Shocking Nebraska portal entry is first real roster limit pain

With the House settlement limiting the roster to 105 players starting this fall, Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule has often talked about not relishing the job of cutting down to that number. It’s possible that a Monday departure was the first explicit casualty of not being able to have as many players on the roster as wanted to be there.

On Monday afternoon Huskers kicker Nico Ottomanelli announced he had entered the portal with four years of eligibility remaining. That means the Harrington Park, New Jersey product’s career in Lincoln is really over before it began, considering he redshirted and did not play in 2024.

Nebraska football loses kicker to apparent roster limit squeeze

Two things make this particular portal entry an interesting one for the Nebraska football team. The first is that it stands to reason that in an era of 105-man roster limits, schools will only carry two kickers more often than not. 

For the Huskers that means they’ve now cut down to Tristan Alvano and John Hohl. The other thing of note is that Ottomanelli’s family might have inadvertently confirmed this was more about the Cornhuskers worried about carrying three kickers more than the player wanting to leave.

Not long after Nico announced he was headed to the portal, his mother Michelle issued her own tweet. There’s definitely some reading between the lines here but she seemed to confirm the departure was not because they didn’t want to be part of the program anymore.

“We loved every single second of our time in Lincoln!!” she wrote. We invested in the local community, bought real estate, shopped small businesses. We love our Huskers and will always cherish our time here. The new college football world is wild!”

If buying “real estate” wasn’t enough of a tipoff that leaving was a relatively new option, her comments about the “new college football world” would seem to underline this is a situation that wouldn’t have arisen just a few years ago.

Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule talked about this exact situation with the House vs NCAA settlement and how much he didn’t like that part of it. This is unfortunately, only the beginning.