Steven Sipple: Rhule’s emphasis on academics during recruiting visits feels refreshing; and Bolt’s players practice what he preaches
Things I know, and things I think I know: You know how it goes these days in college football. June is a critical month for official campus visits by recruits, and Nebraska coach Matt Rhule is incorporating into NU’s visits something you seldom hear about anymore in college athletics.
Nebraska is emphasizing the academic component.
Academics? Well, I’ll be darned.
“The official visit weekends are super fun,” said Avery Gossett, NU football’s first-year director of recruiting operations. “It’s a lot of food and spending time with everyone here on campus and our staff.
“Something that coach Rhule has really instilled in our program and what we do — and especially into the recruiting side of things — is academics. So, something I’ve been trying to integrate into our official visits is getting these prospective student-athletes with their certain college of interests and having meetings with them.”
Holy cow. I thought everything in college football was about dinero and pretty much only dinero. Academics? Seriously? Players just want the bag of money, or so I thought. Everybody just wants the bag of money. It seems all anyone talks about is money.
It’s TV money. Money for players. Money for stadium improvements. Big money for coaches. Big money for contract buyouts. On and on.
Big money is big power. The SEC and Big Ten are prime examples.
Money, money, money.
Academics? Is this Rhule guy serious?
Yes, he’s serious, and it feels refreshing to me.
“It’s been really fun to try to work with different colleges here on campus to try to make our visits stand out a little bit more,” said Gossett, who heads up the campus visits.
“As we all know, they’re here to be student-athletes,” she said.
I have to remind myself of that sometimes.
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𝗞𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝟮 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 9.7Memorial Stadium 6:30 PM CDT @NBCSports #GBR x #WhatsNExt! pic.twitter.com/9bxGrOm8Pl— Nebraska Football (@HuskerFootball) May 13, 2024
Rhule’s creativity comes in handy
So, with recent shifts in the college football recruiting calendar, can Nebraska still try to highlight its excellent game-day experience in campus visits? Even in June?
The answer is yes — to a certain extent, anyway.
This is where Rhule’s creative mind comes in handy.
“Coach Rhule has many ideas that are really beneficial to recruiting and the recruiting side of things,” Gossett said. “So, one of the things that we’ve started doing is we always do a Big Red Welcome in East Stadium and have the staff there. So, the prospects see the original Memorial Stadium walls.
“Then, we walk them out on the field and have our creative team — you know, everybody sees the stuff out there (on social media). It’s top notch. So, we have those videos playing that show what a game day is really like here.
“I mean, you walk into Memorial Stadium in June and it’s empty, and you envision it packed — it’s pretty breathtaking to a lot of these families and recruits.”
I haven’t missed a home game in 25-plus years, and the Old Gray Lady can still be breathtaking to me during autumn Saturdays.
It was sort of breathtaking to me years ago when I was running the stadium steps on a blazing hot summer Sunday — and it got really interesting when guards locked up the place. That’s right, I was locked in the stadium. Had to climb a high fence in the southwest corner to get out.
That took my breath away, literally.
Just what is a walk-through room?
Tip of the cap to Sam McKewon of the Omaha World-Herald for his excellent question during the media’s recent session with Gossett and other key Nebraska recruiting staff members.
Just what is a walk-through room? I mean, we hear about it as a key part of Nebraska’s sparkling new training facility — and, as Sam pointed out, we act like we know what it is — but what is it, really?
“Just imagine a big room where when you get done meeting with your players, if you’re a position coach, you can literally walk across a hallway into a full-size space — scale of 1-to-1 — and you can walk through what you just did on film,” said Vince Guinta, Nebraska’s senior director of recruiting and player personnel.
“So, you have the ability to do things really quickly and really maximize and be efficient with your time,” he added. “I think when you walk in that room and you realize that there’s a video screen that’s as wide as a football field, and it’s bigger than life …”
At that point, Guinta seamlessly invoked the movie “Step Brothers” into the conversation.
“There’s so much room for activities in there,” he said with a smile.
Perfect.
Game one vs. Florida will be Friday at 2:00pm CT on ESPN+.Tickets for the Stillwater regional will go on sale Wednesday morning at 10:00am CT. https://t.co/bSNSqrKPdK— Nebraska Baseball (@HuskerBaseball) May 27, 2024
NU baseball shows the toughness Bolt wanted
This past January, with Nebraska’s baseball team about three weeks from its season opener, Husker fifth-year coach Will Bolt said something that raised my eyebrows.
I was at a Perkins Restaurant in Lincoln, out near I-80, when I read it. I remember because his comments made that much of an impression on me.
“We’re always going to try to be the toughest team in the country,” Bolt said.
Toughest team in the country? That could mean a lot of different things. But to me, it’s mainly about mental toughness. It’s about being resilient. My heavens, isn’t that what life’s basically about?
Well, Nebraska just won five straight elimination games — talk about resilience — to capture the Big Ten Tournament in Omaha, its first championship in a conference postseason event since 2005 in the Big 12.
Yeah, it had been that long.
Bolt certainly does a have a tough and resilient team. That’s been evident all season, really, but it was more evident than ever during this season’s Big Ten Tournament in Omaha.
Nebraska, now 39-20, seems dangerous heading into the Stillwater Regional.
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The post Steven Sipple: Rhule’s emphasis on academics during recruiting visits feels refreshing; and Bolt’s players practice what he preaches appeared first on On3.
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