Trev Alberts says Matt Rhule negotiations were 'long and arduous'

Matt Rhule was always at the forefront of the names rumored to potentially land the Nebraska job. Cornhuskers athletic director Trev Alberts was persistent, and eventually landed the coach he believes will bring them back to relevancy in the Big Ten.

“This was a long and arduous process,” Alberts said of Rhule’s hiring process. “It’s hard enough to negotiate between two interested parties that involved agents and universities. I think that the interesting part here is that we actually had a tri-party challenge. So finding a way to structure a business arrangement that everybody was willing to sign off on was a challenge.

“Quite frankly, from day one, Matt Rhule was candidate 1A. I believed that he was the perfect person based on his experience and based on where we find ourselves today as a program and to help us rebuild and to build the foundation needed.”

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In fact, Alberts said Rhule was one of the people he called after he fired former head coach Scott Frost. Rhule was still the head coach of the Carolina Panthers at the time, but rumors of his firing were ramping up and Alberts wanted to strike while the iron was hot.

It paid off for Alberts and Nebraska, and now it’s paying off even more for Rhule, who is going to make $74 million over eight seasons in Lincoln. The hiring almost never happened in the first place, though.

“There was a period where it didn’t look like it was going to happen. We just decided to keep working and keep trying and in the end, there was a delta,” Alberts said. “I said, ‘wait a minute, you want to coach the University of Nebraska, the University of Nebraska wants you. We’re going to find a way to get this done.’ … I believe we hired the right person at the right time for our university.”