Matt Rhule gives first comments as Nebraska head coach on College GameDay

Matt Rhule taking over at Nebraska should have Cornhuskers fans everywhere very excited.

Matt Rhule was only out of a job for a few weeks, as the former Carolina Panthers head coach is coming back to the college game to take over the downtrodden Nebraska Cornhuskers program.

Although it did not work out for him in the NFL, Rhule still carries a great bit of cachet at the college level. The great work he did at Baylor and Temple previously made him an ideal candidate to replace Scott Frost at Nebraska. With his reputation of turning around bad situations very quickly, Rhule can be the one to make Cornhuskers football something worthwhile to invest in.

For Rhule, he remembers fondly the Cornhuskers being a national power under the iconic Tom Osborne. He believes he can be the one to change the program’s fortunes here very soon.

Here is what Rhule said while appearing on ESPN’s College GameDay this Saturday morning.

"“This is Nebraska. This is a team I grew up not just watching, this is a team I grew up revering,” said Rhule on ESPN’s College GameDay."

Nebraska finished its 2022 college football season with a win over rival Iowa to get to 4-8.

Matt Rhule makes his first public comments since taking over at Nebraska

While Rhule grew up in State College and played his college football at Penn State, he is of the generation that remembers what Nebraska used to be in the latter years of the Big Eight and its run of dominance in the Big 12 before departing for the Big Ten a little over a decade ago. The entire sport of college football has changed many times over, but he believes he can win at UNL.

Besides his proven track record of success at Baylor and Temple previously, what serves Rhule in this role is he will have considerably more tradition and financial resources at his disposal than he ever had in Waco or Philadelphia. The dawn of NIL and having essentially college football free agency in the form of the transfer portal can help Rhule rebuild this Nebraska program on the fly.

As it was with Temple and Baylor, Rhule is not going to flip the script at Nebraska in year one. He needed a few years at his two previous college jobs of note. However, Nebraska is one of those jobs where if Rhule gets it humming around the midway point of the decade, he may never have to coach anywhere else again in his life. It is a place where legends can be made. Is Rhule ready for it?

Rhule has plenty of work ahead of him, but Cornhuskers fans can buy into what he is selling them.

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