Leadership, Love, and the future of Nebraska Football

It’s not something you expect to hear about during a Nebraska football postgame press conference.

“Do you guys love AG?”

Excuse me. What?

What’s love got to do with it?

A lot, actually.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch this clip of Matt Rhule’s presser after the 20-7 win over Illinois. He appealed to love when talking to the defense after Anthony Grant fumbled in the 4th quarter with four minutes left.

Rhule said: “I got in there with the defense. I said, ‘Hey guys, do you love AG [Anthony Grant]?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, we love AG.’ I said, ‘He needs you guys right now. He just fumbled this football. He needs you guys right now.’ That’s when they told me to get out of the huddle, they got this.”

The Blackshirts stepped up to the occasion.

Nebraska has significant problems to solve on offense. Their third-down defense is still suspect. Special teams are hit-and-miss.

But, dare I say, without love, it won’t matter at all.

As Matt Rhule tries to build a new culture of Nebraska football, he gave us a 15-second window into what it looks like. Notice he didn’t say, “Hey, it’s okay. Go pat AG don’t the back.” No, it’s: “If you love AG, you’ll go out and win this game for AG, for us.”

Love isn’t an idea or a feeling. It’s something you do. 

Typically, you just don’t hear it put this way. We hear coaches say: “Play for the guy next to you.”

It was a stroke of leadership genius on Rhule’s part. Not just to say it on the sideline. But to talk about it in the presser. That is how you build a team, a culture, a program. It’s a fascinating case study for a program that has had a lot of “culture’ talk over the past five years, isn’t it?

Culture. Culture Culture. Okay. So many of us were tired of that talk.

Nebraska football: Show us what it looks like!

This is what it looks like.

Here’s why this is important. Football, more than any other sport, must be complementary. Why? It’s the only sport where the offense and defense is comprised of different people. Make an error in baseball? Okay. Shake it off. You get to come up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with a chance to atone for your own mistake.

Not in football. Make a mistake? Now you watch from the bench. Make three big mistakes? It’s all too tempting for the other side of the ball to complain and blame. It can create silos in a team. An “us vs. them” mentality.

What’s the only antidote to silos? How can a random group of guys become a united team with one mission?

Love.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Love is the greatest force in the universe.” He spoke of things infinitely more important than football, of course. But the power of love is no less significant in sports.

Will “love” refine Xs and Os, recruit top talent, and win championships for Matt Rhule? That remains to be seen. It certainly won’t hurt.

But on one blustery, sleepy Friday night in Champaign, it was enough to secure a victory and lay another critical piece of foundation for the future of Nebraska football.