Enhance

8 hours ago, chamrocck said:

OL is the obvious choice. We need a Deion style reboot, like is there any downside to that?  I think recruits know Rhule has put guys in the league.  But has our OL coach?  We need a tie to the league and ensuring we are putting guys there.  Here is a guy I would look at seriously:

 

https://gohuskies.com/staff-directory/scott-huff/1488

Might depend on the definition or execution of a "reboot." If we're talking a new o-line coach and majority new o-line through portal additions or young guys, the o-line probably isn't getting much better any time soon. IMO it's the hardest position group to develop on a football team because of the high demands on communication and technique. That's not to say you don't make a change necessarily, but I think you just have to be really confident that it's the right thing to do.

Raiola can claim partial credit for six O linemen ND sent to the NFL (he was an offensive grad assistant and o-line assistant coach) but none that he can really solely claim. He went to the NFL after ND and then he's only really been here one full season and I don't think any o-linemen were drafted in '23.

3 hours ago, Fru said:

Raiola: I did not like retaining him. What were the sheer odds that the best possible OL coach that Rhule could find just happened to be the guy that was already here? I wish Rhule had done what Fickell did, and gotten a 30 year veteran OL coach. He didn’t and the OL looks basically the same as last year. My gut says he probably takes a job elsewhere at the end of the season. My concern with Rhule replacing him though is that Rhule tends to hire young coaches with very little experience. Are we better off with a less than inspiring Raiola or a 20something with a thin coaching resume? 

I was kind of 'meh' on his retention. He was considered a really strong up and coming coach in 2021 and I think he was also a finalist for Stanford's o-line. And Mickey Joseph was quoted in 2022 as saying he thought the o-line's problems were more related to depth and recruiting than they were Raiola's coaching. And now Raiola is in year two with an entirely different staff and offense, but the same underwhelming players.

But yeah, so far the unit hasn't gelled super well. They were pretty bad last year. The eye test seems roughly approximate to where they were last year but IDK what the stats will say come season end. That said I'm expecting most of the staff to stay for next season, even Raiola.

3 hours ago, jamesbond said:

Boooooo, on a renovation. The place is just a dump. They literally have porta-potties lining the walkways. Use the 450 million to start building a new stadium that holds around 75,000.

SLEEPER AGENT.

No true Husker fan would ever suggest replacing tradition.

27 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

@Enhancehere is a recent example of why IMO Sean saying 100 people get NIL so NU is fine comment doesn’t mean much for me is  Utah rolling free truck leases (outside of taxes) to 85 kids. 
 

 

Again though, this is all trying to be weighed out in a bubble of uncertainty. The trucks are cool from a marketing perspective but it doesn't necessarily prove anything about the overall money being spent and/or the value players are getting. Unless we're setting the bar at getting a leased truck while on scholarship then yeah, sure, NU apparently doesn't have that. And if that make Utah's NIL better than Nebraska's then that's certainly a perspective someone could have, even if it's based on incomplete information.

I don't really have a dog in the fight on the NIL situation other than I think a lot of people (not saying you, just a lot of people) seem to think something's wrong with it because the production on the field isn't meeting their expectations. IMO that's faulty logic. I think it's fair to question if NIL is being handled appropriately but to turn a question into an indictment is a pretty big leap, particularly when NIL is just a piece of the puzzle.

11 minutes ago, ColoradoHusk said:

I thought that the the current transfer rules (immediate transfer without sitting out a season) started in 2021 or 2022, because that was the same time that NIL started, and I remember the talk about how the combination of the two threw college sports in a loop.  So, while it may have been discussed for a while, it wasn’t in place until Rhule was gone from Baylor. I do think that the new transfer rules, has forced Rhule to adjust his mindset of building a program, in terms of both keeping players and bringing them in as transfers.

You may be right TBH I was going mostly off memory.

6 minutes ago, HANC said:

Serious question that I "should" know the answer to , but don't.   When Rhule was rebuilding Temple, he didn't have to worry about the portal, so kids were willing to "stick" around and develop.  When he was at Baylor, did the portal exist, or is this the first time he is "building" a program while trying to convince kids to not dive into "greener" pastures.  Maybe he built Baylor under the same conditions, I don't know.

If memory serves, the logistics of the transfer portal were set up some time around 2018. Rhule took over as the Panther's HC in 2020. So from a timing perspective he got some taste or experience with it.

2 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

How do we know we are a major player yet also nobody really knows to begin with?  Not trying to pick directly towards you JJ, you just happen to be the latest one to say what others have been saying.  

To be honest, I don't think anybody outside the program really knows much. A lot of the details are not publicly reported.

But, somebody the other day here put the situation into some fair context in my opinion (I can't remember who it was, but if anyone else does, we can tag them for credit) - we have a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests Nebraska is in a strong and competitive position with NIL, and we have virtually no evidence to suggest they're not. "Strong and competitive" can of course be interpreted, but the general narrative has been that there's very little concern of Nebraska being able to compete at a high level from an NIL standpoint.

And then @Mavric shared this the other day which I thought was interesting. Sean Callahan said the following a couple of days ago when someone asked him a snarky NIL question, and Sean probably has more knowledge of the situation than most anyone else who is willing to talk about it.
 

Quote

They have over 100 guys on deals getting paid monthly payments to the current roster, which is in the multi-million dollars. What do you expect it to be? They have 26 kids committed. They lost Brandon Baker to Texas.
 

I don't get posts like this? Literally, this place eats its own. People that have no clue about anything post stuff like this, which no knowledge over something that's supposed to be kept private. NIL and NIL deals aren't public anywhere. I just don't understand the point of these posts are?

So, anecdotal evidence of it being good, virtually no evidence of it being bad. If one were to take a stand either way there is at least some substance to the former. Most of the criticisms or questions I've seen about NIL have been rooted in discontent regarding the production on the field, but I don't think that's necessarily a direct indictment on NIL. Could be bad talent identification, bad coaching, or perhaps even Nebraska's recruitment ceiling is just a bit lower than preferred right now because the program has been in a rut for so long. Money is just part of the equation.

7 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Who?

 

 

If only our NIL was up to snuff.

Even though we'll probably never find out, it would be interesting to know what the NIL breakdown is between all the different possible funding sources (donations and private endorsements) and what kind of traction they're getting with donations in particular. Is it 50/50, 30/70, that kind of a thing.

For example, I imagine Raiola would've been of deep interest to the boosters what with his connections and potential, but I'd be curious how much tolerance the average booster has for getting annual pings to help fund NIL.

This conversation is part of why I think it's important to remember that NIL is just one piece to a very complex puzzle that includes talent identification, the overall recruitment sales pitch, player development, and gameday execution.

One of the narratives around NIL has become this direct suggestion and/or indirect insinuation that 'because the product on the field isn't great, there must be something lacking in NIL.' The abundance of anecdotal evidence available to us suggest raw resources are in a good place, so we can't just negate all the other factors that go into whether or not a recruit will make an impact that meets expectations.

And that's really just part of the recruiting business these days. Back in the day, you'd sell tradition, getting players to the NFL, the fan base, perhaps the student-athlete amenities, the facilities, etc. Now you have to sell all that PLUS get them an Audi and a paycheck. And even then, just like with normal recruiting, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. The dude could still be a bust.

I tend to align philosophically with @Lorewarn in that the foundation should be built upon maximizing the development and process with existing talent, which ideally translates into wins, which helps improve the program's profile, which translates into better recruits, which raises the floor of the process, which translates to more wins, etc. That endless feedback loop.

I don't think the talent Nebraska has brought in during the last 8-10 years is as poor as some of the final end of season results have indicated, so there's been a lot of wasted potential.

And I don't necessarily want to make one recruit into some kind of grand indictment of this challenge, but I do think Raiola is a bit of a microcosm of it. He's the kind of kid you throw the kitchen sink at, and yet, he committed elsewhere. Nebraska is in a better position than most to compete financially, but then you'd have to ask why he'd want to attend a university that has failed to reach .500 much of the last decade. 

It all matters and it's all relevant, of course. It'd just be really nice to know we're maximizing potential of what we have to then say "yeah, we know the process works, but now we just need some players with a higher ceiling to go to the next level."

23 minutes ago, The Maudfather said:

I think it's a fair question and would say that my criticism, at this point, is result oriented. I wish there was some way to quantify. 

 

Nebraska may very well be doing all that they can to attract talent to Lincoln. If the current results are as good as it gets, then Nebraska may just continue to be a bad to middling B1G team. 

 

Hope this staff and program can figure out a way to take recruiting and NIL to a higher level. This team needs talent desperately. 

I agree there probably isn't a good way to quantify it, unfortunately. I don't necessarily know if the current results are as good as they get (I hope they aren't) but I just don't know if the physical resources are the issue. I tend to believe they're not. Recruiting and getting a positive ROI on a player is still a multi-layered challenge, and everybody is trying to do what Nebraska is doing.

Naturally, money has become a big part of the recruiting process, but there are still a number of other things that could cause a recruit to look this way and think "naw, I'm good. Thanks though." And even if they get them here, there isn't exactly a lavish track record of cultivating high performance. So, that's why I've been asking the questions and pushing back a little bit on the mindset of "just open the checkbook" because I think that it unfairly boils the problem down to just one variable. An important variable, but still only one.

I think the concourse area behind the students is going to be part of the same concourse available to south, east and west ticket holders, as part of the 270 degree continuity. I think the "gather and mingle" comment (believe that was in an LJS article) was more due to the fact that students have been split between two sections and never had a good area to really meet up in the stadium. I remember when I was a student too, east student ticket holders could go sit in south, but not vice versa.

Which is really annoying, because I dated a girl in college who didn't get into east, so I sacrificed my seating to go sit with her my senior year. And then I ended up breaking up with her. Never had the chance to enjoy my east side tickets because of her and I definitely still hold it against her. 

CyHawk isn't really worth your time, folks. He's on an involuntary vacation right now and has a documented history of trolling the board.

The reality is that, despite how people like him act or what they might claim, they're still preoccupied by Nebraska football after all these years. The only reason an opposing team's fan would pick fights about the sellout streak on a Husker message board is because they're getting some enjoyment out of it. It's also likely that he's actually jealous/frustrated about the streak, even though it has nothing to do with him.

2 minutes ago, runningblind said:

This is a message board, we talk about stuff.  If everyone was just content all the time about everything none of us would be here.  Can we stop with the complaining about people complaining already?  This is why we are here people.  Not directed at you two specifically.

This sounds an awful lot like a complaint about people complaining. 

39 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I would guess 5 is the max we see come back because a) not many kids want to be in college for 6 years and 2) Rhule can tell them they don't have a scholarship anymore.

This might be a dumb question, but are we expecting Rhule (and other CFB coaches) to yank scholarships from the COVID year players based on things they've said, or is it more that people are hoping/speculating this happens because some of the players haven't met expectations and the program needs more scholarship room?

At the moment, it sounds like there needs to be some fat trimming done anyways to make room for the next recruiting class, but I guess I'm just not very familiar with how a coach might handle scholarship bloating under normal circumstances vs. the situation with all these COVID year players.

Personally I agree with @Mavric: 4-8 vs. 5-7 doesn't do much for me, even if that additional win was against a perceptibly good opponent. Bad teams beat good teams all the time in college football, so if a team is in the 3-5 win area it all feels roughly similar to me.

Because I like charts, this is approximately how many wins would correlate with my football happiness in relation to the current state of Husker football. 1.00 representing an incapability to be any happier. At the moment, 6 wins would be a huge boon.

6 minutes ago, Mavric said:

No.  There isn't anything like that.  People just like to think they have all the answers.

That's what I figured. 

I do like how some people are boiling down talent acquisition and performance expectations into basically how much NIL money we're willing to spend. Screw talent identification, the sales pitch, finalizing the recruitment, installing them into the scheme, development, and then getting them to execute on Saturdays. It's all about them Benjamins dammit. /sarcasm

10 minutes ago, Lorewarn said:

Some of the ignorance comes from the assumption that he hasn't tried to make the adjustments, when there's just as likely a scenario where he has done the work to try and make that progress and can't.

Precisely.

I think it's one thing to arm chair QB coach him and think his mechanics need to change. I don't really have a problem with that. It's another thing to insinuate his current situation is for a lack of coaching and/or attempts to improve him. That's the ignorant/weird part.

Unless, of course, we've got a live stream camera feed into every moment of coaching and development HH has received in the last 3-4 years, in which case my DM's are open for the link. Always looking for new content to consume.

1 hour ago, The Maudfather said:

We need to be more competitive in NIL. We need to take a Texas A&M approach and spend an absurd amount of money to bring in better talent to Lincoln. Whatever we're doing currently, isn't cutting it - not even close. 

 

My point is that we are actively participating in NIL and paying players, but we're paying some mediocre players with poor results. 

 

This program is getting left in the dust.  This program is the laughing stock of college football. 

 

If Nebraska is ever going to find its way back, then it needs to start acting like a big boy program and recruiting at a higher level. Nebraska needs more talent. 

So, I have a genuine NIL question (not trying to be argumentative): does anyone know if we have raw data to analyze Nebraska's NIL efforts, specifically from a financial standpoint? Or, are we hypothesizing their NIL efforts are sub par based on certain players failing to meet fan expectations?

To this point, I haven't yet seen anything related to what I'm curious about, but that doesn't mean it's non-existent. Nebraska's recruiting 100% needs to improve. It has for some time. But, is it more because Nebraska's being stingy with the checkbook, or more to do with the fact this place is a coaching carousel that hasn't done much of substance in 20+ years and has done a poor job of identifying/developing NFL talent of late?

Most people "in the know" about Nebraska's football program continually claim that Nebraska has no real financial limitations when it comes to competing nationally from an NIL standpoint, so obviously there is a disconnect somewhere.

Just now, Mavric said:

We actually only play three games in October.  We have a bye next week.

Dang thanks bro. I didn't realize that.

Just to confirm, are there only three games played in October? Asking for a friend.

Yes, I get it lol. Thank you. There are only three games that actually happen on October dates.

If anybody else would like to point that out for me, may as well let it rip.

7 hours ago, MyBloodIsRed16 said:

Cal Ripken Jr changed his batting stance like 30 times.  Tiger woods changed his swing.  Unless HH has a medical issue that doesn't allow him to move his arm differently then it can be changed. 

They could try to change it, but that's not really the point of the discussion.

We're talking about the risks and difficulties associated with trying to changes a quarterback's mechanics at this level so that it leads to objective improvement. The 'change' is but the vessel for reaching an apparent goal. There is no one saying it can't be done. It's just difficult, and there's plenty of empirical evidence (and experts) to support this perspective. And since none of us have likely been intimately involved with HH's training and development over the last 2-3 years, it's ignorant for any of us to analyze his current status and classify it as "weird." That's a bold proclamation to make, even for being online message board basement dwellers that we are.

(Also, it's not a particularly strong counter-argument to throw out arguably the world's greatest golfer and a hall of fame baseball player. By their very nature, those two guys are exceptions to the general assembly of their respective sports. They're the 1% of the 1%.)

2 hours ago, BoSolich said:

might sound stupid but this feels like a must win game for the short term future of the program. illinois is equally as bad as we are. no reason we can't win. if rhule can't outcoach bielema then he's probably not gonna make it very long here.

I don't think that sounds stupid. This is a pretty big opportunity to show what kind of a team they are after suffering a big loss last weekend and then heading on the road on a short week. A win here could set the foundation for a run at bowl eligibility and injecting the program with a lot of confidence. It's one of those moments where we'll see what kind of a team this really is. Do they bounce back and show heart, or let the mistakes of the past weigh them down?

That said, I'm hesitant to really make this game too much of a statement about the program's overall potential under Rhule. I know it sucks to continually give new coaches time, but IMO it's the only fair and equitable thing to do, and I don't think a loss this week (or even a non-bowl eligibility season) is necessarily an indictment against Rhule's long term viability.

October is traditionally a huge month for any program hoping to put a stamp on its season, and I think this week in particular is going to tell us a lot about this team. They're coming off a drubbing and going on the road against an equitable team on a short week. This is where a team can show its mettle and set a strong foundation for the future.

I'm not going to be too fussed if this month is underwhelming, but it'd be huge for the program's confidence to find a way to win October and go 3-1.