By Racking up Recruiting Victories, Nebraska Football Sets Table for Long-Term Success

Brick by brick, the Nebraska football team is building a program. Victories on the recruiting trail keep mounting — at the expense of giants Ohio State and Michigan, among others.

Recruiting is won or lost, year by year. Some years, the kids you pursue buy into your program and what you’re selling. Other years, not so much.

Program building isn’t having one successful and unexpected recruiting year. Football programs are built over time, not overnight.

Top recruiting classes should be a habit, not an outlier. Highly successful programs don’t have a top-10 recruiting class one year and aren’t heard from the following year.

What Nebraska and coach Matt Rhule are showing, with emphasis, is that the Huskers have made immediate recruiting inroads and have laid the runway for future and sustained success. These kids are choosing Nebraska for a reason — or a dozen reasons.

Maybe it’s Huskers’ facilities, or the promise of being part of a team that could put Nebraska back on the college football map, or knowing Rhule has NFL insight and experience. Each kid has his own reasons. But strong and speedy young men and their families are confidently deciding Nebraska is the right place to play, and to grow from teenagers to men.

Gotta win at recruiting

Small victories in the heat and humidity of June, could turn into big victories in the autumn. That’s the theory, and it’s often the practice. Ohio State consistently has one of the top recruiting classes in the country. When the Buckeyes pounce, they often get their guy.

It’s not enough for Nebraska to be in the hunt for these top players and lose out. That’s what 6-6, 5-7 teams do. College football is a cutthroat, bottom-line sport — on the field and in the recruiting trenches. Gotta win some.

Nebraska has landed eight of its 11 commitments in the Class of 2026 in June. Something appears to be happening in Lincoln.

This is how the rebirth of a long-dormant football program begins, you know. Start with foundational recruiting. Of course, there are miles to go to become a consistent, winning program. But without quality athletes, in the Big Ten, the task is almost impossible.

Five of Nebraska’s six losses in 2024 were by one score. Would better athletes have made the difference in those games? In one of those games? We’ll never know, but maybe. It’s not unrealistic to believe so.

Recruiting is the lifeblood of college athletics, some believe just as competitive as the actual football games. Every school needs top-flight athletes. Every school gets some, some more than its share. If Nebraska starts getting more than its share, maybe the Big Ten’s great sleeping giant of a program once again will rise.

When Nebraska fans see the Huskers beating the Buckeyes and Wolverines for these top athletes, there should be a moment for pause and reflection. What does it mean, in the big picture? Is Nebraska football back?

Not yet.

Are the Huskers on the way? Finally? Recruiting victories are a start. More on-the-field victories, and more important victories — maybe even some wins over Iowa — will ultimately determine that.

Nebraska is winning recruiting battles for kids hotly pursued by Ohio State and Michigan. That should tell you plenty.

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