Can you imagine if the latest Nebraska football recruiting rumor was actually true? That Matt Rhule blew the recruitment of Dylan Raiola all over again, because he forget the 5-star quarterback’s name? More importantly, can you believe such a rumor actually exists?
When it comes to recruiting, rumors tend to fly fast and furiously. Rumors about where someone like Dylan Raiola is going to end up and why. Rumors about what recruits are doing on their various trips. And apparently, rumors about how a new Nebraska football head coach ended the recruitment of one of its top targets because of a slip of the tongue.
The rumor started out on a USC message board and appears to have come about because Trojans fans wanted to believe that the top quarterback in the 2024 recruiting class was actually on their campus over the weekend.
When one poster pointed out it was literally impossible that Raiola would be in Los Angeles instead of Lincoln, another user laid out his claim that the Arizona high school prospect had become so enraged by Rhule calling him the wrong name that he completely called off his recruitment and apparently immediately left the Nebraska football program and flew to California.
Very reliable sources have informed MBG that Dylan Raiola will not commit to #Nebraska after Matt Rhule forgot his name on his latest visit. pic.twitter.com/1Tnj15AuhL
— Message Board Geniuses (@BoardGeniuses) March 26, 2023
The only thing weirder than this particular rumor is that there were people who actually believed it.
One Twitter user even claimed that kind of behavior was normal Nebraska football behavior and that unlike the Huskers’ head coach, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz would never forget a recruit’s name. It’s not entirely clear how this particular fan would know either one of those things.
The fact remains that the rumor itself is one of the silliest of the silly season that is the final push for 2024 recruits. Certainly, USC is in the mix for Raiola. But he wasn’t in Los Angeles over the weekend and while I wasn’t there and can’t say it definitively, I’m as confident as a man can be that Matt Rhule did not forget the name of the player he’s spent so much time and attention on.