A Blue Dot Project I Can Embrace

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Check with Jip, brought to you by Operation
Blue Dot Red. We're turning the Blue Dot Red one
podcast at a time. This may be the longest podcast
I produce. It is not about politics. It's about something
much more important, Nebraska football. Maybe you thought I was
going to say religion. It is holy weak. This podcast

(00:23):
is about the secular religion of our state. I rationalize
it this way. Head coach Matt Rule recently revealed that
for defense he looks for what he called blue dot players,
defenders most likely to make plays that disrupt the other
team's offense. That is a blue dot project I can embrace,
and of course it's in service to the greater good

(00:45):
of the Big Red. So here we go with the
early spring game in the rearview mirror. It's now an
extra long wait until the twenty twenty sixth season begins.
The weight will be agonizing, but my usual Big Red
coopl a guzzling optimism is tempered. The kool aid is unsweetened,
sugar free. I'm a born and bred fan way too

(01:08):
invested in Nebraska football, as evidence by this podcast. My
only credential as a commentator on this topic is the
same passion most fans have for the Big Red. I
write because the credentialed voices have been too mild in
their assessment of head coach Matt Ruhle and athletic director
Troy Dannen. After the Minnesota game last fall, I wrote

(01:31):
a letter to Danon urging him to use the Penn
State situation to maneuver Rule there and bring Indiana head
football coach Kurt Signetti to Nebraska or fire Rule to
make way for Signetti. Dannon did not reply well, not
to me personally, but he did lash out in the

(01:51):
media at critics of his decision to extend Rules contract
at higher pay. Dannon secured a coach that I doubt
Penn State wanted and who has dramatically underperformed at Nebraska.
Rule was successful in the American Athletic Conference and Big Twelve,
but by any objective measure, he's failing in the Big Ten.

(02:14):
Rule entered the twenty twenty five season as the fifteenth
highest paid coach in college football. He finished his year
three being blasted by twenty seven, twenty four, and twenty
two points by teams that did not make the College
Football Playoff, and the games were not as close as
the scores might indicate, don't blame the injury to Dylan Riola.

(02:37):
Even with Riola at quarterback, Nebraska was underperforming, struggling to
beat Michigan State coach fired Maryland four and eight and
Northwestern seven and six. Nebraska was seven and six thanks
to two wins against overmatched FCS teams, and don't blame
Riola for leaving. He came on board believing Nebraska would

(02:59):
be a college football playoff team ready to contend for
conference and national titles by his third year in the
program this fall, Rule year four. Instead, Nebraska is in
disarray and Royola can't afford another broken leg because of
bad offensive line play. Nebraska had a month to prepare

(03:20):
for its bowl game and looked lost. The offense had
two touchdown drives to open the game, then died. The
defense was dead throughout. Rule's backward Camo ball cap made
it seem even worse. Rule said before the season, if
we're not good, blame me. He said the defensive line
would be hell on wheels. It was hellish for black

(03:43):
shirt fans rather than opponents. Rule said the Minnesota game
would reveal how much Nebraska had improved since losing to
Minnesota in twenty twenty three. It was a degrading loss,
much worse than twenty twenty three, the first of several
dismal performances as Nebraska went two and five over the
final seven games. The all white surrender uniforms with pink

(04:07):
accents added salt to the wound. Are we seeing Bill Callahan?
Two point zero? Great talker, some recruiting splashes, ultimately though
big hat, no cattle, and somewhat delusional. Shortly before he
was fired, Callahan said, I have done an excellent job
in every area. Asked about a reset after the awful

(04:30):
conclusion to the twenty twenty five season, Rule said reset,
what reset? We don't need a reset. There's an odd
sense of complacency from Rule and his staff given the
inferior condition of the program. Offensive coordinator Dana Holgerson was
asked what kind of offense he expected to run next season.

(04:51):
He said he didn't know that. It took until game
six last season to figure out what worked. What I
understand coach saying before spring camp that we have to
work with new players and learn what's possible. But a
coach should be fired for saying, why are you asking me, now,
it took me halfway through last season to figure out

(05:13):
what worked. Holgerson is getting a million bucks to figure
out what works before the season begins in fall camp,
as dozens of other programs do. Imagine a coach at
a top ten program saying, check with me in the
middle of the season. By then, we should know what
we're doing on offense. Meanwhile, Signetti appears to be the

(05:34):
next Urban Meyer. He wins immediately wherever he goes, his
team will know exactly what it's doing in all phases
of the game. When the twenty twenty sixth season opens,
Despite breaking in a new quarterback for the third year
in a row, Rule complained recently about having to resurrect
a program that had been dead for ten years. The

(05:57):
latest excuse from apologists, drawn from the recently released Bill
Moose book, is that Rule has had to overcome problems
going back a decade or more due to institutional dysfunctionality
in the athletic department and in overall and new administrative leadership.
At Indiana, Signetti had nothing on which to build, certainly

(06:20):
not the legacy infrastructure Rule inherited at Nebraska. Indiana won
a Big Ten title in nineteen forty five, a share
of the conference title in nineteen sixty seven, and in
the decades since won a few bowl games, but the
Hoosiers had never won ten games in a season prior
to Signetti. In contrast to Rule, Signetti did not make

(06:42):
excuses for why it would take several years to get good.
He did not spend two seasons losing a half dozen
winnable games. In contrast to Rules disastrous decisions to begin
his Nebraska era by making transfer quarterback Jeff Simms the
franchise player and mark as centerfield offensive coordinator, and retaining

(07:03):
Donovan Rayola as offensive line coach. Signetti in his year
one brought in the right talent, coached it well with
the right staff, and made the College Football Playoff. Along
the way, he destroyed Rule year two Nebraska fifty six
to seven. How on earth was that possible? Rule had

(07:23):
an extra year at a better program. Signetti's Hoosiers made
Nebraska look like FCS roadkill. Apologists for Rules said, Signetti
brought to Indiana most of his coaching staff and a
bunch of players from his previous school, which helped establish
his team culture right away. Okay, but when Indiana and

(07:44):
Nebraska met in Rule year two. Rule had a staff
and corps of players who had been with him for
a year. At Nebraska, the culture should have been at
least equal to Indiana's. What if Indiana Nebraska had played
in twenty twenty five, it would have been another mauling
by Indiana. Rule year three at Nebraska trailed Signetti year

(08:07):
one at Indiana. Never mind Signetti year two. Could Nebraska
have gone into Oregon and won? Nebraska can't even go
into Minnesota and win. Indiana went into Oregon and gave
up a fourth quarter pick six that tied the game
at twenty and put the home Crown in a frenzy.
Yet Indiana went on to win thirty to twenty. We

(08:29):
want that culture and performance at Nebraska. Signetti has an edge,
So did urban meyer Bob Devanny, who's not a candidate
for sainthood. Tom Osburn might be, but as a coach
he was not warm and fuzzy. He had a stoic,
taciturn edge. Uscar Nation would tolerate some edginess in exchange

(08:51):
for championship football. Nebraska would have to set the new
bar in college football and pay Signetti fifteen million dollars
per year, plus bonuses for success beyond the regular season,
and apparently it would cost fifteen million to extricate Signetti
from Indiana. That's not all. The cost of Dannin's contract

(09:11):
enhancement for Rule apparently means paying a fired Rule about
seventy million dollars through twenty thirty three. So in addition
to the one time payment to pri Signetti from Indiana,
the annual cost of securing Signetti would be something like
twenty five million dollars plus per year. Fifteen million for Signetti,

(09:32):
ten million for Rule, and we hope bonuses for Signetti's
conference title and playoff wins. Maybe the Rule payments would
be reduced if he got another coaching job. Still, the
numbers are mind boggling, But how much is it worth
to make the College Football Playoff every year, win the
Big Ten, win a national title. Signetti reached the first

(09:54):
stage in year one. In year two, the recently completed
twenty twenty five season, he won the Big Ten, was
the number one seed and the College Football Playoff, obliterated
powerhouses Alabama in the quarterfinal and Oregon in the semi final,
and then won the national championship. After three years at Nebraska,

(10:15):
Rule is nowhere near any of that. Nebraska spends eighty
four million dollars annually on football, Indiana spends sixty one million.
Rule has built what is, for Nebraska an unprecedented football bureaucracy,
though all the staffers from Texas don't seem to be
bringing difference making Texas talent to Nebraska. Maybe Nebraska should

(10:38):
shed some of that bureaucratic overhead and redirect those dollars
to financing a transition to Signetti. Rule has commented on
Nebraska's meager nil spending compared to top programs. It's hard
to tell from casual research, but Nebraska apparently has been
just under ten million dollars annually compared to thirty million

(10:59):
or more for top programs. Indiana reportedly spent twenty one
million on its title team. That helps explain Indiana's rise,
but does not explain Nebraska struggling to be top fifty
in on the field performance. If it's not possible to
get Signetti, then Dannon should at least put a picture
of Signetti in his office to light a fire under Rule.

(11:23):
Maybe Rule is feeling some heat. He admitted that Signetti
is making the rest of us look bad. Despite his
protestation to the contrary, Rule is resetting his staff and roster.
Nebraska will significantly increase its NIL spending. I hope it works.
I want rule to succeed. I want Big Red football

(11:45):
to be fun again. It's not fun to lose winnable games,
struggle to beat mediocre teams, get boat raced by teams
with bad offenses Penn State and Iowa, and get brutally
outclassed by a Utah team without its head coach and
several of its best players. The romp over Colorado in

(12:05):
Rule year two was supposed to be the foundation of
the Rule era, not its peak. The good news is
that the Indiana phenomenon offers hope. All the nay saying
about Nebraska having had its run that there are too
many obstacles to returning to championship status is garbage. Anything

(12:26):
is possible anywhere with the right coach and approach, especially
in the age of NIL and the transfer portal. Rule
can show he finally has the program where it should
be By beating Indiana next season. I realized that Indiana
will come to Lincoln as the defending national champion. I
don't care Rule has exhausted his grace period. Every day

(12:50):
Nebraska spends looking up at Indiana in football is a
day Rule should fear for his job. Dannon too, that's
check with Chip. I'm Chip Maxwell. Thank you for listening.