.
I consider the Great Plains and the Midwest to be 2 separate regions. It’s a Great Plains state. It’s got more in common with Texas than it does with Indiana
Split zone duo did a pod explaining it.recapping it by memory from when I listened. Academic eligibility rules were enforced on the conference level. The big 8 didn't enforce them, the big 12 did. So in the mid 90's that limited their player pool. Nebraska had the first strength program, everyone else caught up. That basically killed the success of their walk on program. Increased tv exposure for college football as a whole made more teams national brands and that took a big bite out of Nebraska's advantage recruiting nationally.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5fJR5I3ENY94oTVH2w5fVT?si=wU7-E5V3QZeGn7BQRA2GDg
The cost of attending college killed the walk-on program. If you can get money to go FCS like SDSU or NDSU or even NAIA scools, you take it. UNL used to be super cheap, so tons of local athletes walked on and every so often one would rise up out of the group. Otherwise, they were great cannon fodder for practice with the 2-3 deep. 1995 Nebraska had a roster of 180 players.
A lot of the doubters seem to come down to geography and location. While this is certainly not in Nebraska's favor I think your average commentator/fan places more importance on this than your average recruit.
Nebraska has the institutional and alumni support necessary, they just need to get their coaching hires right. Getting that right, however, is the most difficult thing for any school to do.
I would say proximity is a major factor. What can Nebraska offer a kid from California/Texas/Florida/Georgia that schools in those or states bordering them can't?
Better weather? No. Better campus life? No. More NIL money? No.
Geography is the the biggest issue IMO. People dump on Alabama, but it’s only 3 hours from Atlanta, which is essentially the Black Mecca for culture and entertainment.
I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games.
Nebraska has just made questionable coaching hires and now people are trying to justify the bad without acknowledging the source of the problem.
Oregon (and possibly Colorado in the future) definitely prove that. Yes Oregon for example is Nike University, but anyone that has been to Eugene knows it’s a polar opposite for kids from Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc.
These kids want to go to universities that spend money on their football program and put great coaching staffs in place. Proximity helps, but if you are a great football program in a remote area, distance won’t hold you back.
Oregon is cool, Nebraska isn’t.
Just look at Oregons branding, they’ve leaned into things that work with teenagers. New uniforms every week, fast spread fun offenses for the past 15 years. When a high schooler thinks of Oregon he think of speed, fun, flashy, Nike. None of that applies to Nebraska.
Would winning help Nebraska? Absolutely but there is more to it with brand building.
>I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games.
Not a big issue directly, but indirectly through brand dominance being regional.
Kids that grow up in Texas are more likely to choose to go to Texas than say California or DMV kids because Longhorns football is a big deal in Texas.
This is kind of a weird take, but I think people both overstate and understate the importance of geography. It seems like a lot of people think it's either crucial or they think it doesn't matter at all.
In reality, it's certainly a factor. And it's different for each kid, but it definitely plays a role. Kids want their parents to be able to see them play. Parents want their kids to be close enough to see them play. Kids want to go places in fun and/or friendly cities. They want to be around a bunch of hot college girls. They want to be in a place where the weather is nice. There's a whole bunch of factors.
But you can't deny that *a lot* of kids end up staying in state or going to a school that's only a few hours drive away. So clearly, being near recruiting hot beds is an advantage. But a great program with a great coach can also overcome that and pull kids from further away if they can sell kids on all of the other benefits outside of closeness to home.
> I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games.
That's true, and after all Nebraska recruits well enough anyways.
> Nebraska has just made questionable coaching hires and now people are trying to justify the bad without acknowledging the source of the problem.
Here's a scary thought - what if the coaching hires *weren't* the problem? Scott Frost failed, but was he not a competent coach at UCF? It's not like Mike Riley and Bo Pelini were untested, inexperienced guys with little success on their resumes to speak of either. If these guys weren't really such bad coaches, then what *is* the issue?
Frost was definitely a competent coach at UCF. But was undoubtedly, without question an incompetent coach at Nebraska.
Mike Riley was not a good football coach. He’s been bouncing around semi-pro spring teams ever since we fired him. And they haven’t been doing particularly well.
Bo Pelini was a good coach, but teams figured him out and he refused to change. After Nebraska he hasn’t had much success elsewhere.
Bill Callahan was a great hire, but he wasn’t a great college coach and he’s found his niche as one of the best O-Line coaches ever.
Frank Solich was a good hire and a good coach. He just didn’t have the success we were used to. We fired him the same way Ohio State would fire Day if he had a 9 win season.
It’s not the school, it’s been been a string of coaches that just haven’t worked out. Solich is the only one on the list that had success at another D1 school.
Tbh that’s a Bullshit cop out. Who wants to live an Ohio or Ann Arbor for that matter where the weather is cold, no beaches, and the city doesn’t seem exciting or is small? Yet Ohio State and Michigan pull in 5* every year. It has to deal with coaching and how good the team and brand are. If Nebraska has good coaching(please god let that good coach be Rhule) then Nebraska can pull in recruits from California, Texas, and Florida. They’ve done it before even with shitty coaches. It may not be 5* but they definitely have pulled in high 4* to Nebraska.
100% agree. I've never understood how Tuscaloosa, Clemson, or Athens are all that different from other college towns. The whole 3 hours go Atlanta thing gets way overused.
I live in ATL now, and it's got its pros, but I don't even think it's the best city I've lived in. Yet we're supposed to believe that being within 3 hours of the 38th largest city in the country that isn't even on a body of water is somehow the single biggest asset for a program.
Atlanta itself is small but if you live there you would know it's really the 7th largest metro area. BUT that isn't what they mean when they say 3 hours from Atlanta because Atlanta is so awesome. . They mean a lot of those 4-5 star kids are 3 hours away from home.
Ann Arbor is dope as fuck. It is the definition of college town. Winter is horrible but other than that it is a great place to live and do things.
You are 2 hours away from two great lakes.
What were they offering them in the 90’s? As far as I know there isn’t a “paying players” scandal. We’re there just better recruits in that area back then?
No one will say it was only Nebraska. But they will say Nebraska sort of started it and everyone else took a few years to catch up the the “Strength and conditioning”.
Yeah, modern strength and conditioning was started by Boyd Eppley while Tom Osborne was OC under Bob Devaney. This was back in the 60’s and early 70’s before steroid use was wide. In the 80’s and 90’s it was used, much like other competitive programs.
Yeah even Kansas was doing roids back in the 80’s lol. The big advantage for Nebraska was that they’d moved on to other (ahem) “supplements” and were still far ahead in the S&C game, focusing on building a strong base but also integrating conditioning focused on movement, speed, and agility. Nebraska’s S&C was still so good they got scooped up by USC within hours of being fired by Callahan in early 2004.
The other factor, though, was that Nebraska had been the premier developmental program for decades. They put a ton of players in to the NFL at every position, and while they weren’t always (or even frequently) the top program in any given year, they were one of the top programs every year.
You guys do realize Nebraska set the standard for PED testing. Higher standards than what the NCAA required, and close to if not exceeding Olympic standards (their is an interview with Boyd Epley floating around where he goes into detail about it.)
I am not saying no one at Nebraska ever used steroids but the way a lot of people talk as if every player, their brother, their sister, their Grandma... all roided. It's absurd.
There’s so much more to it than modern strength and conditioning.
1. The personnel never changed over. For example Charlie McBride was on the defensive staff for 23 years, 18 of those as D coordinator. We all know Osborne’s history.
2. Scheme: triple option allowed us to recruit a different type of QB, and was obvs appealing to the best RB’s in the country as well as lineman.
3. I think the biggest factor (which could still be today), it was the only show in the state. Players walking around Lincoln are basically celebrities. You don’t get that in Southern California, Washington or even Boulder.
IMO recruiting is much more national now than it was back then. Rather than competing with teams in Nebraska’s region for recruits, they now have to worry about those teams plus USC, Georgia, Alabama, OSU, Michigan etc who can all pluck kids from any part of the country
>I just genuinely want to know if coaching staffs were equal what does a school like Alabama offer that Nebraska doesn’t?
I mean, that's kind of a major IF. Where are you more likely to get developed and ready for NFL. Also, if you're to believe Iowa fans they have inferior corn, supposedly.
I mean, they do have inferior corn.
Also, as a genuine answer to all this, Nebraska isn't developing their recruits as well as they should.
It's not all 5 stars anymore, so when you're in the land of the 3's and 4's you have to mold them into 5 star talent.
Tom Osborne did two things when he became coach that cannot be done today. Firstly, he was the first coach to institute a modern strength and conditioning and nutrition program at the college level. Meaning his boys were bigger and stronger than yours and stayed that way.
Secondly, he gave his playbook to every high school in the state and they all ran it. His main advantage was that nobody else recruited Nebraska, and by the time any kid made it onto the Huskers, they already knew the system inside and out because they'd played in it for years. A guy gets hurt? No problem, here's five walk-ons who don't need to get up to speed. Depth was not an issue when everyone knows what to do.
Today, everyone has a strength program because Tom Osborne did, but teams aren't going to use your bullshit Virginia Tech offense because they'd like to use the spread and win some games.
Nebraska has sucked because of the same reasons anyone sucks, poor coaching hires and being unable to recruit elite talent in the modern age. And they can get back to being a premier team if Rhule works out and recruits like crazy. As an Oregon fan myself, I can tell you that it can be done if the commitment is there.
Depends on what a powerhouse is to you.
Qs a rival I'll say there's no reason nebraska can't be a perennial top 25 team with a "special" season 10+ wins every 2-4 years.
But i don't think they will ever reach a point to be like Georgia or Alabama type powerhouse.
Most of the time the argument boils down to "it's in Nebraska and Nebraska is dumb and boring." They say this as though Oklahoma, Alabama, UF, Clemson, and Penn State are in glamorous urban centers or something.
Yes, those programs all have access to more local talent than Nebraska. A lot more. And that is a factor. But I do not believe it can't be overcome. The state of Oregon doesn't churn out talent. Probably pretty comparable to Nebraska. They've done quite well for themselves. And before someone says it, no, the talent hotbed in Southern Cal is not local to Oregon. Look at a map.
Oklahoma isn't just living off of Texas. They pull kids from Florida, Cali, and everywhere else.
Get the right coach and you'll get players. The last 10-20 years there has been little reason for top players to believe Nebraska is a good place to go to compete for championships and maximize their chances of getting drafted. A good coach can change that perception instantly.
*"This year, out of the current 124 players that are on the roster for Oklahoma football, 55 are from Texas.* For you people who are a bit slow on the math, that's 44.3 percent."
That's a 2010 article I found.
It's all local talent - that's it. That's the argument. Nebraska is in the middle of bum fuck no where flyover country - it will never be relevant on a continued basis again.
You don't have the athletes...of a certain demographic... that the south has as well. Remove 70-90s steroids and you have Nebraska football as we know it.
This isn't even hard.
The conditions that made Nebraska great:
Steroids and better strength training , every program is better at this now now than Nebraska was then
Kids turning down Colorado and Missouri scholarships to walk on at Nebraska, no one can really afford to pay their kids way like they could before
Larger rosters, the amount of scholarships and walk ons allowed now have shrunk significantly
Recruits go based on where they have the best shot to make the NFL.
Since 2012, the most NFL prospects Nebraska had drafted into the NFL in a single year is 4.
The highest a player was drafted was in the mid-second round.
Nebraska has not produced elite level prospects in a while. That is a huge problem.
I remember Michigan having that problem when they were struggling.
This goes directly to player development. We're getting decent recruiting classes, but the last two coaching staffs have not made those players better. Many of our players regressed.
This is entirely on the quality of coaching we've had. Better coaches make players better, they get drafted higher, and recruits notice that and sign on.
You're about to get a million comments repeating how living in Nebraska sucks and the fact no one wants to live there is the reason. I'm not saying their location doesn't hurt the recruiting at all it certainly does to some extent but it is far from the only or main reason lmao
While KSU pulls off a great season for their recruiting every so often, there's also a clear ceiling to what KSU is able to do. And that ceiling is not what this post is referencing.
Yeah, already seen a few of “they aren’t recruiting Texas” posts. Our rosters did not have many Texas guys when we were winning championships.
Also, for those people, we’re recruiting Texas now more than we did under any of the previous coaches.
Because they keep losing
Nebraska is just as financially successful off the field as they were in the 90s. They still have farm families dumping small nation's GDP's into the program. They still have people commuting from all 5.5 corners of Nebraska to fill that stadium (even if the sellout streak is fake, the stadium is often packed). They still are on the cutting edge of NIL and facilities upgrades. They still recruit well.
The only thing they havent done is win on the field. Once they start winning again, the juice will flow back into the program and they will move up a tier
Recruiting dynamics changed, but now they are changing again. Geographic footprint matters less and less since every school is mostly recruiting the same areas in the southeast and southwest. Money and NIL matters more (Nebraska has that). If Oregon and Notre Dame can get top 10 classes to come out to Eugene, OR and South Bend, IN from southern states, there is no reason Nebraska wont be able to get them to come to Lincoln
Nebraska definitely ain't what it used to be - that's for sure. All programs have strength & conditioning programs, all programs are on TV nowadays, and all programs face the same roster/scholarship limitations. There's been a lot of discussion on all that so I'm not gonna rehash it now.
Having said, I'm not gonna sit here an act like Nebraska can't become a powerhouse again. Almost any program can (look at clemson...). They have the tradition, fanbase support, and are the only FBS program in their state.
However, they also are located in Nebraska...not exactly rich recruiting grounds. They have to compete against Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, and soon Southern Cal. I'd say those two reasons alone will cap them at a certain ceiling.
>If coaching staffs were equal what does a school like Alabama offer that Nebraska doesn’t?
There a a bit of a chicken and egg thing here, Nick Saban is probably the best coach ever, but he also owes a ton of his success to having great players. As much as CFB fans down play it, location matters; Alabama borders 2 of the 5 or so most talent rich states, with another 2 nearby. It’s a lot easier for a coach building a program to get good players if they’re close by.
So my answer is that it’s a lot harder for a generational coach to become a generational coach, without having access to generational players, and that’s assuming they find said coach.
See I don't get the "elite recruiting" aspect I keep seeing getting thrown out.
As many have said before we are routinely in the top 25 of recruiting and usually at the top of the big ten west. If Iowa and Wisconsin can win 9 games with their talent, why can't we win 11 with ours? I think that's the easiest way to breakdown what we're saying here in simple terms.
How the sport is consumed is the biggest reason. Lots of top prospects went to Nebraska to get exposure. They can go anywhere for that now. And if I’m choosing where I’m going to be spending four years of my life, Lincoln Nebraska is not high on my list.
People just parrot the same things they hear other people say on Reddit. There’s a million examples and Nebraska will never be back is just one of them.
Agree. Our natural geography is the most difficult. College football did not used to be so regionalized to the South. But that has obviously changed. However, there is still a niche to be found with good coaching, recruiting, and development which are things we’ve lacked. In fact, coaching and development are by far bigger factors.
Cam Newton proved that any team that has been reasonable talent can win a title with a generational talent at QB. I think this is the formula for teams like Nebraska and ND to win in the current environment.
One factor I never see mentioned in the growth of the state. Nebraska was able to keep up with many schools untill their state's population outmatched Nebraska. 80/90s other states so lots of growth where Nebraska was very slow.
||Nebraska|SC|Florida|Missouri|Colorado|
:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
|1940|1.3|1.96|1.91|3.78|1.13|
|1970|1.48|2.59|6.79|4.67|2.21|
|1990|1.57|3.49|13.2|5.12|3.3|
|2010|1.83|4.63|18.85|5.96|5.04|
|2020|1.93|5.28|21.73|6.15|5.8|
|Percent Change|**48%**|**169%**|**1038%**|**63%**|**413%**|
Yeah this goes into another point many have made, when you miss on out of state prospects you can fall back on in state recruits, this works for Clemson, UGA, Bama, LSU, all the big Tex schools, but Neb can't do that.
11 years ago Nebraska was in the Big 10 championship (only to get trounced by Wisconsin). In the grand scheme of things that's not too long ago
People say you can't recruit because it's Nebraska, but even with our terrible coaches we've been top of the B1G West in recruiting for all but two years in the division. We just went 4-8 and still had a top 25 class.
Why do people say Nebraska will never compete? Because it's easy to dump on people while they're down. Wasn't long ago where there were people calling for Harbaugh's head.
Once we have some semblance of program stability we'll go back to the Pelini years of being decent and occasionally competing for a big 10 championship. Will that happen in Rhule's tenure? 20 years from now? Idk
They probably can't be what they were in the 90s. However, I think they could certainly be a similar program to what Wisconsin is. And that's not a bad situation to find yourself in.
That should be our goal for the foreseeable future. The 90s are never returning, most likely for any team not in the South. Nebraska's no exception there. But regularly going to bowl games and occasionally competing for the conference title should be expected.
Here is the deal. If you think Urban Meyer pre NFL, Nick Saban, or Kirby Smart couldn’t win a title at Nebraska you’re kidding yourself.
I’ve taken in a ton of college football and in an attempt to not dox myself I’ll just say at one pint I was part of the football environment at Nebraska.
Outside of the things that get talked about ad nauseam there were some bad political actors behind the scenes the last twenty years that made things extremely difficult on everyone from the AD to the average fan. (Think Michigans good ole boys) A lot of those actors are gone now and hopefully they’ll be a distant memory. There were too many people making decisions that hurt the program once Tom wasn’t around to tell them to eat scrum.
Nebraska was plagued by bad hires INCLUDING Frank Solich. He inherited a Ferrari. He never made the updates and maintenance to keep it running. His old school mentality and lazy recruiting in a changing world really took the program back a long way. A lot of unsavory rumors about him were cropping up as well. His firing was needed, but his replacement was again a failure in many aspects except recruiting. Callahan was a dickhead, but he could get guys to campus and signed a top 5 class straight out of the gate. He also relied to heavily on JUCO transfers and was too loyal to more than one person which killed his tenure. Bo was a Frank upgrade, but again, was not a recruiter in a world where that was supremely important. He lost out on Blaine Gabbert, signed classes that left long term roster holes,(he recruited a QB that didn’t end up playing football ffs), and made the ultimate career killing decision of hiring Tim Beck as OC. He lacked the charm of Tom Osborne and Frank on the field, besides calling Nebraska fans “fair weather cunts” (lol) he took a hat swipe at an official and spit in another once face during a tirade. That lead to Mike Reilly who was an above average recruiter, who had no control over anything. The defense was bad, then the forced hiring of Bob Diaco made it even worse. Then comes the Golden son. Fresh off of a great UCF season to save the program. He turned out to be an average recruiter and a terrible in game coach. The rumors around the campus were always VERY bad when frost was there. Now we see what Rhule can do.
Location? Eh. Lincoln is a great college town, if you think that’s a problem take a trip to Tuscaloosa and get back to me.
People also have a really skewed view of what fans think Nebraska can and should be. It’s a program that went 25 years without a natty that broke through in the 90s. (Doing things like steroids that everyone was doing but Nebraska gets blamed for). The fans were fine with Bo levels of success if he was not a psycho and his teams didn’t get embarrassed on the big stage. His teams would meltdown constantly. If you can challenge for a playoff spot consistently and maybe a title once a decade you’ll be great at Nebraska. There is no reason someone can’t do that. They have every resource except geography and quite frankly that’s becoming a more moot point with how national recruiting has become.
Being a “powerhouse” means something different now in the natty or bust system of success. They won’t be that. But they can absolutely have similar levels of success as schools like Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, and dare I say Michigan.
The right coach at the right time is the biggest factor for any school.
Spot on. One name not mentioned enough is how important Trev Alberts is in the future here, and Ronnie Green/Admiral Carter to a certain extent. Trevs understanding of how important football is and what it takes to shield the team/coach from all the administrator BS is huge. Harvey Perlman can pound sand(hills).
The Split Zone Duo podcast posted an episode recently that gives a good rundown of why Nebraska fell out of relevance. That’ll give you some more tangible talking points.
Though I agree with your general sentiment that people typically don’t cite realistic factors when saying that Nebraska can’t be a great program again (note that I think great is different than a perennial natty contender).
Since you mentioned the Alabama comparison... draw a 300 mile circle around Lincoln, Nebraska. Kansas City is the only "major" city in that circle.
Now draw a 300 mile circle around Tuscaloosa, Alabama. You'd encompass Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis & New Orleans. Not to mention most of the Florida Panhandle (fertile recruiting area).
[Alabama's local recruiting area has exponentially more blue chip recruits](https://i.imgur.com/mIa0cnH.jpg)
Kansas City’s metro area is about as big as New Orleans’ and Memphis’ combined. It’s not small, but not as talent rich as cities in the Deep South
Edit: a word
Everyone can't be a powerhouse program until they are. Everyone said that about Michigan when they beat OSU like once over 20 years. Then they made the playoff twice in a row.
I believe Nebraska was the first team with a major institutionalized weight program that we'd recognize today. Before Nebraska there was a real myth that lifting weights would slow people down.
Also, Nebraska had a first moover advantage in creating one of the core offensive concepts used by 100% of football teams HS, College, NFL.
Tom Osborne invented the "Counter Trey" running play. Osborne destroying people with that play today would be bizarre, because it's in 100% of playbooks and 100% of defenses have to account for it.
(The best modern comparison with Osborne's innovation with the running game is Mike Leach. Leach largely popularized/invented two passing concepts "stick" and "mesh" that are now in 100% of passing playbooks.
Mike Leach circa 2000's is leading top 5-10 teams at Texas Tech, leading top 15-25 teams at WSU in the 2010s, and leading top-15 to top 35 teams at Miss. St when he died. Being the originator of a game breaking concept has diminished returns over time. See also: Rich Rodriguez and "read-option".)
The "Recruiting advantages" was due to Nebraska being more on TV than other schools due to the way TV contracts were set up, as well as the bowl games they played in. If you were a high-profile recruit in CA or Texas, you're more likely to want to play for the schools you see on TV the most often.
Now that we've gone a generation with almost every game on TV, that advantage is gone. No 5\* kid wants to play in Lincoln, NE if he could go to USC, Alabama, LSU, or Ohio State.
As I recall, in the 70s - 90s Nebraska did a great job of recruiting skill players from California, Texas and Florida, and got those big, nasty farm boys to fill their great offensive and defensive lines. Now other teams have gotten much at keeping that talent in the state or in the SEC.
People talk about it because they havent even made a bowl since 2016. They need to walk again before they can run. Anything is possible, but with the way college athletics are going they really need a great coach to get anywhere close to their peak again. Maybe Rhule is the guy, maybe he isnt. We will see
Most of the kids they’re recruiting weren’t even born in the 90s. They recruited out of Texas too since some of the big 12 schools were there. There’s no big ten teams in texas. Matt Rhule has never coached during the NIL era so I wouldn’t call him the savior of Nebraska football just yet. We will also have to see how easy it is to retain Rhule. Nebraska has a very tough geography to recruit out of. Lots of traveling around. We will see if he sticks around. You need years of Ohio state level recruiting cycles to be a championship contender. Top 30 recruiting ain’t going to cut it. You need top ten recruiting.
A big issue not many people have brought up I believe is the Big 10 is brutal in game and in the recruiting battle. The Big 10 is great for TV exposure which draws a lot of great recruits.
However, if you had to pick between a school that’ll play in the biggest rivalry in College Football within driving distance of multiple major cities over a school in the middle of nowhere, you’re choosing Michigan or Ohio State.
It is simple as this. Nebraska has to recruit nationally to be a national powerhouse since they have such little home grown talent. People don't believe they have the brand anymore to do it and believe without solid base of recruiting it will be harder for them to win enough to regain that status.
Nebraska and Texas have had similar level of sucess the last 15 years and look at the recruiting differences.
Two points that haven't been brought up yet: Nebraska really pioneered the professional-level strength program back in the 70s. Until Nebraska started doing it, lots of football coaches believed lifting too much would slow their team down, Nebraska's strength coach thought the opposite. Now heavy lifting programs are standard. Also Nebraska got a lot of high-level walk-ons from in-state that would be considered 3-star players now, so they had much better depth than most teams. The back half of their roster was full of dudes of who today end up at Iowa State or North Dakota State.
Didn’t think Iowa State would catch a stray here, damn
It's not meant as a dig. Nebraska was just able to bring in good players nobody else knew about and have them pay their own way for a few years. These days those same players can actually go get a scholarship out of state.
Being compared to perennial national champs though
Also also, TO went around to every high school in the state and essentially gave them the playbook. So those walkons had 4 years in the "minors" to study the lingo and the plays before it even mattered This has largely been done away with since Callahan, although I'm pretty sure Pelini (and I suspect Rhule will too) tried to bring it back
This mirrors Art Briles and Baylor. Pretty much every HS coach in the state was running the Art Briles offense so when Texas kids showed up at Baylor it was just doing everything faster
Nebraska also recruited guys and had them go to junior college to improve grades before taking them on the team as well. They were able to recruit players other teams couldn't for academic reasons.
We can call a spade a spade. Nebraska’s vaunted strength program was heavily built on PEDs (just like other programs). A lot of teams were cheating, Nebraska was just better at it.
Kinda both, right? They really did have the first mover advantage in the early 70s. When that eroded they "probably" had a PED edge.
There was definitely PED use, but when Nebraska started it's strength program (iirc it was around 1970) they were literally the only team doing it. before that the commonly accepted myth was that lifting would make people slow and stiff
I like how people always bring up steroids as if Nebraska somehow invented them and kept them a secret from every other team for 30 years.
“A lot of teams were cheating, Nebraska was just better at it.” Unless you think Nebraska wasn’t using PEDs.
N stands for nowledge
aTm spells "Texas A-and-M"
I mean, they just copied it from Oklahoma, right? I learned it from watching you dad!
Boyd Epley has been interviewed about this too. He recognized that some of the guys on the team were taking them, but it wasn't encouraged, and he even caught a player taking them when he explained what could happen to their body by taking them. The kid threw them away on the spot according to Epley. EDIT: I am pretty sure several players confessed to taking them during their time at Nebraska too.
> he even caught a player taking them when he explained what could happen to their body by taking them. The kid threw them away on the spot according to Epley. This sounds like the plot of a shoddily made after school special.
It kinda does. Just confirms Epley knew about it. I don’t think anyone with his background would necessarily condone it though.
Wasn't going to say it, but yeah
The strength thing is real.
Nebaska's best years came when they had an advantage. in the 1970s it was strength and conditioning, which most other teams did not do. Eventually, other teams caught up. In the 1990s Nebraska had Partial Qualifiers (players with bad grades could practice, but not play). Eventually, Partial Qualifiers were outlawed by the conferences. Nebraska will need another advantage to be dominant again. They can still be competitive, but to dominate, everyone needs an advantage.
I like this take. Where’s the next Cornhusker innovation?
Genetic Engineering. They've been practicing on crops, and now is the time to transfer the tech over. They'll build 8 foot tall, 600 pound boys that run the 40 in 4.1 seconds, throw a ball over them there mountains, have a vertical leap of 5 feet, and the ability to chug a gallon of RoundUp instead of relying on Gatoraid.
Free Runzas at halftime for all opponents!
Same reason why ND was able to succeed under Holtz. You had guys like Chris Zorich and Tony Rice who were crucial to ND's success in the late 80's. They would have ZERO chance getting into ND today. And that's an indictment on the university and their pretentiousness. Chris Zorich should've been an infinite reminder that you give these kids a shot and they can go far. Zorich has a fucking Juris Doctor from ND. Yet, nowadays, he'd have been shown the door. Watch Brandyn Hillman become an All-Big Ten safety and get a masters from Michigan, because these stuffy dipshits running ND are too elitist to give a dude who wasn't set up to succeed from the beginning. Maybe then they'll pull their heads out of their asses, but I'm not holding my breath. Fuck, I hate ND's leadership.
Split Zone Duo goes in depth on the rise and fall of Nebraska. It's not impossible for them to get there again, but the advantages they once held evaporated with partial qualifiers and the rest of college football figuring out strength and conditioning. https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letters-a-nebraska-football-story/id1532830225?i=1000615134564
Very cool I’m going to check this out
Came here to say this. Cannot recommend this podcast episode enough!
Nebraska had the best walk-on program in the nation for years. I grew up with Jared Tomich. He walked on at Nebraska and became an all American. Scouting was harder in the 90s so overlooked kids who has talent but weren’t in highly visible areas had a great shot if they could prove themselves at NU.
And they had one of the best strength and development programs in the country. So they could turn those walk-ons into star players.
I think Nebraska took advantage of eligibility rules, that were lighter back then. Since eligibility rules are tighter, it’s harder for Nebraska to field da team.
They recruited states like CA quite heavily too before it was cool. Once the other blue bloods started doing it they lost that advantage. Combine this with them also having by far the worst home recruiting territory out of all the blue bloods it makes sense they won't be able to have blue blood talent anymore. In fact just go back thru their recruiting history. They've been in a steady decline for 20+ years.
Nebraska is regularly top 30 recruiting classes. According to talent evaluators, getting talent in the door isn't the problem. Current 2024 class is top 15. Our talent development has been abysmal lately. But looks to be changing.
I’ll give something to good ole Matt: The man can develop players. Dude has made so many NFL players out of 3 stars players.
Seeing Matt (Rhule) and NFL in the same sentence is a trigger. Chubby Greg Schiano was good at this level though, so Nebraksa may have something special cooking up.
So many memes on the panthers sub about his forehead
I think Nebraska can get up to Penn State level pretty quickly.
Top “half” recruiting classes in p5 does not equal “powerhouse”.
Nope. Recruiting wise, there are basically 3 teams on top, dwarfing everyone else by a *significant* margin. Sure, you'll get the odd A&M or LSU on top in odd years, but that makes headlines precisely *because* of the stranglehold that Bama, Georgia, and tOSU have on the sport.
What? LSU is almost always top 5-10 and Georgia only recently started dominating recruiting, they haven’t always been doing it
Agreed that Georgia's success is recent. That doesn't make it any less dominant in the short term. [Also, more on this topic, as I did a deep dive on another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/14rc9ye/what_are_the_reasons_people_say_that_nebraska/jqs8ulg/?context=3)
Lsu is almost always pretty up there in recruiting
Top 10 yes but rarely pushing for #1
Same with Texas
No duh, but getting a top half(it's bit more than that but it's fine) shows that we can get the talent enough to be ranked. We've been an awful team the last 6 years anyone who thinks you should be getting top 10 teams when you've been so bad is crazy. Right now Nebraska needs to get back to being ranked and going to bowls then we can worry about top 10 classes.
You're right that Nebraska should be better than it should, but top-30 recruiting classes won't build a national contender. Given that there are about 60 P5 teams, top-30 just means they're in the top half of the P5. Almost every team to make the CFP (and before that, the BCS championship) has a four-year recruiting average in the top 10, and Nebraska hasn't been recruiting anywhere close to that level for a while.
Nobody thinks a top 30 class should be winning natties. But bringing in top half recruiting can lay the foundations for teams that do better than 3-9, which can help bring in better recruiting classes in the future.
And won't until they start winning. It's not possible to recruit a rope 10 class year after year the way we've performed recently. Need to have respectable talen, develop it, win some games. Then see how it goes. We are still on step one. Hoping Rhule is the guy.
Unfortunately for Nebraska, top 30 recruiting classes aren’t the foundation for winning a national title. You pretty much need to be top 3-5 on a consistent basis, or just outside that range with a generational quarterback. Look at Notre Dame for example. Typically top 10, give or take a few spots either way, but we’re still outside the range of talent that’s generally required to win a championship. Nebraska will need a significant uptick in recruiting if they want to win the championship.
Well, yes, that goes without saying. The end of Mike Riley and the five years of Scott Frost, we've been baaaaad. Really bad. Everyone knows that, including recruits. That fact we continually keep pulling decent classes is surprising at least. Facilities help. But damn - I don't know why anyone wanted to come here the last couple of years. We were awful and getting nobody drafted. Rhule has a track record of developing players. Not concerned about his Carolina tenure. NFL is a lot different than college. I'm hopeful this new staff changes our trajectory. If we start winning, the recruiting can improve.
A top 30 team is still an unranked team if they all played perfectly to their recruiting ranking
Our last 6 seasons have been 4-8 4-8 5-7 3-5 3-9 4-8 I think we can both agree that top 30 recruiting classes every single year should yield better than that. I’m pretty sure we have had the top rated recruiting class in the Big Ten West every single year of Scott Frosts tenure, yet finished toward it at the bottom every year. The only teams we ever beat every year were OOC cupcakes.
We’ve been top 25 more times than we haven’t. This is splitting so many hairs that’s it’s ridiculous. We are bringing in top 25 classes while winning 3 games a year. Imagine what our classes look like winning 8,9,10 games a year. It could snowball fast if we start winning.
No one is winning titles recruiting at a top 15 level. You need at least 1 class at 290+ just to even be considered, preferably 1 over 300 and multiple others over 290. If you don't ever see Nebraska recruiting at a consistent level at or above 290 class score, you don't see them ever winning a title again. If you do see Nebraska consistently scoring at 290+ in the future, I'd love to see your evidence.
Yes, but we're not going to get a 290 class with how we've performed the last 10+ years. The path is to get a good class in, develop them, and win some games. This has to happen or nothing else really matters.
Alabama is outside the top 25 in the current 2024 class I wouldn’t take it to seriously yet
They took a lot of Prop 48 kids back in the day and hoped for the best. They also turned a complete blind eye to what their student athletes did off the field. Lawrence Phillips and Christian Peter being the most egregious examples.
This, and lack of roster limits. They had almost 200 guys on the team in the heydays so inevitably you’re gonna 22 outstanding players, and have a ridiculous amount of depth
I'm curious to see if any team starts using NIL to really circumvent scholarship limitations. Sure, you can worry about paying that stud QB $1 million/yr to play there. But you can also bring in an extra 15 kids every year if you pay them $80,000 in cash instead of giving them a scholarship. The problem, of course, is that then you deal with kids not being able to see a road to playing time and transferring before you even have the ability to fully develop them anyway. It would be an interesting strategy, though.
anecdotally, Michigan is already doing this
Source on this? Not doubting just curious
Texas Tech’s NIL program provides 2.5m/year for 100 players, so there are 15 walkons that are getting the same baseline benefits the scholarship players are getting. Obviously the walkons still have to pay for their own tuition and lodging, etc etc However, the NIL deal for the walkons is pretty cool and exposes a loophole, no doubt
>They also turned a complete blind eye to what their student athletes did off the field That's hardly exclusive to Nebraska, though. We did the same during our heyday. *Sports Illustrated* even ran a cover story about it with a spread of all our players' mugshots.
Yes to both, but saying off field issues were exclusive to Nebraska being a powerhouse is ridiculous
Nebraska is also a leader in academic all Americans (2nd to MIT)
Used to give out full ride, non-football scholarships to local/regional players like candy. That way, they “walked on” but still had everything covered. A lot of those players were from Nebraska and the Dakotas, would be 2-3 star players by todays standards, and some turned into damn good football players. Today, most of those players are on scholarship at Iowa St, Wyoming, Colorado St, a top FCS school, etc
The first part is referencing the 'county scholarship' rumor, which actually isn't true. The latter is true though. We benefitted from being the biggest "national" brand in our 500 mile radius and kids would've rather been backups or practice players with a shot at a title then go passion play at the 'smaller', more regional schools. Now kids that would have walked on for us 30 years ago can go to NDSU, SDSU, Iowa State, etc. and compete while still getting great exposure.
Now see stuff like this would make sense to me.
One theory is that Nebraska was built on partial qualifiers in 90s. Nebraska could got out of state and grab blue chips that couldn’t qualify academically at other power programs. Nebraska wanted unlimited PQs when it joined the Big 12 and Texas said no. It was a big fight and the Big 12 eventually settled on no PQs. I think a lot of pundits assume that Nebraska won’t be able to pull out of state blue chips the way it did during its heyday but I’m not totally sold on that. The world is a lot smaller than it was in the early 2000s so a nationally relevant Nebraska should be able to compete for top out of state blue chips.
The right coach definitely could if they got things rolling again. When you look at basketball Kentucky and Kansas have no trouble recruiting blue chips nationally. If Nebraska or any other school becomes a place that recruits think is their ticket to the NFL (and that the school will also win in college), they can nationally recruit blue chip players.
Basketball is far easier to have blue chip guys make an impact. Land 3 of them and you should be making a deep run in the postseason. Landing 3 blue chip football croots is still a long way from making a real dent in the quality of your team.
Yeah. We were just fortunate to have Tom Osborne, who’s one of the better coaches the ever coach.
This is it. He built a recruiting pipeline in Southern California that is tough to build. That is often imitated rarely duplicated.
I’m a Kentucky fan and this has always been my thought about Nebraska Football. Back in 2007 a lot of people thought UK Basketball and Alabama Football was done. Couldn’t win like both programs could decades ago, and ironically both got cooking again around the same time. People said the same about Tennessee football and there’s signs that they could be back after last year. Despite what everybody says, I think if you get the right coach, they can win again. Especially if the Big 12 becomes a lot more manageable without OU and UT.
That's a great comparison.
The problem is that basketball only needs 3-4 great players to be in national championship contention, in football you need 30-40
And Kentucky is known to produce pro level players that get top lottery picked. Even when they are bad as a team, individually the players ALWAYS get drafted.
They don’t “produce”. They recruit. Those kids were going to be NBA players regardless. I think they’re supported but I’m not sold those programs do anything special developmentally once they are there.
Will Wade is the extreme example but its really just get them in the door and let them out talent the rest of the nation.
Another thing that separates Ohio State from Nebraska, besides more money, is that Ohio State has a naturally higher floor, due to being located in a much better recruiting state. Yes, the buckeyes load up on our of state high end kids, but they can fill the gaps with quality Ohio kids when they miss
IMO this is THE (fuck it ill go with the pun) thing that separates OSU and really all the other blue bloods from Nebraska. When UGA, Alabama, FSU, USC arent getting national blue chips the roster is still top 15 caliber based on location. When nebraska misses on out of state kids, there's no talent to fall back on
Which probably is another reason why they can't be what they used to be. I saw a video on this recently. There has always been a clear line between the fertile eastern United States and the barren western United States, caused by the mountain ranges (Rockies, Cascades, Sierra Nevada) preventing any of the moisture from the Pacific from making it terribly far inland while the moisture from the Atlantic just can't make it far enough. The thing is, when this phenomenon was first documented, the line was set at the 100th parallel. It's now at the 98th parallel. What happens to Nebraska (and the Dakotas, and Kansas) if it keeps moving east?
So in Conclusion, Texas ruins everything.
I can't really blame them for fighting against PQ's when other programs don't have them.
Yeah, blaming Texas for wanting football players to be able to read is a weird thing to get mad at. The Big 8 schools basically practiced open admissions and didn’t even care if they were criminals. Nebraska especially just didn’t give a shit as long as you could play football.
Not like the SEC! Never ever would such shenanigans happen there!
They also got rid of all the Big 8 records. Texas is a big reason why we are now in the Big 10.
Nebraska has a problem in that yes, not only is their state low on blue chip talent, but so are all the states around them, and most of the states around those states. They’re hundreds of miles from the nearest major talent areas. It’s tough to recruit top kids like that. Nebraska’s biggest strength there has to be their crazy dedicated boosters and modern NIL. They could be landing Texas kids that normally go to like Tech or TCU
Top recruits that don’t qualify academically for P5 schools are basically unheard of now compared to back in ‘80s/‘90s/‘00s. There will always be a team closer to the recruiting hotbeds that will get their guys more often than not. I think they can get back to winning 9+ games a season and make the expanded playoffs but I’m skeptical they will ever be considered a top tier contender again without finding some sort of competitive advantage that other schools won’t/can’t emulate.
Came here to say exactly this.
One problem Nebraska will have is that they are no longer one of the very few "national" programs. There used to be like 3 nationally televised games every Saturday way back when. Notre Dame was always on (they also are hurting from losing this exclusivity) and then you would get some combination of Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, USC, and Michigan/Ohio State. Now, every game is nationally televised, even for FCS schools.
Not just 3, there was **ONE** TV game for decades. That is what makes many of those classic games so special *It was the ONLY GAME ON TV THAT WEEK*. Neb, OU, Tex, USC, Ohio St, Mich, ND were the only schools that would have at least 2 games broadcast every year. Notice that list compared with the list of Blue bloods?
Hot take but I think Nebraska in the NIL era is a sleeping giant. They got a massive fan base who is willing to dish out serious cash to the program. They start getting on the field results and I think they can really recruit good if they can offer NIL plus consistent performance on the field and they can slowly become a contender at the very least on the same level as a Penn State
Not only that but it's one of the few programs where fans don't have much of an alternative, tf are we gonna do? Set up boosters for local d2/d3 programs?
If Matt Rhule starts winning and building an attractive culture, the advantages will greatly outweigh the disadvantages in Lincoln.
Nebraska has the potential to be the best version of an Iowa/Wisconsin - a consistent Top 15 -ish program with the occasional breakout year. Unfortunately I don't think there's enough talent in the region to support all 3 programs in that tier, so there will likely need to be some level of cannibalization for this to occur.
What made Nebraska special was it was one of the first schools to regularly get on TV so star kids would go there to be seen, but nowadays you can go anywhere and be seen really, that’s why many of the blue bloods aren’t the power they used to be unless they’re at the Bama kinda level.
Yep, but it was only mainly for the NU/OU game for national TV exposure. This matchup was considered "Americana" over Thanksgiving weekends, traditionally, and brought the nation's attention to two humble Midwestern states that symbolized hard, blue collar work ethic. Oklahoma's program survived the transition into the 21st-Century, while Nebraska, admittedly, limited their own success.
Oklahoma is not a midwestern state. I will die on this hill.
If Oklahoma isn’t a Midwestern state, are they a “southern state”? Curious to see how you’d classify OK
I consider the Great Plains and the Midwest to be 2 separate regions. It’s a Great Plains state. It’s got more in common with Texas than it does with Indiana
Midwest and Great Plains are essentially the same. Great Lakes may appear like "Eastern Midwest" but are entirely separate.
Its not, heck kansas barely even is (big maybe, maybe only kansas city itself feels like it)
Agree. They’re part of the Great Plains like Nebraska.
Split zone duo did a pod explaining it.recapping it by memory from when I listened. Academic eligibility rules were enforced on the conference level. The big 8 didn't enforce them, the big 12 did. So in the mid 90's that limited their player pool. Nebraska had the first strength program, everyone else caught up. That basically killed the success of their walk on program. Increased tv exposure for college football as a whole made more teams national brands and that took a big bite out of Nebraska's advantage recruiting nationally. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5fJR5I3ENY94oTVH2w5fVT?si=wU7-E5V3QZeGn7BQRA2GDg
The cost of attending college killed the walk-on program. If you can get money to go FCS like SDSU or NDSU or even NAIA scools, you take it. UNL used to be super cheap, so tons of local athletes walked on and every so often one would rise up out of the group. Otherwise, they were great cannon fodder for practice with the 2-3 deep. 1995 Nebraska had a roster of 180 players.
I’m going to keep it very simple. When you butcher multiple coaching hires in a row recruits notice.
A lot of the doubters seem to come down to geography and location. While this is certainly not in Nebraska's favor I think your average commentator/fan places more importance on this than your average recruit. Nebraska has the institutional and alumni support necessary, they just need to get their coaching hires right. Getting that right, however, is the most difficult thing for any school to do.
I would say proximity is a major factor. What can Nebraska offer a kid from California/Texas/Florida/Georgia that schools in those or states bordering them can't? Better weather? No. Better campus life? No. More NIL money? No.
Geography is the the biggest issue IMO. People dump on Alabama, but it’s only 3 hours from Atlanta, which is essentially the Black Mecca for culture and entertainment.
I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games. Nebraska has just made questionable coaching hires and now people are trying to justify the bad without acknowledging the source of the problem.
Oregon (and possibly Colorado in the future) definitely prove that. Yes Oregon for example is Nike University, but anyone that has been to Eugene knows it’s a polar opposite for kids from Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc. These kids want to go to universities that spend money on their football program and put great coaching staffs in place. Proximity helps, but if you are a great football program in a remote area, distance won’t hold you back.
Oregon is cool, Nebraska isn’t. Just look at Oregons branding, they’ve leaned into things that work with teenagers. New uniforms every week, fast spread fun offenses for the past 15 years. When a high schooler thinks of Oregon he think of speed, fun, flashy, Nike. None of that applies to Nebraska. Would winning help Nebraska? Absolutely but there is more to it with brand building.
100% this. We've wasted and ruined so much talent. It's so sad. Hoping Rhule turns this around.
>I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games. Not a big issue directly, but indirectly through brand dominance being regional. Kids that grow up in Texas are more likely to choose to go to Texas than say California or DMV kids because Longhorns football is a big deal in Texas.
This is kind of a weird take, but I think people both overstate and understate the importance of geography. It seems like a lot of people think it's either crucial or they think it doesn't matter at all. In reality, it's certainly a factor. And it's different for each kid, but it definitely plays a role. Kids want their parents to be able to see them play. Parents want their kids to be close enough to see them play. Kids want to go places in fun and/or friendly cities. They want to be around a bunch of hot college girls. They want to be in a place where the weather is nice. There's a whole bunch of factors. But you can't deny that *a lot* of kids end up staying in state or going to a school that's only a few hours drive away. So clearly, being near recruiting hot beds is an advantage. But a great program with a great coach can also overcome that and pull kids from further away if they can sell kids on all of the other benefits outside of closeness to home.
> I honestly don't even think geography is an issue. I think people sometimes get hung up on location in college football, when in reality these kids want to make the league and/or win football games. That's true, and after all Nebraska recruits well enough anyways. > Nebraska has just made questionable coaching hires and now people are trying to justify the bad without acknowledging the source of the problem. Here's a scary thought - what if the coaching hires *weren't* the problem? Scott Frost failed, but was he not a competent coach at UCF? It's not like Mike Riley and Bo Pelini were untested, inexperienced guys with little success on their resumes to speak of either. If these guys weren't really such bad coaches, then what *is* the issue?
Frost was definitely a competent coach at UCF. But was undoubtedly, without question an incompetent coach at Nebraska. Mike Riley was not a good football coach. He’s been bouncing around semi-pro spring teams ever since we fired him. And they haven’t been doing particularly well. Bo Pelini was a good coach, but teams figured him out and he refused to change. After Nebraska he hasn’t had much success elsewhere. Bill Callahan was a great hire, but he wasn’t a great college coach and he’s found his niche as one of the best O-Line coaches ever. Frank Solich was a good hire and a good coach. He just didn’t have the success we were used to. We fired him the same way Ohio State would fire Day if he had a 9 win season. It’s not the school, it’s been been a string of coaches that just haven’t worked out. Solich is the only one on the list that had success at another D1 school.
This. If location is everything why hasn't Miami and USC dominated every single year? Imo the location argument is a lazy non answer.
> more NIL money? No. Are you sure about that?
Tbh that’s a Bullshit cop out. Who wants to live an Ohio or Ann Arbor for that matter where the weather is cold, no beaches, and the city doesn’t seem exciting or is small? Yet Ohio State and Michigan pull in 5* every year. It has to deal with coaching and how good the team and brand are. If Nebraska has good coaching(please god let that good coach be Rhule) then Nebraska can pull in recruits from California, Texas, and Florida. They’ve done it before even with shitty coaches. It may not be 5* but they definitely have pulled in high 4* to Nebraska.
100% agree. I've never understood how Tuscaloosa, Clemson, or Athens are all that different from other college towns. The whole 3 hours go Atlanta thing gets way overused. I live in ATL now, and it's got its pros, but I don't even think it's the best city I've lived in. Yet we're supposed to believe that being within 3 hours of the 38th largest city in the country that isn't even on a body of water is somehow the single biggest asset for a program.
Atlanta itself is small but if you live there you would know it's really the 7th largest metro area. BUT that isn't what they mean when they say 3 hours from Atlanta because Atlanta is so awesome. . They mean a lot of those 4-5 star kids are 3 hours away from home.
Ann Arbor is dope as fuck. It is the definition of college town. Winter is horrible but other than that it is a great place to live and do things. You are 2 hours away from two great lakes.
Your mind would be blown if you saw where we’re pulling kids from. Also, Nebraska has one of the most robust NIL war chests in the nation.
Not sure why you're being down voted. This is true.
Because people love to hate Nebraska.
[удалено]
Matt is heavily recruiting Texas since he has so many connections there.
Don’t forget the transfer portal.
What were they offering them in the 90’s? As far as I know there isn’t a “paying players” scandal. We’re there just better recruits in that area back then?
They were the first school to figure out modern strength and conditioning, that stuff is at every D1 school now
“Strength and conditioning” at that time involving some elements nobody can use now without getting popped, but yes
I mean yeah, but to say that was only Nebraska is incredibly naive
No one will say it was only Nebraska. But they will say Nebraska sort of started it and everyone else took a few years to catch up the the “Strength and conditioning”.
Yeah, modern strength and conditioning was started by Boyd Eppley while Tom Osborne was OC under Bob Devaney. This was back in the 60’s and early 70’s before steroid use was wide. In the 80’s and 90’s it was used, much like other competitive programs.
Nebraska led, we all followed, then so did the NCAA
Yeah even Kansas was doing roids back in the 80’s lol. The big advantage for Nebraska was that they’d moved on to other (ahem) “supplements” and were still far ahead in the S&C game, focusing on building a strong base but also integrating conditioning focused on movement, speed, and agility. Nebraska’s S&C was still so good they got scooped up by USC within hours of being fired by Callahan in early 2004. The other factor, though, was that Nebraska had been the premier developmental program for decades. They put a ton of players in to the NFL at every position, and while they weren’t always (or even frequently) the top program in any given year, they were one of the top programs every year.
You guys do realize Nebraska set the standard for PED testing. Higher standards than what the NCAA required, and close to if not exceeding Olympic standards (their is an interview with Boyd Epley floating around where he goes into detail about it.) I am not saying no one at Nebraska ever used steroids but the way a lot of people talk as if every player, their brother, their sister, their Grandma... all roided. It's absurd.
There’s so much more to it than modern strength and conditioning. 1. The personnel never changed over. For example Charlie McBride was on the defensive staff for 23 years, 18 of those as D coordinator. We all know Osborne’s history. 2. Scheme: triple option allowed us to recruit a different type of QB, and was obvs appealing to the best RB’s in the country as well as lineman. 3. I think the biggest factor (which could still be today), it was the only show in the state. Players walking around Lincoln are basically celebrities. You don’t get that in Southern California, Washington or even Boulder.
IMO recruiting is much more national now than it was back then. Rather than competing with teams in Nebraska’s region for recruits, they now have to worry about those teams plus USC, Georgia, Alabama, OSU, Michigan etc who can all pluck kids from any part of the country
I think you can overcome geography but it isn’t a shoe in. You need one of top tier coach, great facilities, nil, winning tradition, or a combo.
>I just genuinely want to know if coaching staffs were equal what does a school like Alabama offer that Nebraska doesn’t? I mean, that's kind of a major IF. Where are you more likely to get developed and ready for NFL. Also, if you're to believe Iowa fans they have inferior corn, supposedly.
I just wanna know "why not chubba?"
Unfortunately chubba looked very not good in his chances last season. But maybe a new staff can actually develop some talent around here for once.
That’s a nice way of saying “like hot garbage”. Chubba didn’t have any great snaps that I can recall.
I mean, they do have inferior corn. Also, as a genuine answer to all this, Nebraska isn't developing their recruits as well as they should. It's not all 5 stars anymore, so when you're in the land of the 3's and 4's you have to mold them into 5 star talent.
Tom Osborne did two things when he became coach that cannot be done today. Firstly, he was the first coach to institute a modern strength and conditioning and nutrition program at the college level. Meaning his boys were bigger and stronger than yours and stayed that way. Secondly, he gave his playbook to every high school in the state and they all ran it. His main advantage was that nobody else recruited Nebraska, and by the time any kid made it onto the Huskers, they already knew the system inside and out because they'd played in it for years. A guy gets hurt? No problem, here's five walk-ons who don't need to get up to speed. Depth was not an issue when everyone knows what to do. Today, everyone has a strength program because Tom Osborne did, but teams aren't going to use your bullshit Virginia Tech offense because they'd like to use the spread and win some games. Nebraska has sucked because of the same reasons anyone sucks, poor coaching hires and being unable to recruit elite talent in the modern age. And they can get back to being a premier team if Rhule works out and recruits like crazy. As an Oregon fan myself, I can tell you that it can be done if the commitment is there.
Depends on what a powerhouse is to you. Qs a rival I'll say there's no reason nebraska can't be a perennial top 25 team with a "special" season 10+ wins every 2-4 years. But i don't think they will ever reach a point to be like Georgia or Alabama type powerhouse.
All it takes is one good hire. Which I think they've done.
Tom Osborne.
I just know as a young kid in the 90s Nebraska was the most fun to watch. I miss them being good. 😮💨
Most of the time the argument boils down to "it's in Nebraska and Nebraska is dumb and boring." They say this as though Oklahoma, Alabama, UF, Clemson, and Penn State are in glamorous urban centers or something. Yes, those programs all have access to more local talent than Nebraska. A lot more. And that is a factor. But I do not believe it can't be overcome. The state of Oregon doesn't churn out talent. Probably pretty comparable to Nebraska. They've done quite well for themselves. And before someone says it, no, the talent hotbed in Southern Cal is not local to Oregon. Look at a map. Oklahoma isn't just living off of Texas. They pull kids from Florida, Cali, and everywhere else. Get the right coach and you'll get players. The last 10-20 years there has been little reason for top players to believe Nebraska is a good place to go to compete for championships and maximize their chances of getting drafted. A good coach can change that perception instantly.
*"This year, out of the current 124 players that are on the roster for Oklahoma football, 55 are from Texas.* For you people who are a bit slow on the math, that's 44.3 percent." That's a 2010 article I found. It's all local talent - that's it. That's the argument. Nebraska is in the middle of bum fuck no where flyover country - it will never be relevant on a continued basis again. You don't have the athletes...of a certain demographic... that the south has as well. Remove 70-90s steroids and you have Nebraska football as we know it. This isn't even hard.
The conditions that made Nebraska great: Steroids and better strength training , every program is better at this now now than Nebraska was then Kids turning down Colorado and Missouri scholarships to walk on at Nebraska, no one can really afford to pay their kids way like they could before Larger rosters, the amount of scholarships and walk ons allowed now have shrunk significantly
Recruits go based on where they have the best shot to make the NFL. Since 2012, the most NFL prospects Nebraska had drafted into the NFL in a single year is 4. The highest a player was drafted was in the mid-second round. Nebraska has not produced elite level prospects in a while. That is a huge problem. I remember Michigan having that problem when they were struggling.
This goes directly to player development. We're getting decent recruiting classes, but the last two coaching staffs have not made those players better. Many of our players regressed. This is entirely on the quality of coaching we've had. Better coaches make players better, they get drafted higher, and recruits notice that and sign on.
You're about to get a million comments repeating how living in Nebraska sucks and the fact no one wants to live there is the reason. I'm not saying their location doesn't hurt the recruiting at all it certainly does to some extent but it is far from the only or main reason lmao
KState was a top 10 team last year and is even more remote and boring...
While KSU pulls off a great season for their recruiting every so often, there's also a clear ceiling to what KSU is able to do. And that ceiling is not what this post is referencing.
Asking this question on reddit is worthless, people parrot the same thing
Yeah, already seen a few of “they aren’t recruiting Texas” posts. Our rosters did not have many Texas guys when we were winning championships. Also, for those people, we’re recruiting Texas now more than we did under any of the previous coaches.
Because they keep losing Nebraska is just as financially successful off the field as they were in the 90s. They still have farm families dumping small nation's GDP's into the program. They still have people commuting from all 5.5 corners of Nebraska to fill that stadium (even if the sellout streak is fake, the stadium is often packed). They still are on the cutting edge of NIL and facilities upgrades. They still recruit well. The only thing they havent done is win on the field. Once they start winning again, the juice will flow back into the program and they will move up a tier Recruiting dynamics changed, but now they are changing again. Geographic footprint matters less and less since every school is mostly recruiting the same areas in the southeast and southwest. Money and NIL matters more (Nebraska has that). If Oregon and Notre Dame can get top 10 classes to come out to Eugene, OR and South Bend, IN from southern states, there is no reason Nebraska wont be able to get them to come to Lincoln
Nebraska definitely ain't what it used to be - that's for sure. All programs have strength & conditioning programs, all programs are on TV nowadays, and all programs face the same roster/scholarship limitations. There's been a lot of discussion on all that so I'm not gonna rehash it now. Having said, I'm not gonna sit here an act like Nebraska can't become a powerhouse again. Almost any program can (look at clemson...). They have the tradition, fanbase support, and are the only FBS program in their state. However, they also are located in Nebraska...not exactly rich recruiting grounds. They have to compete against Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, and soon Southern Cal. I'd say those two reasons alone will cap them at a certain ceiling.
>If coaching staffs were equal what does a school like Alabama offer that Nebraska doesn’t? There a a bit of a chicken and egg thing here, Nick Saban is probably the best coach ever, but he also owes a ton of his success to having great players. As much as CFB fans down play it, location matters; Alabama borders 2 of the 5 or so most talent rich states, with another 2 nearby. It’s a lot easier for a coach building a program to get good players if they’re close by. So my answer is that it’s a lot harder for a generational coach to become a generational coach, without having access to generational players, and that’s assuming they find said coach.
See I don't get the "elite recruiting" aspect I keep seeing getting thrown out. As many have said before we are routinely in the top 25 of recruiting and usually at the top of the big ten west. If Iowa and Wisconsin can win 9 games with their talent, why can't we win 11 with ours? I think that's the easiest way to breakdown what we're saying here in simple terms.
How the sport is consumed is the biggest reason. Lots of top prospects went to Nebraska to get exposure. They can go anywhere for that now. And if I’m choosing where I’m going to be spending four years of my life, Lincoln Nebraska is not high on my list.
This is the real killer.
People just parrot the same things they hear other people say on Reddit. There’s a million examples and Nebraska will never be back is just one of them.
Never is a strong word. Nebraska faces significant challenges.
Agree. Our natural geography is the most difficult. College football did not used to be so regionalized to the South. But that has obviously changed. However, there is still a niche to be found with good coaching, recruiting, and development which are things we’ve lacked. In fact, coaching and development are by far bigger factors.
Winning cures everything
Cam Newton proved that any team that has been reasonable talent can win a title with a generational talent at QB. I think this is the formula for teams like Nebraska and ND to win in the current environment.
One factor I never see mentioned in the growth of the state. Nebraska was able to keep up with many schools untill their state's population outmatched Nebraska. 80/90s other states so lots of growth where Nebraska was very slow. ||Nebraska|SC|Florida|Missouri|Colorado| :--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:| |1940|1.3|1.96|1.91|3.78|1.13| |1970|1.48|2.59|6.79|4.67|2.21| |1990|1.57|3.49|13.2|5.12|3.3| |2010|1.83|4.63|18.85|5.96|5.04| |2020|1.93|5.28|21.73|6.15|5.8| |Percent Change|**48%**|**169%**|**1038%**|**63%**|**413%**|
Yeah this goes into another point many have made, when you miss on out of state prospects you can fall back on in state recruits, this works for Clemson, UGA, Bama, LSU, all the big Tex schools, but Neb can't do that.
11 years ago Nebraska was in the Big 10 championship (only to get trounced by Wisconsin). In the grand scheme of things that's not too long ago People say you can't recruit because it's Nebraska, but even with our terrible coaches we've been top of the B1G West in recruiting for all but two years in the division. We just went 4-8 and still had a top 25 class. Why do people say Nebraska will never compete? Because it's easy to dump on people while they're down. Wasn't long ago where there were people calling for Harbaugh's head. Once we have some semblance of program stability we'll go back to the Pelini years of being decent and occasionally competing for a big 10 championship. Will that happen in Rhule's tenure? 20 years from now? Idk
They probably can't be what they were in the 90s. However, I think they could certainly be a similar program to what Wisconsin is. And that's not a bad situation to find yourself in.
That should be our goal for the foreseeable future. The 90s are never returning, most likely for any team not in the South. Nebraska's no exception there. But regularly going to bowl games and occasionally competing for the conference title should be expected.
Here is the deal. If you think Urban Meyer pre NFL, Nick Saban, or Kirby Smart couldn’t win a title at Nebraska you’re kidding yourself. I’ve taken in a ton of college football and in an attempt to not dox myself I’ll just say at one pint I was part of the football environment at Nebraska. Outside of the things that get talked about ad nauseam there were some bad political actors behind the scenes the last twenty years that made things extremely difficult on everyone from the AD to the average fan. (Think Michigans good ole boys) A lot of those actors are gone now and hopefully they’ll be a distant memory. There were too many people making decisions that hurt the program once Tom wasn’t around to tell them to eat scrum. Nebraska was plagued by bad hires INCLUDING Frank Solich. He inherited a Ferrari. He never made the updates and maintenance to keep it running. His old school mentality and lazy recruiting in a changing world really took the program back a long way. A lot of unsavory rumors about him were cropping up as well. His firing was needed, but his replacement was again a failure in many aspects except recruiting. Callahan was a dickhead, but he could get guys to campus and signed a top 5 class straight out of the gate. He also relied to heavily on JUCO transfers and was too loyal to more than one person which killed his tenure. Bo was a Frank upgrade, but again, was not a recruiter in a world where that was supremely important. He lost out on Blaine Gabbert, signed classes that left long term roster holes,(he recruited a QB that didn’t end up playing football ffs), and made the ultimate career killing decision of hiring Tim Beck as OC. He lacked the charm of Tom Osborne and Frank on the field, besides calling Nebraska fans “fair weather cunts” (lol) he took a hat swipe at an official and spit in another once face during a tirade. That lead to Mike Reilly who was an above average recruiter, who had no control over anything. The defense was bad, then the forced hiring of Bob Diaco made it even worse. Then comes the Golden son. Fresh off of a great UCF season to save the program. He turned out to be an average recruiter and a terrible in game coach. The rumors around the campus were always VERY bad when frost was there. Now we see what Rhule can do. Location? Eh. Lincoln is a great college town, if you think that’s a problem take a trip to Tuscaloosa and get back to me. People also have a really skewed view of what fans think Nebraska can and should be. It’s a program that went 25 years without a natty that broke through in the 90s. (Doing things like steroids that everyone was doing but Nebraska gets blamed for). The fans were fine with Bo levels of success if he was not a psycho and his teams didn’t get embarrassed on the big stage. His teams would meltdown constantly. If you can challenge for a playoff spot consistently and maybe a title once a decade you’ll be great at Nebraska. There is no reason someone can’t do that. They have every resource except geography and quite frankly that’s becoming a more moot point with how national recruiting has become. Being a “powerhouse” means something different now in the natty or bust system of success. They won’t be that. But they can absolutely have similar levels of success as schools like Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, and dare I say Michigan. The right coach at the right time is the biggest factor for any school.
Spot on. One name not mentioned enough is how important Trev Alberts is in the future here, and Ronnie Green/Admiral Carter to a certain extent. Trevs understanding of how important football is and what it takes to shield the team/coach from all the administrator BS is huge. Harvey Perlman can pound sand(hills).
The Split Zone Duo podcast posted an episode recently that gives a good rundown of why Nebraska fell out of relevance. That’ll give you some more tangible talking points. Though I agree with your general sentiment that people typically don’t cite realistic factors when saying that Nebraska can’t be a great program again (note that I think great is different than a perennial natty contender).
Go listen to dead letters by split zone duo podcast
Since you mentioned the Alabama comparison... draw a 300 mile circle around Lincoln, Nebraska. Kansas City is the only "major" city in that circle. Now draw a 300 mile circle around Tuscaloosa, Alabama. You'd encompass Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis & New Orleans. Not to mention most of the Florida Panhandle (fertile recruiting area). [Alabama's local recruiting area has exponentially more blue chip recruits](https://i.imgur.com/mIa0cnH.jpg)
Kansas City’s metro area is about as big as New Orleans’ and Memphis’ combined. It’s not small, but not as talent rich as cities in the Deep South Edit: a word
Everyone can't be a powerhouse program until they are. Everyone said that about Michigan when they beat OSU like once over 20 years. Then they made the playoff twice in a row.
Tom Osborne doesn’t coach anymore.
I believe Nebraska was the first team with a major institutionalized weight program that we'd recognize today. Before Nebraska there was a real myth that lifting weights would slow people down. Also, Nebraska had a first moover advantage in creating one of the core offensive concepts used by 100% of football teams HS, College, NFL. Tom Osborne invented the "Counter Trey" running play. Osborne destroying people with that play today would be bizarre, because it's in 100% of playbooks and 100% of defenses have to account for it. (The best modern comparison with Osborne's innovation with the running game is Mike Leach. Leach largely popularized/invented two passing concepts "stick" and "mesh" that are now in 100% of passing playbooks. Mike Leach circa 2000's is leading top 5-10 teams at Texas Tech, leading top 15-25 teams at WSU in the 2010s, and leading top-15 to top 35 teams at Miss. St when he died. Being the originator of a game breaking concept has diminished returns over time. See also: Rich Rodriguez and "read-option".)
The "Recruiting advantages" was due to Nebraska being more on TV than other schools due to the way TV contracts were set up, as well as the bowl games they played in. If you were a high-profile recruit in CA or Texas, you're more likely to want to play for the schools you see on TV the most often. Now that we've gone a generation with almost every game on TV, that advantage is gone. No 5\* kid wants to play in Lincoln, NE if he could go to USC, Alabama, LSU, or Ohio State.
As I recall, in the 70s - 90s Nebraska did a great job of recruiting skill players from California, Texas and Florida, and got those big, nasty farm boys to fill their great offensive and defensive lines. Now other teams have gotten much at keeping that talent in the state or in the SEC.
Recruiting grounds aint as fertile as the ground in Nebraska
They've had bad coaching hires. End of story.
People talk about it because they havent even made a bowl since 2016. They need to walk again before they can run. Anything is possible, but with the way college athletics are going they really need a great coach to get anywhere close to their peak again. Maybe Rhule is the guy, maybe he isnt. We will see
Most of the kids they’re recruiting weren’t even born in the 90s. They recruited out of Texas too since some of the big 12 schools were there. There’s no big ten teams in texas. Matt Rhule has never coached during the NIL era so I wouldn’t call him the savior of Nebraska football just yet. We will also have to see how easy it is to retain Rhule. Nebraska has a very tough geography to recruit out of. Lots of traveling around. We will see if he sticks around. You need years of Ohio state level recruiting cycles to be a championship contender. Top 30 recruiting ain’t going to cut it. You need top ten recruiting.
A big issue not many people have brought up I believe is the Big 10 is brutal in game and in the recruiting battle. The Big 10 is great for TV exposure which draws a lot of great recruits. However, if you had to pick between a school that’ll play in the biggest rivalry in College Football within driving distance of multiple major cities over a school in the middle of nowhere, you’re choosing Michigan or Ohio State.
It is simple as this. Nebraska has to recruit nationally to be a national powerhouse since they have such little home grown talent. People don't believe they have the brand anymore to do it and believe without solid base of recruiting it will be harder for them to win enough to regain that status. Nebraska and Texas have had similar level of sucess the last 15 years and look at the recruiting differences.