Matt Rhule evaluates how competitive Nebraska is in transfer portal

The 2024 season ended in a bowl game for the Nebraska Cornhuskers for the first time since 2016. That’s not good enough for head coach Matt Rhule, though, and now he’s looking at building the program to take another step forward.

Recruiting and building the roster through the Transfer Portal is a major aspect of the next step forward for Nebraska. Importantly, Rhule sees the program getting more competitive in those spaces.

“I think anybody we lost to when it was straight up — so the world we’re living in now if I offer you [pointing] $50 and I offer you $500, you’re probably gonna go there,” Matt Rhule said. “So, we have to make different valuations based upon what we have. But when things were straight up, if we lost someone we lost them to a program we want to be in the same conversation with. I think that’s happening now with recruiting, too. We’re in the conversation with some schools we want to be in the conversation with. I think we did an excellent job.”

Nebraska currently has the 36th-ranked transfer class in the 2025 cycle, according to the On3 College Football Team Transfer Portal Rankings. That class includes 26 players who have left and 16 players who have joined the program.

“Again, you can’t underestimate — revenue sharing hasn’t started so just to get guys here just a tremendous investment by the Peed family and 1890 and all the people who give to 1890 because what everyone did is they basically surged ahead this spring. I know schools that spent a ton of money on this spring — and we have, too to get the roster to the point where we have with rev share. 1890’s been amazing to us. It’s allowed us to be competitive,” Rhule said. “I think we all saw in the College Football Playoff, the people who spent the most, got the most. I’ve been saying that since I got here. It’s kind of real, right?”

Matt Rhule is referencing Nebraska’s NIL collective, 1890 Nebraska. That group has been vital for the program in helping adapt to the new era. Now, Rhule and the program are also preparing for the beginning of revenue sharing and another major change. Amid all of that, high school recruiting remains important to the program.

“So, I think that we’re competitive and the building, if you come here and visit, the building is really good. Even in normal recruiting now, like I’m in high schools now and I’m talking to players and it’s maybe the third time they’ve seen me in their high school and they’ve been here five times. It wasn’t like I was in college football and got here. I was in the NFL, so I didn’t necessarily know all these guys,” Rhule said.

“We’ll start to really, over the next couple of years, the conversation about what’s Lincoln like will be less and less and less the more we get people on campus, get people to our camps, hopefully, build some other things to get people into Lincoln and that news will just go forward. So, now I’m on the road, people are saying, ‘I saw the Colorado game.’ ‘Oh, I saw the volleyball game.’ The more things we do, the big moments like that that we capitalize on, you know, we’ll move up in recruiting and then we’ve got to win. At the end of the day, we’ve got to win, win, win, win so that people want to be part of a winner.”

The Class of 2025 will be solidified on Wednesday, February 5th when the second National Signing Day wraps up. Currently, Nebraska has the 21st-ranked class in that recruiting cycle. Following Spring practice, there will also be another Transfer Portal window.