May and June visits ramp up in full force

We set the stage for what will be a very busy May and June visit season for Nebraska and more in the Rundown column.

You have to feel pretty good about these things right now:

A visit-filled May and June: Alabama safety Kain Williams is expected to visit Nebraska this weekend. His Crimson Tide teammate, defensive lineman Stephon Wynn, also is expected to visit.

This will set the stage for what is going to be a very busy May and June of official and unofficial visitors making their way to campus.

The following weekend on May 22, Kansas City standouts Jaidyn Doss and Cayden Green will take official visits to Lincoln. Bill Busch has done an outstanding job getting in the door with both of these players.

Wisconsin will be picked to win the West: CBS released their updated post-spring football poll this week. Wisconsin was the only team in the Big Ten West ranked at No. 19.

USA Today had the Badgers No. 15 and Iowa No. 11 from the West in their post-spring poll. The bottom line is the West appears to be a crapshoot heading into 2022, but Wisconsin still seems like the safe pick over Iowa at this point.

A memorable Saturday in Memorial Stadium: It’s going to be a beautiful spring day on Saturday when UNL holds its spring commencement ceremony inside Memorial Stadium.

It will also be the first event held on NU’s brand new field turf that went in this spring. Congratulations to all of the graduates who will take part in Saturday’s ceremony. I love the idea of being able to have the commencement ceremony inside the stadium in the spring.

These were my surprises of the week:

No offensive line names have emerged yet: We know Nebraska is in the market for a potential offensive line body in the transfer portal. The problem is nobody has emerged at this point.

We are also learning that, at this stage of the game, the transfer portal has very limited options. Ochaun Mathis-type players are few and far between, and the competition to get them is very difficult. Will any offensive line names emerge as visitors later this month?

Demariyon Houston to Missouri: The transfer portal has offered a fresh start for a lot of players.

When wide receiver Demariyon Houston came to Nebraska out of high school, he looked like a potential “can’t-miss” guy. Things never took off for Houston, and he could not crack into the rotation in 2019 and 2020 when Nebraska had some of its most inconsistent play at wide receiver in years.

Houston left Nebraska and played the 2021 season at Hutchinson (Kan.) C.C. He committed to Missouri this past week. If Houston is able to go into Columbia and be an impactful player, it will really make you wonder about the development he received at Nebraska.

Questions still surround these things:

Big Ten schedules for 2023 and beyond: We still don’t have any idea on what direction the Big Ten may go with future schedules.

There are a lot of thoughts out there regarding nine league games vs. eight and the elimination of divisions.

The debate remains whether it is more important to have a schedule built around geography or one that changes things up and potentially helps the Big Ten get an extra team in an expanded playoff each year? If divisions are blown up, Penn State probably comes out of this the big winner.

Set transfer portal windows: Just how soon might we see the NCAA introduce set transfer portal windows after the regular season and spring football?

I think everyone agrees this makes the most sense, as otherwise, the portal is never going to stop. It’s gotten to the point where coaches and support staffs spend as much time evaluating the transfer portal as they do traditional recruits.

Moving forward, this has my attention:

NIL enforcement:

The NCAA and the Power Five athletic directors want to see more enforcement on NIL – particularly collectives.What exactly does that mean?

The bottom line is you’d better be operating by the book. I can tell you everything Nebraska does with their primary collective, ABM, is reported on the OpenDorse App, which also processes payments and requires a proof of performance picture to be uploaded for record-keeping purposes.

From there, that information is shared with NU’s Compliance Department. If the NCAA has any questions, everything is right there to review.

The biggest thing is every collective and athlete should be operating like this. There are too many stories of under-the-table payments going on around the country. My prediction is you are going to see recruits have recording devices on them and all it’s going to take is one tape to get a school/collective in a lot of trouble.

Soonervision moves over to ESPN+: We’ve seen a lot of different multimedia rights moves in college athletics in the last few years, but Oklahoma taking all of its in-house productions from Soonervision to ESPN+ is certainly notable. Over 100 different OU games will now be bundled into a standard ESPN+ subscription through Soonervision.

BTN+ remains a good concept, but the quality of the production continues to be the biggest issue. We’ve seen games look like ESPN quality and others look like they are being captured on an iPad with no announcers.

25-man scholarship limit: One of the biggest things that came out of the conference meetings this past week was that we should see the end of the 25-man scholarship limit very soon.

No longer will a school have to play the countback numbers game to sign bigger classes or creatively make guys walk on for a year.

Fremont Bergan’s Kade McIntyre: I’ve been a fan of Fremont Bergan’s Kade McIntyre since seeing him live in the Class C-2 state championship game. This past week he picked up his second Power Five offer from Minnesota. Kansas State also offered him several weeks ago.

Will McIntryre play his way into a Nebraska offer? Most project him as an outside linebacker on defense, but he has the ability to play multiple positions. If the Huskers want to get involved, they may have to make a decision here sooner rather than later.

Sean Callahan can be reached at sean@huskeronline.com and he can be heard each day at 6:45 am and 5:05 pm on Big Red Radio 1110 KFAB in Omaha during the football season. He can also be seen on KETV Channel 7 in Omaha during the fall and each week he appears on Nebraska Public Media’s Big Red Wrap-Tuesday’s at 7 pm.