2025-2026 Portal Updates

BigRedBuster said:
Replace Matt Rhule with Fred Hoiberg in this post three years ago. Now, Fred is looking like a great coach with a program that is a major talk nationally for good reasons. He’s in his seventh year.

What happened over that time? Fred was able and willing to keep working, adjusting, making changes. The last 2.5 years we have started to see the fruits of sticking with him.

Everyone wants a coach to come in and win instantly. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes, that can take longer. The important things:

1) Is the coach willing to make changes?
2) Are good players wanting to play for him?
3) Does he keep improving his staff?
4) Does he represent the program well?
5) Do better coaches still want to come work for him?

To me, Rhule checks all of those. Yes, there were assistants that didn’t work out. Sucks, but oh well. But, he’s willing to make the changes and keep trying.

I’m a firm believer that to often, head coaches are fired way to soon and not given the opportunity to keep building and programs are stuck with huge pay outs and not better results because they are stuck in a never ending circle. (Look at Nebraska football the last 15 years). If used to be the norm that you saw coaches stay at programs for a long time and work through adversity. I think this is where Nebraska needs to be right now.

I don’t have a problem with the extension and how it was written.
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Basketball is much different than football, where it's significantly more difficult to build a winning culture. I'm glad that Hoiberg has turned Nebrasketball into a fun, exciting product. In college football, it's extremely rare for a coach to suddenly turn the ship in 4 years. Rhule is already making pathetic excuses because he realizes the team isn't where it's supposed to be.

But what about the Matt Rhule era tells you he's the guy? Is he good at evaluating talent? Is his game management good? Is he good at player development? The answer to all those questions, so far, is no. Extending a coach that hasn't demonstrated an ability to make progress was a bad idea, particularly when he's not being sought after by other programs. Nobody was coming to steal Matt Rhule from Nebraska, but we're going to torch $25 million when we fire him in two years.

His best attribute as a coach is his willingness to fire coaches he should've never hired in the first place.
 
Dr. Strangelove said:
But what about the Matt Rhule era tells you he's the guy? Is he good at evaluating talent? Is his game management good? Is he good at player development? The answer to all those questions, so far, is no.
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I can definitely see your points. I think MR relies on his coordinators more than some other coaches. Obviously he hasn't found the right combination of players and coaches yet but I am intrigued to see if he can. I personally hope we give it another couple years unless he completely flops.
 
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