Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule took the podium at Big Ten Media Days and did what he usually does well: talks a big talk but wanders around aimlessly. The line that most fans are taking out and running with is when he said, "We didn't come to Nebraska to go 7-6." Opposing fanbases love that because that seems to be Nebraska's ceiling. That wasn't the one that stood out the most, though; it was at the very end of the press conference when he was asked a challenging question, and then he fumbled the answer.
He tried to rewrite Wisconsin vs. Nebraska history and missed wildly. Wisconsin fans can't let him off the hook for how he tried to drag the Badger name into his mouth, rewrite the narrative, and then ride off into the sunset.
The question was: "Finishing stronger down the stretch, being 2-10 in on-the-road games as Nebraska's head coach, what kind of changes have you made for your team to prepare down the stretch?"
Matt Rhule found a way to blunder a question about road woes in a variety of ways
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Rhule's answer was insane. He starts with "I think sometimes we always think we have to change something." Well, when you are 2-10 on the road, you probably should change something. That's a big enough example of being terrible at a specific thing to maybe pivot. He then decided to use an example that made zero sense in multiple ways.
"To me, you win in November by being the better football team." Rhule said, "So two years ago we beat Wisconsin for the first time in 12 years in November to be bowl-eligible. On that day, we were just the better football team."
Pause. Woah. What?! Is Rhule living in some alternate reality? Let's start with the most obvious and blatant revisionist history... that game was in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was asked about improving the Cornhuskers on the road and answered using a home game. You can't make this stuff up. The year was 2024, and it's true, the first time in 12 years that Nebraska had beaten Wisconsin. And get this: Rhule, after the game, said, "This will be the last time we ever celebrate six wins.”
Ok let's dig into Rhule's revision a little deeper. He also said that Nebraska was the better football team. It's a good thing he said, "On that day." Because that part is actually true. The Cornhuskers won 44-25, and Wisconsin's Ben Barton said this after the game: "We played really well against the No. 1 team in the country, and then we come out today — and I'm not saying Nebraska is not a good program, but they're not No. 1 in the country — and we gave up three times the points to Nebraska. This is on our defense today.”
This isn't to give an excuse to Wisconsin. The Badgers were terrible in that game against Nebraska, but Rhule has so few examples of success at Nebraska that he has to point to a flailing Wisconsin team as his crown jewel.
Wisconsin was awful, beatup, and had just fired Phil Longo before the game
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But maybe what Rhule doesn't remember is that the Badgers were banged up that game. Tyler Van Dyke, the original starter for the season, was done for the year; Braeden Locke was the stand-in, and by that point, it was normal. But Will Pauling was injured and didn't play versus Nebraska, and neither did star safety Hunter Wohler (which explains a ton why the defense was so putrid for Wisconsin against Nebraska). Luke Fickell also, the week leading up to the Nebraska game, fired Phil Longo. It was a messy week for the Badgers.
Matt Rhule didn't quit there; while he stopped talking about Wisconsin, he went on to explain how his team is older now and more experienced, and they just have to play better. His closing reply to this question about his road record was, "I don't think it's necessarily something different. It's just doing what we do better than we did it before."
It was a wild answer from Rhule, but one in which he should have left Wisconsin out of his mouth because he was blatantly wrong in multiple ways. What a goof.
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