When it comes to recruiting, I have been beating the drum for a while now to not worry about it until we had a head coach in place and December 2nd came our way. I still remember when Malachi Coleman committed in October, and I tried to let people know that the recruiting class and commits were inconsequential until we had a HC in place. Mickey wasn’t even being looked at for the job unless he got us to a bowl game, and it was 50/50 on if he would be retained anyway. I sent this tweet:
I got a ton of backlash for it from a couple people telling me recruiting absolutely mattered and it was dumb to even think that. The point of what I was saying is, it would unprecedented to have a head coaching change and not have decommits and people bolt. It was going to work both ways… recruits weren’t going to still come here if Frost, Mickey, or others weren’t coaching still. Conversely, Rhule may not want some of the guys that are committed like the QB or RB. I just didn’t understand the backlash. But I got backlash for tweeting after Coleman committed to just hang tight, and he has since decommitted, that couldn’t have played out any more like I said it would.
I’ll again go into the message board I was on where I got in an argument with the main moderator who told me “you can’t fire Riley because the recruiting class would blow up.” IT DOES NOT MATTER. This recruiting class starting now begins to matter, but even so, Nebraska football is bigger than one recruit or recruiting class. We are going to have even more decommits, I promise you. But with the transfer portal nowadays, it does not matter. Just relax and enjoy the drama, because Rhule and his staff are the ones getting to deal with it. I promise in the end we will still have a nice core of in-state kids as well as some recruits or two to be very excited about that weren’t even on the previous regimes radar. And to make something clear, i’m not mad or think that Mickey shouldn’t have recruited players while he was interim, he did everything he should have. The inevitable was just going to happen.
The transfer portal
So Malachi Coleman decommits and people lose their mind, then we get this tweet:
I told everyone to relax. It’s funny, you go on social media and people all relate this to the kids not liking the new hire, or anything else they can do to dump gasoline on the fire. I told people this on twitter, and i’ll post it on here:
So let’s take Hausmann for example since he’s the only one I care about keeping. He signs here and he probably got 20k as a non-starter. If he doesn’t put his name in the portal, no team can talk to him, which means he can’t get offers. All of a sudden he puts his name in and Arizona State offers him 75k to come sign with them, he can now go back to Nebraska and ask for at least that much. As I said, it’s almost dumb to NOT do it.
And let me calm the waters even more, look at this tweet:
That is a 7-5 school that is going to a bowl game that is not in a head coaching change having their collective actively get donations just to keep players from going into the portal December 5th (Nebraska players could enter sooner due to a head coaching change). This isn’t a Nebraska issue, a coaching change issue, or anything like that. It’s literally the era of college football we are in now. As I said before when Frost was looking at the portal as a negative, you better figure out a way to make it be a positive for your school, because it isn’t going anywhere. To say it again and drive the point home, that is a school that had a much better season than Nebraska that is going through the exact same thing.
Mickey
Unfortunate situation here, as Rhule and him were supposed to finalize something on Wednesday (whether that was fully staying or leaving) so that they could hit the ground running and recruiting today.
Hopefully things work out for him and his family and he’s able to get past this and on with their lives.
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