Home Away From Home: How New Huskers are Finding Family in Lincoln

New Nebraska punter Archie Wilson is proof of that. On Tuesday, he was asked about being away from everything he knew for the first time, and as you can see from the video above, emotions got the best of him. His heart and certainly his mind, at times, are still back home with his siblings and parents in Australia.

However, both of his feet and his ability to be a switch punter and kick "banana balls" are very much so right in the middle of Lincoln. (What the heck is a banana ball?)

Wilson undoubtedly is missing out on his family's home cooking, his closest friends, and his favorite hangout spots in Australia, but like every kid who leaves home for college, he's also forging his next chapter in life—and a new family to live it with.

For Wilson and several other first-year Huskers, that family is taking shape faster than anyone could have expected. While Wilson may have the coolest accent on the team and apparently an impressive rendition of "Piano Man," he's certainly not an outlier when it comes to being a new face on campus that is still trying to learn the ropes during his first-ever season with the Huskers.

In the transfer portal alone, Nebraska added offensive linemen Elijah Pritchett from Alabama and Rocco Spindler from Notre Dame. NU also picked up the services of wide receivers Dane Key (Kentucky) and Nyziah Hunter (Cal) and defensive standouts Maques Watson-Trent (Georgia Southern) and Andrew Marshall (Idaho).

There are more, but those are the ones expected to be making an immediate impact on Saturdays this fall. For decades, Nebraska prided itself on its walk-on program and the homegrown Huskers that would come from small-town Nebraska to become household names nationwide by the end of their careers. Now, thanks to NIL and the transfer portal, that's all changed for not only the players, but even the coaches at times.

"You know what's so hard about college football today—guys, the veterans in our secondary, did you know they're on their fourth DB coach?" Nebraska associate head coach Phil Snow said. "That's college football now. Players are leaving, and so are coaches."

Now more than ever, teams are seeing players jump ship year after year, but teams are adapting. At Nebraska, head coach Matt Rhule and his staff watched star running back Emmett Johnson enter the transfer portal only to return to Nebraska in relatively quick fashion. Instead of losing players to the portal, Nebraska is bringing them in. For at least a handful of them this year, expectations are high.

However, it's that shared experience that is ironically having the same effect all those Husker teams of the 1990s and early 2000s had. The team is unifying from the fact that they all have similar stories, but instead of being from small, rural parts of Nebraska where the kids were raised on a trough of corn and a good Nebraskan upbringing, the players are bonding from the fact that they truly are from all over the world.

Some stays will be longer than others. Star sophomore quarterback Dylan Raiola has three more years of eligibility after his up-and-down freshman campaign in Lincoln. Husker fans can only hope he stays for all three instead of declaring for the NFL Draft early. For others like Watson-Trent, it's a 6th-year senior campaign with one last "go" in college being the primary focus.

Whatever the path is that brought them to Lincoln, it's their different stories of how they got here that are bringing them closer together. In the case of new Nebraska receiver Dane Key, the Kentucky transfer said he's already landed a pretty cool roommate—Raiola.

"He's my brother at the end of the day," Key said. "He wants what's best for me. I want what's best for him. If I'm not doing what I need to do, he's the first one to check me."

As for how the two became roommates?

"It was kind of just mutual," Key said. "I live a ways away, he lives way closer, so I was like 'yo, let's just do it,' and he was like 'why haven't you done it already.'"

Of course, not all of the new faces are becoming roommates, but it's small events like being able to sing "Piano Man" in front of the team that are slowly bringing this team together, and it's made the transition from one norm to the next a lot easier for players like new place-kicker Kyle Cunanan.

"Me and Archie Wilson arrived on campus within days of each other," Cunanan said. "We got pretty close pretty quick because we were kind of the only two we knew, so (he) and I definitely bonded over that."

It's that off-the-field camaraderie the Husker coaching staff hopes will turn into on-field success by its opening kickoff against Cincinnati on August 28.

Ironically, that first game will be on the road for a team that followed so many different roads to end up at Nebraska. However, if we've learned anything through the first few weeks of fall camp, "home" for this year's Nebraska football team won't necessarily be at Memorial Stadium or even Lincoln in general, and it certainly won't be "where the heart is."

Instead, it'll be in the Nebraska locker room, where new family ties are getting sewn tighter by the day.