Matt Rhule having ‘best time of my life’ at Nebraska

Nebraska kicks off their college football season on Thursday versus Minnesota, marking the first game that new head coach Matt Rhule will lead the Cornhuskers into battle. But before the season gets rolling, Rhule reflected on his time so far in Lincoln with Greg McElroy on ‘Always College Football’.

“I’m having the time of my life, I really am,” Rhule admitted. “I look back at like really happy moments from my life, being at Temple, we call it Camelot here. Like we loved everything about being at Temple and this place is so similar. The ethos of the way that we practice, it’s just a great group of guys. They’ll do everything we ask and so I’m having a lot of fun.”

Rhule achieved head coaching success at Temple and Baylor, then took his talents to the NFL and coached the Carolina Panthers for two seasons before being fired five games into his third year with the franchise.

Later that year he’d be named Nebraska’s 31st football coach, explaining why he chose the Cornhuskers through his interview process with athletic director Trev Alberts.

“I think what Trev wanted and what was important to him, I think you learn a lot about people when you’re in an interview process. The questions they ask, that really tells you what’s important and Trev cared about player development, he cared about academics, he cared about weight room, he cared about nutrition,” Rhule explained. “He cared about all the things that made Nebraska great and it’s really all the same things I believe in. And so I knew right away hey, we have a like-minded approach to this and so that was important to me.”

Rhule’s alignment with Alberts made him a good fit, but the status of Nebraska in the history of college football also caught Rhule’s attention. Which he compared to his last college head coaching gig at Baylor.

“My wife and son knew it way before me Greg, they were like hey we need to go there. And then I’ll be honest with you, the history of it, the gravity of what this place means,” Rhule said. “When I went to Baylor people thought I was nuts, and I was like you know what, my Dad’s a Baptist minister, a Nazarene minister and a high school football coach. Like to go to Baylor and go to a Christian university that was at the time in the middle of a scandal and trying to get the program right. That had meaning to me, that had purpose to me.”

The Cornhuskers are looking for someone to turn things around on the field for them, with one five-win season, three four-win seasons, and two three-win seasons to their name in the last six years. But given the rich tradition and history of the program, Rhule is eager to get Nebraska back to their winning ways.

“And now, as someone who loves college football, to come to Nebraska. Tom Osborne, Frank Solich, Bob Devaney, Turner Gill, Mike Rozier, on and on and on, to come here and to say hey if we can get this back on track, what would that mean for college football? It’s needed, and so I think that as much as anything, the importance of what this could be, it’s needed. And so I think that as much as anything, the importance of what this could be, really hit me,” Rhule concluded.

Rhule’s turnaround of the Nebraska program starts Thursday, as they take on Minnesota at 8:00 p.m. ET in a Big Ten matchup airing on FOX.