Will He Stay or Will He Go?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All it took to take the joy out of a
nice win on Saturday, a come from behind delight that
included a last minute touchdown drive, is to have the
head coach at our coaches alma mater get fired, which
instantly ginned up all of the old insecurities, fears, frights,
and trepidations about losing our coach to somebody else, reminding

(00:23):
the world how hard it is to sometimes be a husker. Somewhere,
there's a curse that we missed, a missus O'Leary's cow,
a pig that got loose in somebody's garden, if there
is one, It was always there. But Bob Devanny and
Tom Osborne were so good and the Big eight was
so bad it never had a chance to pop up.

(00:44):
Then Tom made good on a promise we stopped hiring
good chancellors and athletic directors, which means we fired good coaches,
hired bad ones, bypassed really good ones, and started losing,
perfect conditions for a curse and a terminal care of
the blues. Then, in a bit of good timing, we
land coach turnaround. Matt Ruhle, a great salesman with a

(01:08):
stubborn resume as head coach of Temple, his owls finally
started to win, took over the EPA superfund site that
was Baylor football after Art Briles and his despots treated
female classmates like amusement parks. One there flunked in the NFL,
but most do. He was available, and for nearly one

(01:30):
hundred million dollars in salary and buyouts, we got him
so far, thirty two games in Lincoln, seventeen wins, fifteen losses,
Still waiting on a w over our ranked team. But hey,
we may be battling paranormal forces and the transfer portal here,
Baby steps, folks, baby steps. No arguing the trend is positive.

(01:52):
It ate Indiana, but who is then? Penn State hauls
off and fires James Franklin. Six games removed from a
playoff appearance and a number two national ranking. Three straight
losses is rough, and we can relate. But to run
Franklin and write a goodbye check for forty nine million
means the MRI on that program must be pretty bad.

(02:15):
They have an opening and just our luck. Our guy
is a Penn State guy. Walk On played linebacker there, graduated.
His wife is a Penn State gal. Still has family there,
friends galore. Rule was hired at Temple for his first
head coaching position by a guy named Pat Kraft, who
It's tough being us is now the athletic director at

(02:39):
Penn State. The two are close. They have publicly spoken
highly of each other. They own property together. Rule helped
Craft get the Penn State job. To suggest the two
don't speak often bounce off of each other's challenges would
be to ignore the human condition. They have a rarity
in today's sports ecosystem, a mutual trust. Anymore, ads don't

(03:03):
trust coaches and vice versa. We saw it here with
the departure of Trev Roberts and university president Ted Carter.
Seemingly moments after they yelped a loyalty along with big
pay raises. Jim Schlosnagel, Texas A and M baseball coach
publicly declares his fidelity to the Aggies all of twenty
four hours before he takes the job at Texas. A

(03:26):
Craft Rule marriage would be built to last, so is
Rule gone. The buyout if he leaves voluntarily is relatively light,
five million paid to unl If Rule were to be fired,
it's forty nine million to him. Now, why didn't Nebraska
negotiate a bigger number when Rule was hired? A fair
but irrelevant question this morning, See what he says at

(03:48):
is weekly news conference today. If he issues an emphatic
I'm not leaving with no squishy words, that's it. But
if he does a verbal ropodope, the issue will hang
over the rest of the Husker season, which would be regrettable.
Just know, this move won't be about money or terms,
or security or even Nebraska. It'll be about emotion and trust,

(04:12):
powerful forces inside each of us.