Friday afternoon’s UNL press release announcing the University of Nebraska's Board of Regents' unanimous approval for a new Research Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior did not and should not have included a single reference to Nebraska football. But make no mistake. That simple statement reverberates as Nebraska’s newest and most unique influencer for football recruiting, at least in my lifetime.
Don’t just accept my opinion on the athletic benefits of what seems like a purely academic announcement. In our corner is Ross Els, Nebraska’s recruiting coordinator for football. Seven months before the curtain goes up on what will be called CB3, Els has grasped the impact it will have. The result of this historic breakthrough will be the first on-campus, shared academic/athletic research facility in the history of intercollegiate athletics.
We sat down with Els in his second-floor North Stadium office and asked him to help us paint the big picture of Nebraska’s 2013 football recruiting class, and he was more than willing to elaborate on why he thinks the entire East Stadium Expansion Project packs such a game-changing wallop in terms of recruiting.
Please feel free to join our conversation because it begins with an explanation of how that new center already applies to all 24 recruits who have given Nebraska their verbal commitments to sign letters of intent on Tuesday, Feb. 5.
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