Rhule Gets Candid

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pretty candid stuff from Mad Rule. Yesterday, Husker football coach
channeled his inner fan during his weekly news conference after
looking at film of the Friday night massacre known as
the Minnesota game. He was mad, used a term that
rhymes with mist says if he were a fan, he'd
boo us too. Nobody escaped blame, not the players, not him,

(00:21):
not his staff. Didn't mention anybody by name, but said
one of his assistants, wandered out loud why Rule was
crowning Minnesota. Couldn't understand why coach fretted about the Gophers.
Rule says, that kind of entitlement mentality is just what
we're trying to get away from. Was not happy with
the play calling or the defensive adjustments. Okay, that's progress,

(00:41):
that's accountability, but if you don't fix it, accountability quickly
morphs into incompetence, and sadly, we've seen plenty of that
in the last twenty five years. One thing Rule didn't
bring up refreshingly was nil funding. He's made a semi
habit of dropping not so subtle hint about where he
thinks Nebraska aka Nebraska's land on the support meter. He's

(01:06):
implied it's not high enough. He needs to stop doing that.
It's off putting and will affect his popularity, and it
isn't true. Here are the numbers, probably not exact, but
close enough. Not counting concessions and merchandise sales, Nebraskans just
for football spend right around seventy five million dollars a

(01:27):
year for tickets and donations to get the tickets. Seventy
five million for seven Saturdays. Not bad. Throw in local
media rights twenty million a year revenue shares from bowl games,
the NCAA Tournament, regular and postseason TV. Just for being
in the Big Ten. Nebraska got two point five million
from the college football playoff concessions. Heck, they're going to

(01:49):
do four million just on beer A football games this year.
Throw in tickets and other stuff for basketball, baseball, volleyball,
and Husker sports rakes in right around one hundred and
seventy five million dollars a year after subtracting expenses like
Matt rules eight point five million dollar salary, Fred Hoiberg's
four million dollar salary, the eleven million for football assistants, scholarships,

(02:11):
chartered air travel, recruiting meals, medical care facilities, management expenses
for non revenue sports, all the administrators and you got
a pretty big enterprise. And even with the twenty point
five million that goes directly to the athletes from the
court cases, the program still cash flows millions. Oh I
almost forgot. We all just chipped in one hundred and

(02:33):
sixty five million to build a state of the art
football training facility. Yeah, we Nebraskans are real tightwads when
it comes to big red. Now, given all of that,
perhaps coach Rules should try a different tactic if he
thinks the ten or fifteen extra million we give and
they spend on players each year leaves us a little
short and compared to the twenty five or thirty extra

(02:56):
million Texas, Ohio, State and LSU spend does But check
out the top ten this week you think Indiana spends
more than we do. Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt Missouri is seventeenth
or second to last in the SEC and nil spending,
but ranked fifteenth in the national polls. Translation, a bigger

(03:19):
player payroll doesn't always equal wins. Truth is, each of
these big spenders has a small cadre of very wealthy,
very passionate fans who write the big checks. In some cases,
it's one guy like Mark Cuban, the tech billionaire and
star of TV's Shark Tank. He's a hoosier last week
told Indiana count on me. At Texas Tech, it's Cody Campbell,

(03:43):
former Red Raider football player, now an oil baron Rule
and his boss, Troy Dannen might very well find the
pot of gold they seek not by public begging, but
personal appointments. Identify ten super huskers, some next door, some
out of state, some in another country. Recruit them like
you do a five star quarterback. Start a club entrance

(04:05):
fee two million a year for the next ten years.
Goal ten members. Make membership special. Create a calendar of
exclusive activities, private plane trips to Scotland for golf, rock concerts, cookouts,
access the super Bowl. The final four of the Masters.
Use your American Express black card on them. Sure, tell

(04:26):
them a value story, but play on ego, leverage, fomo,
fear of missing out. Make it the club of clubs
in Husker Nation. Let's call it Rules Gold with a
motto he who got the gold. Make the rules and
rules life a lot easier.