Matt Rhule reveals Nebraska players did 'TikTok workout' as punishment for filming inside facility

Matt Rhule is unabashedly “old school,” especially when it comes to modern day social media.

But, after recently downloading TikTok to discover what his nine-year-old daughter was up to on the wildly-popular social media app, Rhule learned the TikTok influence had already infiltrated the Nebraska football locker room, much to the 50-year-old Cornhuskers head coach’s chagrin.

“I walked into the training room the other day and Harper Murray, our All-American volleyball player was sitting there with my 9-year-old. She said, ‘Coach Rhule, we’re going to go do a TikTok’ – now I’m anti-TikTok, I won’t let the kids have it – and my 9-year-old is like, ‘What are you going to say to Harper?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, have fun,'” Rhule revealed during a Thursday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. “So I’ve had to download TikTok and I found my daughter all over (it), she finds people in the facility, I thought I saw 35 of my football payers doing TikToks. (And), one of them did it in the facility, which is a hard no. ”

With this new knowledge, Rhule had the Nebraska strength staff send a definitive message about players spending too much time on social media by putting the new freshmen through the offseason ringer.

“So our strength coach did a TikTok workout this morning with the freshmen, and they were pushing plates with their bios and all their cool stuff they love to post on there,” Rhule said as the McAfee crew broke out in laughter. “But they were doing wall sits at the end, and every freshman had to get out and do a 10-second TikTok dance while the rest of the guys did the wall sit. Welcome to old school.”

Matt Rhule eager for ‘level playing field’ in new revenue-sharing era

There’s at least one coach who is thrilled with the direction college football is headed in the short term: Nebraska head man Matt Rhule.

Why, you might ask? Well, Rhule believes his program is about to be able to compete at the highest level again. He can’t say that was the case in the past few years.

“I think this will be the first year where we’re on a level playing field, and it’s this new settlement, right?” Rhule said on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday. “We’re going to be spending the same amount of money on our roster that everybody else is.”

That mostly checks out, as an anticipated House settlement will put some new parameters around revenue-sharing. It should, in theory, help level the field after a bit of a Wild West on the NIL front the last few years.

Nebraska and Rhule have watched as some of their peers have surged on by.

“Ohio State, Oregon, they made huge investments last year,” Matt Rhule said. “Good for them. We’ve been making big investments but not at the level they were making at, because they were just ahead of us. This new thing will kind of even things out.”

Rhule also gave a bit of an unexpected shout-out to one team and coach that he feels did exceptionally well in the NIL era, even working with considerably fewer resources.

“And I will say, kudos to Arizona State, places like that that won at the level they did without (a level playing field),” Rhule said. “Kenny (Dillingham)‘s a coach, now. He’s a real coach. One hundred percent. One hundred percent. That team played really well.”

On3’s Thomas Goldkamp contributed to this report.