Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule certainly has a high opinion of the Big Ten.
The second-year head coach stated at Big Ten media days that he believed four teams from the conference should automatically get into the College Football Playoff because he considers it “the NFL of college football.”
Whether Rhule’s assessment is true or not can certainly be debated, but his grandstanding for a conference in which he won just three games last season didn’t sit right with noted college football analyst Paul Finebaum, who went in on Rhule during an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up.”
“Matt, stay in your lane,” Finebaum said. “Job 1 — win enough games to get to some stupid bowl game. Don’t worry about the big boys because you’re not one of them. We saw what you did in the NFL — you were a complete disaster in Carolina, you somehow got this job in Nebraska, and you’re talking like you belong at the table with Ohio State and Georgia; you don’t. Just try and win maybe six games, quit choking big games on the final play and leave the punditry to the professionals.”
In Rhule’s first season at Nebraska, he led the Cornhuskers to a 5-7 record and he went just 3-6 against Big Ten opponents.
Aside from two 10-win seasons at Temple and one 11-3 season at Baylor back in 2019, Rhule’s coaching resume leaves much to be desired. He has a 52-50 career record and he’s 1-2 in bowl games, which furthers Finebaum’s point that Rhule doesn’t have the skins on the wall to be making such declaratory statements about the CFP.
Nebraska’s schedule only gets harder this season with the addition of UCLA and USC to its slate.