Nebraska football’s place in national storylines as ‘talking season’ nears

It’s always slowest just before we get in a real hurry-up offense.

In sports, the down time is here, mid-July, where after the end of Wimbledon (Sunday) and the baseball All-Star festivities (Monday and Tuesday), you have the laziest sports day on the calendar this Wednesday. No baseball. No tennis. Golf’s Open Championship doesn’t tee off until Thursday. So, a dead zone.

Unless you consider SEC Media Days a sport. Which, SEC football fans do. And Nebraska football fans can see around the corner to July 24, when Matt Rhule and three players head to Indianapolis for the Big Ten’s annual soiree.

It’s slow now. Get ready to hurry up. A college football season unlike any other awaits. The national narratives alone are thrilling.

* Dramatic conference realignment in the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and ACC has reshaped the sport from five power conferences to four. Oklahoma and Texas, long flexing in a lesser league, try Alabama, Georgia and LSU on for size. The Big Ten becomes a coast-to-coast league with the addition of western brands. The Big 12 may well have the most fun of all in its reshaped conference where no one team is a true blue blood.

* A 12-team College Football Playoff — and all the hurt feelings that may come from the selection process — goes out for its inaugural spin. The event will quickly become a referendum on the leagues themselves — the SEC should get four! No, the Big Ten should! — and the level of interconference posturing and intraconference loyalty will be off the charts.

We may find out quickly how big the gap is between the 11th team and the top team. As it is, the last six CFP title games were decided by 26, 17, 28, 15, 58 and 21. The last two title games were over before the end of the first quarter. But the semifinals in 2022 and 2023 were extremely exciting. Will more games produce similar results?

* The NCAA recently passed rules to allow unlimited on-field coaches, which creates an opportunity for programs to innovate how they arrange their staff. Prediction: The programs that wait and observe will fare best. It is not necessary to be a “first mover” in the coaching staff space for this fall. Better to be a “best mover” come 2025.

* Revenue-sharing rules, and the potential roster limits that come with it, loom for next season, but the discussions will progress through this summer and fall, leaving little time, once the transfer portal opens in early December, to adjust. Here, at least in the immediate window, being a “first mover” — in terms of having a good plan to share with transfers — could be important.

National angles abound — some team in that Big 12 is headed to the CFP, after all — as do local angles. When a sport embraces this “move fast and break things” mode of the tech companies a company/program like Nebraska has to consider its position — and strike accordingly.

Coach Matt Rhule understands that. He’s given an aura of urgency in various interviews, not shying away from a desire to build for the long term while acknowledging a need to get ahead of schedule, too. His programs at Temple and Baylor found their footing in year three. No one around the Osborne Legacy Complex plans for the bowl drought to last past year two.

And as talking season continues, and starts to ramp up for Nebraska, you’re going to hear urgency.

While only 29% of the roster is filled by juniors and seniors, nearly every major contributor is either in his fourth, fifth or sixth year. Many are taking advantage of an extra “COVID” year allowed by the NCAA, and they’re hungry.

“I didn’t feel like I got done what I wanted to get done,” fifth-year senior Isaac Gifford said this spring. He led the Huskers in tackles last season.

Experience like that can really lead and galvanize a team. Consider the 2016 squad with Tommy Armstrong, Jordan Westerkamp, Ross Dzuris and Michael Rose. They banded together and produced a good team under Mike Riley.

Riley turned the team over to the seniors, who delivered repeatedly over the first half of a weak schedule. NU started 7-0 and finished 9-4, winning a crucial non-conference game over Oregon.

A similar scenario could play out in 2024 — but Nebraska may have to rely on a freshman, Dylan Raiola, where the 2016 team had Armstrong, who also enjoyed a strong supporting cast.

That’s one place where my mind goes in a slow week. Where it doesn’t go is “rebuilding year.” Nebraska had that in 2023, when the fan and media’s switch was set more to “curious.” Fans saw what “Rhule ball” was all about — and liked what they saw, particularly on defense.

They’ll expect more over the next five months.