A lot has been made of a renewed feud between Nebraska football and Colorado, but for his part, Matt Rhule doesn’t feel hate for his Buffs counterpart.
Granted, it doesn’t appear as though Rhule is really about fostering “hate.” That alone is quite different from the last couple of coaches. Some might say it’s uncomfortably close to the way that Mike Riley behaved.
However, with Rhule, the lack of hate doesn’t look like softness, the way some people felt it did with Riley. With Rhule, it feels more like he doesn’t exude hate because he’s too confident that he’s going to beat you, to hate you.
That’s why when he recently showered Colorado and Deion Sanders with kind words, it felt more like he felt sortof sorry for the Buffs than anything.
“I’ll be honest with you: I’ve followed it from afar, you know, because they (Colorado) do such a good job of filming everything,” Rhule said on The Herd while speaking with Colin Cowherd. “I think it’s good for football right now.”
It almost feels like that “filming everything” comment was a bit of a backhanded compliment. After all, while Nebraska football and every other school out there does hype videos, CU has gotten quite a a bit of ridiculing for the way they’ve shown their videos.
Nebraska Football coach is honest about what the sport needs
While the filming things comment felt like a sly slight, Rhule does seem to be believe Colorado being good is better for the sport than if they’re bad. Similar to Nebraska football getting back to winning ways.
"“College football can’t just be, like, in the southeast and a couple of schools in the north. It’s got to be what Lincoln (Riley) is doing at USC, what Coach Sanders is doing in Colorado, hopefully what we’re doing in the middle of the country. Like, this has to be a nationwide thing. You can tell that Deion and his staff – they’re going to recruit relentlessly and they’re gonna have their team ready to play.”"
The Nebraska football head coach isn’t wrong. It’s still an interesting twist to see the Huskers head man talking positively about Coach Prime. After all, Sanders is fostering hatred of the Cornhuskers in a way that hasn’t been done since the two teams were both in the Big 12.
That includes not allowing the color red around Boulder.
It appears that Rhule will leave hating Colorado up to the Nebraska football faithful. And that’s fine. I’ll hate them enough for both of us.