Most Nebraska football fans hope that the Huskers will go after a portal quarterback this winter, but head coach Matt Rhule threw some cold water down.
Ask any Nebraska football fan what they think the team’s top priority is this winter and they’ll almost all come back with the same answer:
After watching Jeff Sims, Heinrich Haarberg and Chubba Purdy become the three-headed monster of rampant turnovers, Husker faithful are ready to try someone else. Anyone else.
As long as that anyone was a successful quarterback elsewhere first. Daniel Kaelin seems to almost be an afterthought at this point. Some of that is because he’ll be a true freshman. Some of it is because the expectations next year are for a veteran presence to come into Memorial Stadium and offer top-of-the-line quarterback play.
Then Matt Rhule strode into the same room where he’s given his press conferences all year on Wednesday afternoon and threw a bucket of cold water on the hopes of landing one of the best transfer quarterback targets out there.
"“A good QB in the portal costs $1 million, $1.5, $2 million”"
It’s a reality that most Nebraska football fans understand. The transfer portal era of college sports is also the NIL era. Money talks. It determines where a player walks. It’s why the Huskers don’t appear to be players for top targets like Will Howard.
Well, that and the seven straight seasons without a bowl game.
Nebraska football’s NIL money is the million-dollar question
It’s worth pointing out that Rhule didn’t say the Cornhuskers absolutely wouldn’t spend that kind of money. Of course he can’t say whether they will or won’t. It’s one of the few strict rules around NIL.
What he did seem to be doing was sending out a flare to NIL organizations like the 1890 Iniative.
“We need money, poney up.”
Rhule and his fellow Nebraska football coaches have already shown they can recruit. They’ll go after a quarterback or two they think can take NU to the next level. But in the end, they can’t go somewhere like Matthew Sluka’s living room without the promise of a fat stack of cash.
That’s just the way it is. The Nebraska football head coach wants everyone to know he understands the reality of the situation. And he wants everyone around the program to understand it as well.