'I Don't See Any Reason to Think That We Won't See More Improvement': ESPN's Bill Connelly Talks Nebraska Football

Below is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation about Nebraska.

Josh: It's been so fun as I've been doing a lot of research this off-season about Matt Rhule and year threes. I went back and I read your 2015 preview of Temple on SB Nation. I read the 2019 Big 12 preview, of course, focusing on Baylor. Trying to figure out returning production; all sorts of things. It's a completely different sport now compared to what he was able to do at both of those stops in terms of keeping your players for many, many years. I imagine that you're as interested in this as a lot of us are around here.

If they are going to have that season that people have been hoping for, why does it happen? And if they're not, why does it happen in your mind?

Bill: What he proved in his previous stops was he's one of the best just pure culture builders in the sport. And he will take his time. His first year at Temple and his first year at Baylor were both atrocious because he just wasn't going to take shortcuts. Now you only have shortcuts. So it's definitely different. Just in terms of “how do you build a culture?”

I've always defined culture – it comes from when I went up to Boise State; I wrote a piece about them and just talked to all the guys who were in the building during that rise from the previous decade or so – and I started to realize like culture is basically when your upperclassmen are acting like coaches when the coaches aren't around. Like somebody at all times of every single day is upholding the standard and reinforcing the standard to the young guys who then move through the system and become the old guys who are upholding the standard for everybody else. And that's just how you know; when the coaches don't even have to be around for that bar to be so high.

Think of even back to the U when they were talking about, you know, in Miami when the voluntary summer workouts that were led by the seniors were even harder than the practices when the coaches were involved. Like that's how you raise a bar and keep a bar high. How does that happen when you have like three fifth-year or seniors or whatever? So it's definitely different. And I've been really curious about how the really good culture guys handle that.

I mean, what we saw last year was kind of a typical Matt Rhule second year, right? The first year was results don't matter. We're just going to lay down some building blocks, and then we're going to get better in the second year. And then we're going to get a lot better in the third year. So they've still followed that. And on paper, you know, the improvement wasn't dramatic, but it was from 66th to 47th and SP+; first time in the top 50, incredibly, since 2016. Like, that's never going to make any sense to me at all that Nebraska was outside of the top 50 for that long. But you could squint and kind of see what you were looking for in terms of a Matt Rhule second year.

I don't think you can build the culture in the same way that you used to when so many guys are just trying to remember the combination to the building. But it is definitely following some sort of path here, and we'll see exactly. I don't think coordinator changes are all that scary. We'll see about defense. Tony White certainly had two really, really good defenses. And if that falls off and the offense suddenly starts to have to improve very quickly, which kind of did under Dana. My concerns have been dismissed a couple of times on social [media] by Nebraska. And it's like, “Oh no, we got Dana now. It's fine. We're good!” Like, he's not the most finger on the pulse coach in college football in 2025, but it got at least a little better late. I don't think we're gonna see a leap into the top ten or anything, but I don't see any reason to think that we won't see more improvement.

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