Nebraska Football: No, the Huskers are not responsible for Matt Rhule’s Carolina Panthers lawsuit
A rather odd argument sparked up around Nebraska football earlier this week.
One particular columnist apparently felt as though the Huskers’ “penny pinching” forced Matt Rhule to sue his former employer for money he was owed. Not only did the argument seem to be written by the owner of the Carolina Panthers, but it seemed to misunderstand just how severance pay works. Perhaps the weirdest part of all claiming paying Matt Rhule more than $8 million a year was “lowballing” him simply because the contract was backloaded a bit.
The argument boils down to this: Did Trev Alberts “penny pinch” by structuring the new Nebraska football head coach’s contract the way he did? Was he being “unfriendly” by trying to force Carolina’s hand and actually pay the money they had agreed to pay him after they fired him five games into the 2022 NFL season?
I suppose it comes down to whether you think it was the responsibility of Trev Alberts and company to help Carolina. Jon Johnston over at Corn Nation apparently thinks it was.
I disagree. And just because Matt Rhule filed a lawsuit for the rest of the money he is owed by Carolina doesn’t not mean that Rhule thinks it was Nebraska’s responsibility either. One could in fact, leap to judgment that the fact that he took the job means that he felt the deal was more than fair.
Much like the man that Nebraska football fired in order to make room for Rhule, the former Temple and Baylor head coach could have sat this season out and simply earned tens of millions of dollars. As of now, that’s what it looks like Scott Frost is going to do.
While we can argue about whether or not the Nebraska football program should have structured Rhule’s contract differently or not, this particular part of the recent editorial stands out to me as the oddest of all.
"For a program looking to repair its image in the college football world after 20 years of coaching carousels and terrible administrative decisions, it is yet another moment of self-flagellation because the North Stadium offices can’t get out of their own way."
It doesn’t appear as though many people beyond Johnston really tagged the Cornhuskers as the problem here. So the idea that the Nebraska football program can’t get out of its own way by structuring a contract that makes the most sense for them is an extremely odd take.