Not quite two years into his gig as <a href="https://www.on3.com/teams/nebraska-cornhuskers/">Nebraska</a> athletic director, Trev Alberts frames the task of resurrecting football at his alma mater as “being Nebraska,” as in, “I’m not talking about winning national championships, I’m just talking about being Nebraska. Operating in a way that’s Nebraska.”



To Alberts, an All-American Husker linebacker and Butkus Award winner in 1993, “being Nebraska” defines success. For the last 12 years, Nebraska has suffered an acute shortage of italics. “Being Nebraska” has meant a slow slide into mediocrity and an overflowing source of irrelevance in the Big Ten.



Nebraska has become one of the Big Ten’s trust-fund babies, a new generation that collects its checks and contributes little to the family business. In the last five seasons, in a conference that sponsors 27 sports, Husker teams have won three Big Ten championships – men’s indoor track in 2019, baseball in 2021 and the softball tournament in 2022.



And none of those sports is driving the Husker bus.



 “The football piece is so huge for the overall culture,” Trev Alberts told On3. “When the football culture is right, it cascades down into the rest of the athletic department.”



Football, the program that attracted the Big Ten to Lincoln, has strayed far from the success that defined the Huskers for four decades under Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne and <a href="https://www.on3.com/db/coach/frank-solich-132201/">Frank Solich</a>. Shoot, Husker fans yearn for the seven years under <a href="https://www.on3.com/db/coach/bo-pelini-132243/">Bo Pelini</a>, a coach they hounded for alternating between winning nine and 10 games every season. Since firing Pelini at the end of the 2014 regular season, Nebraska has gone 38-57 (.400).



<h2 id="h-financial-leaders-helped-trev-alberts-adapt">Financial leaders helped Trev Alberts adapt</h2>



Trev Alberts, 52, believes that Nebraska can execute a turnaround because he has done so twice in his professional life. After injuries curtailed his NFL career, Alberts made himself into a television analyst who rose to work in the ESPN College Gameday studio.



In 2009, Alberts turned his back on TV to become an athletic director at Nebraska-Omaha. He took a huge pay cut and sold his suburban Atlanta home at a significant loss to chase a dream.



Six weeks in, after the excitement of a new challenge wore off, Alberts realized he had no idea what he was doing and even less of an idea of how to do it.



“We were still living in an apartment,” Alberts said. “Three kids, a dog and a bird. I’m 40 years old and I’m wondering if we had made the single biggest mistake I could have ever made.”



Alberts went to Omaha business leaders, such as billionaires Warren Buffett and the late Walter Scott Jr., and asked for advice. He learned the importance of financial discipline so well that he cut the UNO football program. As Alberts molded UNO into an athletic program strong enough to move up to Division I, he watched his alma mater one hour to the west succeed financially and flounder competitively.



When he arrived in Lincoln, Alberts felt instantly at home. And that was the problem, “a lot of, ‘Well, this is how we did it when we were successful,’” Alberts said.



<h2>‘We haven’t had everybody pulling in the same direction’</h2>



Demanding change can be tricky in a program that reveres its tradition as much as Nebraska. Trev Alberts doesn’t want the Huskers to do what Osborne did 30 years ago. He wants the program to think the way that Osborne thought. Alberts sees Osborne as an innovator: the man who brought strength training into football and a tactical wizard in the running game.



“We can still honor and respect that tradition,” Alberts said. “But if Coach Osborne was still the coach here, I promise you he would have innovated, and he would be doing things very, very different from the way we [did] them in our best days in the early ’90s.”



When Alberts looked for a football coach last fall, he wanted someone to thread that needle. He wanted a coach who had succeeded on the field, and <a href="https://www.on3.com/db/coach/matt-rhule-131152/">Matt Rhule</a> has done that at <a href="https://www.on3.com/college/temple-owls/">Temple</a> and again at <a href="https://www.on3.com/college/baylor-bears/">Baylor</a>. But winning alone wasn’t enough. “We haven’t had everybody pulling in the same direction,” Albert said. “We fire a coach. Half the fan base is mad, and former coaches weren’t pleased. I just thought Matt has an ability to bring people together.”



Rhule is every bit the people person that Alberts is. He already has connected with Osborne. Last month, Alberts, Rhule, and Osborne recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s02H-d5p-yU">a 48-minute sitdown discussion on the Nebraska Huskers YouTube channel</a>. Alberts handled it as if he had never left the TV studio. But he said the idea for the show came from Rhule, who wanted Husker fans to see the respect he has for Osborne.



“You come into a place like Nebraska where someone like Tom Osborne still has a significant presence whether he wants to or not,” Alberts said, “a guy like Matt can really get off on the wrong step with the fan base if you don’t understand the tradition, the history.”



They discuss physicality, a trait for which the Huskers were known under Osborne, an identity Rhule intends to reclaim.



“At its core,” Rhule said on the video, “the game of football is about one man moving another man in a direction he doesn’t want to go.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Roundtable Conversation with Tom Osborne, Matt Rhule & Trev Alberts" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s02H-d5p-yU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



Rhule has asked Osborne why he let his quarterback be hit in practice (to let his teammates know that the quarterback is tough, too). Rhule has asked Solich about how he used the fullback in the run game. Solich, a former Husker running back, longtime assistant and highly successful head coach, hasn’t made a public appearance at the University since Nebraska fired him 20 years ago. He is returning this week when Nebraska <a href="https://www.on3.com/college/nebraska-cornhuskers/news/nebraska-announces-plans-honor-former-coach-player-frank-solich-huskers-spring-game/">will honor him Saturday</a> at the Huskers’ spring game. 



Listen closely and you can hear Husker fans swooning from Mitchell on the Wyoming border to the Tom and Nancy Osborne Athletic Complex in Lincoln. The fans are hungry, they are weary, and they are nostalgic for success. And they are still there.



“There are very, very few places in the country where you’d be 3-8 and every seat is full,” Osborne said on the video.



Rhule can’t wait to hear the 390th consecutive sellout crowd at Memorial Stadium in the home opener against <a href="https://www.on3.com/college/northern-illinois-huskies/">Northern Illinois</a> on Sept. 16. He has immersed himself into the Lincoln community. He took his daughters to a Husker women’s basketball game and then headed downtown afterward for ice cream. Rhule knows how to build a bridge. His record suggests he knows how to build a football team.



Alberts bet on both qualities.

trev-alberts-personal-transformation-creates-confidence-nebraska-will-return-to-glory

Sports Business

Trev Albert’s transformation creates confidence Nebraska will win big again

Teams

Fan Sites

Forums

Shows

team-link

College Football News

College Football Player Rankings

College Football Rankings

College Football Playoff

College Basketball News

Women's Sports

College

NIL News

NIL Valuation

NIL Deals

NIL Deal Tracker

Transfer Portal News

NCAA Transfer Portal News

NCAA Transfer Portal

Transfer Portal Rankings

Transfer Portal Team Rankings

Transfer Portal

NCAA Transfer Portal Home

Football Recruiting

Basketball Recruiting

Database

Team Rankings

Player Rankings

Industry Comparison

Commitments

Recruiting Prediction Machine

Recruiting

High School News

Schools

High School Search

Rankings

High School Rankings

Scores

High School Scores

High School

NFL Draft

NFL Draft News

Draft By Stars

College Draft History

College Draft Totals

NBA Draft

NBA Draft News

Draft

NASCAR

Culture

Sports Betting

About

On3 App

Advertise

Press

Contact

Football

Basketball

Women's Basketball

Softball

Baseball

News

Deals

Recruits

Events

Newsletter

Alabama

Arizona State

Arizona

Arkansas

Auburn

Baylor

Boston College

California

Removed

Clemson

Colorado

Duke

Florida

Florida State

Georgia

Georgia Tech

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Iowa State

Kansas

Kansas State

Kentucky

Lettermen Row

Lettermen Lounge

Louisville

Maryland

Miami

Michigan State

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi State

Missouri

NC State

Nebraska

North Carolina

Northwestern

Notre Dame

Ohio State

Oklahoma

Oklahoma State

Ole Miss

The Main Board

Oregon

Oregon State

Penn State

Pittsburgh

Purdue

Rutgers

South Carolina

Stanford

Syracuse

Tennessee

Texas A&M

Texas

Texas Tech

UCLA

Utah

Vanderbilt

Virginia

Virginia Tech

Wake Forest

Washington

Washington State

West Virginia

Wisconsin

BamaOnLine

BOL Round Table

Inside Texas

IT Members Only

DawgsHQ

Dawg Walk

Scoop Duck

Recruiting & Sports

AuburnSports

The Corner

WeAreSC

GarryP's Trojan Huddle

The Wolverine

The Fort

The Lions Den

The Wolfpacker

The Wolves’ Den

GatorsOnline

Swamp Talk

Alabama A&M

Alabama State

Albany

Alcorn State

Abilene Christian

Appalachian State

Akron

Army

Austin Peay

Arkansas-Pine Bluff

Arkansas-Little Rock

Arkansas State

Air Force

Ball State

American

Wofford

Winthrop

Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Wisconsin-Green Bay

Wichita State

Western Carolina

Volleyball

Gymnastics

Men's Lacrosse

Women's Lacrosse

Men's Soccer

Women's Soccer

Women's Track

Men's Golf

Women's Golf

Men's Hockey

Women's Hockey

Men's Swimming

Women's Swimming

Wrestling

Men's Tennis

Women's Tennis

Annual $1

Annual Premium

Annual $1 

Monthly

Annual

Unlimited Access to This and All Articles.

Article (On3 Plus Rivals)

Forum (On3 Plus Rivals)

Intro

Trev Albert’s transformation creates confidence Nebraska will win big again

Lou Holtz

Best hoops conference

Player Buyouts

B1G-SEC

Charles Bediako case