LINCOLN — Sweat on his face, Matt Rhule worked a downtown lunch crowd like they were recruits.
“I am on a mission for us to be the very best of the best,” the Nebraska coach said. “There are no days off, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, we don’t relax. Every single day our mission is to build something that lasts.”
It was May 10. Nebraska had six commits — less than half of what Iowa had. Two fewer than Wisconsin, which had beaten the Huskers for two prospects in April.
Rhule had no quarterback or running back in his class, just one receiver, and a blocking tight end. The NU era felt, for a second, a little like the latter stages of the Bo Pelini regime.
But Rhule and his staff didn’t relax.
What a difference 50 days can make.
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After a surprise recruiting win Saturday night over Miami for four-star receiver Jacory Barney, the Huskers sit at 23 commits. Christmas in July? Nope. It came early in June!
The meal simmered for months, finally arriving when Husker fans were hungriest for it.
Recruiting doesn’t end July 1; these days, it lasts for years into the development phase. But given the historic haul, it’s worth examining five ingredients that made it happen, including the one commit, in mid-May, that changed the trajectory of the class.
All gas, no brakes, lots of staff and a family touch
Nebraska deploys tons of people and energy to its recruiting operation.
Bill Callahan and his crew worked this hard. Mike Riley and his crew had excellent organization.
Rhule’s approach combines both with more staff at his disposal.
Yeah, NU’s athletic department is paying for it — Rhule wasn’t taking this job with recruiting constraints — but NU blends work behind the scenes with Rhule’s relational vibe.
“You go there, and it’s a family feel,” commit Landen Davidson said. The Broomfield (Colo.) offensive lineman canceled a visit to Colorado after he went to NU.
“I’d always thought I wanted to stay in-state and play at home,” Davidson said. “But when I got home from that official visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nebraska.”
The plan with Carter Nelson revolved around being a part of doing something that his other top schools — Georgia, Notre Dame and Penn State — had already largely done. But Nebraska made sure to have a ton of already-committed prospects in that conversation with Nelson.
At UGA, Nelson, as good as he might be, is effectively a commitable offer. At NU, he plans to be part of the come-up.
“When we were talking, we didn’t have a we-believe mentality at all because we know what we’re going to do,” Nelson said. “They could have been like, ‘We’ll try Nebraska and see how it goes.’ But we were all full into it. We know we’re going to do great things there.”
It takes effort, people, passion and, yes, money, to put together a class-changing breakfast in the Haymarket.
NU got their guy at QB, a commit that looks better by the week
Bellevue West’s Danny Kaelin is a better fit for where Nebraska currently is than Dylan Raiola, the nation’s No. 1 recruit, would have been.
Husker fans would have heaped too much pressure on Raiola, who in turn would have reasonably expected to play right away, even if Jeff Sims stuck around an extra year. At Georgia, a program full of five-star players, Raiola will have a proper ramp to his ultimate goal, the NFL.
At NU, Kaelin doesn’t have to be a magician — or the starter — in 2024. He can grow into a role alongside guys in his class.
But his ability as a peer recruiter and Elite 11 designation gave the Huskers a tentpole commit for 2024.
If Kaelin sticks with Missouri — if Rhule doesn’t handle the Raiola-to-Kaelin dance just so — NU likely isn’t sitting with 23 commits. And it’s possible neither of Kaelin’s teammates, Isaiah McMorris and Dae’vonn Hall, are in the fold, either.
Coaches believed in the power of camps
Nebraska found one of its commits at a satellite camp in Texas (Braylen Prude), one at an Under Armour event in Kansas City (Callen Barta), and several at its own camps (Jake Peters, Quinn Clark, Rex Guthrie, Landen Davidson, Donovan Jones).
Guthrie points to the power of personal evaluation; to say NU coaches were ecstatic at discovering a 6-foot-1, 205-pound, big-school-in-Colorado kid with zero offers might be an understatement.
They trusted their own evaluation
In his book Gridiron Genius, former NFL general manager Michael Lombardi relays a quote from Bill Walsh: “Our job is to find talent, not to dismiss it.”
We don’t know whether Barta, Clark, Guthrie, Jones, Peters and Prude — who each received their first Power Five offers from Nebraska — will pan out as top college players. But they all somewhat magically have three-star grades now, proof that recruiting services not only don’t have enough scouts to see every prospect but apparently respect what Rhule and Co. saw in these guys.
NU coaches evaluated all of them in a camp, went by their own checklists — speed, athleticism, projected potential — and found talent instead of dismissing it.
The top two Big Ten cornerbacks selected in the 2023 NFL Draft were Devon Witherspoon and Deonte Banks. Witherspoon picked Illinois over South Alabama. Banks picked Maryland over Buffalo.
Nebraska doesn’t need every “Big Red Ticket” to pan out to validate the approach. Check back in five years.
Leveraging relationships in long-distance picks
So long as Rhule is at Nebraska, he’ll set up recruiting camp in Texas.
He built his coaching and personnel staff to dig deep in the Lone Star dirt; they’ll get every good prospect tip from Amarillo to Houston.
But NU also did good work in getting Barney to Lincoln. He plays at Miami (Fla.) Palmetto High School, alma mater to Dwight Bootle and Corey Collier, and the former school for fellow 2024 commit Willis McGahee IV.
“We locked in,” Collier wrote on Twitter when Barney announced his top three June 26. He was right.
On with the Rewind.
Volleyball recruiting
The No. 1 volleyball recruit for 2025, Abigail Mullen, has yet to commit to a school.
That’s not necessarily a shock; two years ago, Harper Murray didn’t commit to Nebraska until July 29, 2021. Skyler Pierce, NU’s top-rated commit in the 2024 class, committed June 19, 2022.
Mullen, wherever she goes, is likely to land somewhere in the middle of those two dates.
Remember: Mullen can’t sign for more than a year. Pierce doesn’t sign until this fall. Such is the pressure for elite volleyball players to verbally commit to a school.
In football, elite players at only one position — quarterback — feel a fraction of that push. And remember: Until the NCAA stepped in, high school freshmen were rushing to commit.
How did the balance of power get so lopsided? The NCAA allows volleyball coaches to start calling June 15, but official visits can’t start until Aug. 1. Kids and coaches start talking at midnight June 15. Some start committing to reserve their spots in a limited class.
“So it creates this panic,” NU coach John Cook said on his in-house podcast, Kicking Back With the Cooks. “But they can’t visit. Because a lot of them want to take visits, but they feel pressure so that, if they wait, they’re going to lose out.”
And once coaches miss out on one prospect, Cook said, they will “deadline” another prospect.
“They’ll say ‘hey, you have until 5 o’clock tonight to make a decision, take it or leave it,’” Cook said. “This is a 15-year-old girl, making a huge decision — and still two years away from even getting to college — and they have to deal with that pressure. But coaches are trying to protect their programs. And so it can get pretty ugly fast with some of these recruits.”
Aside from parents and prospects collectively resisting that pressure — not easy! — there’s no easy fix to the problem. You can’t set up official visits by Morse Code, so phone calls naturally precede visits. And, in the case of many Husker commits, they’ve already seen NU as a Dream Team camper. You can’t call a kid on the phone until June 15 before their junior year, but you can host them at a youth camp.
That’s how Caroline Jurevicius made her choice. On Sports Nightly, Jurevicius explained that the pressure of recruiting had caused her face to break out in hives. A friend’s mom noticed the hives clearing up while Jurevicius attended the camp.
“It solidified: This is where I’m supposed to be,” Jurevicius said in an unusually open, direct interview for a true freshman.
Her Dream Team camp roommate? Harper Murray. Jurevicius committed July 16, 2021. Murray did the same two weeks later.
Jurevicius offered blunt advice for recruits going through the process now.
“Do not let anybody push you around,” she said. “Do not let anybody give you a timeline. This is for you. And if they’re treating you like a piece of meat now, what are they gonna do when you get to their program?”
Phil Steele on Nebraska
When we kicked off the Camp Countdown, I suggested Nebraska’s roster alarmed me a bit, given the lack of depth, inexperience and top-end players.
Phil Steele’s four-deep All-Big Ten teams underline that concern.
Not that Steele’s an all-encompassing authority, but he has just two Huskers — cornerback Quinton Newsome and offensive tackle Bryce Benhart — on his third team. Running back Gabe Ervin, receiver Billy Kemp and punter Brian Buschini make his fourth team.
Iowa has 10. Wisconsin has 11.
Steele calls Rhule an “A+” hire. But it could be a few years for Rhule to get the roster where he wants it.