Matt Rhule shares what makes him a good rebuilder

Throughout his career as a college coach, Matt Rhule has been known for his ability to rebuild programs. Now, going into his second season as the head coach of Nebraska, he’s looking to rebuild the Cornhuskers program too.

While making an appearance on the College GameDay Podcast, Rhule shared thoughts on the turnaround jobs he’s made at Temple and Baylor, as well as what he thinks makes him a good rebuilder.

“I will say this, I loved Temple because I had been there as an assistant coach for six years,” Matt Rhule said. “So, I had this deep belief in Temple and what we could do there. As you’ve said, I’m the son of a minister and a football coach, so going to Baylor, and to me rebuilding Baylor, if we just got it back to its stated purpose. There’s nothing worse than a Christian university that you almost kind of look at sarcastically because of what’s happening there. So, the football was the bonus there, but I felt cold and sort of on a mission to be there.”

Matt Rhule took over as the head coach at Temple in 2013, going 2-10 that season. By 2016, the Owls won 10 games for the second season in a row and won the AAC. He then left for Baylor, still dealing with the fallout from the end of the Art Briles era. Immediately, he went 1-11. By his third season, the Bears were 11-3 and the NFL came calling.

In his first season at Nebraska, Matt Rhule led the Cornhuskers to a 5-7 record, with the hopes for a big jump forward in his second season.

“To me, I love college football and historically love college football. So, to come to Nebraska, help Nebraska retain its rightful place in football makes total sense. In terms of why I’m able to do it, I think it’s because I don’t mind — I don’t like — but I’m willing to do what it takes to win in the long run. That probably hurt me a lot in the NFL because I probably wasn’t enough, ‘Hey, let’s in right now.’ I was probably like, ‘Hey, let’s build this for four or five years,’ and didn’t end up getting that time. But, when I went to Temple, when I went to Baylor, it was about let’s pay the price now for success down the line, and even at Baylor when things would come up, we’d be in a meeting, talking, and people would talk about the optics. I would always say, ‘Let’s let history write our story. Let’s not worry about what people are writing right now about what we’re doing. Let’s worry about 10 years from now when people write about what we’re doing.’ So, if we’re gonna do something that’s controversial, that people don’t like, but we think it’s the right thing, let’s do that,” Rhule said.

“I think if you take that over to football, I try to do the right thing. I try to do what’s in the best interest of the long-term for what we’re trying to build, and if that means we have to start out 2-10, or this year we were 5-3, we finished 5-7, it doesn’t mean I enjoy those things. It just means I know right now we are so much further ahead than we were last year.”

Ultimately, Matt Rhule feels that point of view that it’s about long-term success, not short-term success, that has helped him over the years.

“Anytime a coach tells me that gets a new job, I always tell them, ‘Don’t worry about winning the first year. Worry about building something you can be proud of, building a foundation,” Rhule said. “Then, the winning will come.’ So, I think that that confidence it will work out in the long run is probably what’s allowed me to do it at the college level.”

Beyond that, truly caring about the players is also vital to Matt Rhule’s success. That’s something that he insists on in his programs.

“The only other thing I’ll say is, I think because I truly believe that I and my staff truly care about these young people, like even if I have to dismiss them from the team, I always tell them, ‘There’s nothing you can do that can make me not care about you,'” Rhule added. “Now, there’s a standard here you have to live up to and I think when you do that and you go through hard times, and the players see you not changing, a lot of times in their lives people have changed on them and turned their backs on them, I think we get real buy-in on a personal level that allows us to take some huge, huge steps.”