1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Why Matt Rhule's Contract Extension is Team Friendly: October 30th, 11:45pm

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Why Matt Rhule's Contract Extension is Team FriendlyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome back to one-on-one here on 93-7, the ticket, the Adam Carrier Show, set to start here in under 10 minutes. But we do have one final segment here. And we're all going to be talking about the same thing today because it is a huge news here in Nebraska as they have extended coach rule just before the USC game. Nick Stainer was with me earlier in studio. He has stepped out for the moment. But I will go ahead and finish up this show. And again, bring to you the news here. Again, first reported here by Pete Thamele, but then became official with the University of Nebraska

that they have signed a two-year contract extension now. And so Matt Ruhl is on the books through 2032, includes a $15 million buyout this year that effectively eliminates him from any jobs in this cycle. Again, the contract includes an innovative clause where every time Nebraska qualifies for the college football playoff, his base salary for each year on the deal will increase by a million. So a good job of getting the incentives out there. And really, I mean, I got to just kind of speaking out again for where this, where this stands in the whole kind of, because there's going to be a million opinions on it.

And there's, honestly, you kind of just got to get to the contract itself. And that's where, you know, if you just think, extension or not, you can have your own opinion. but when you look at this specific or contact extension, is it didn't really change his base salary yet it just kind of gave it two additional years. And he was already making a lot of money. And I don't just say that as compared to you and I mean, in the college football world. He's already a top, what, 15 paid coach and set to be for the next several years for,

you know, for the length of his contract. And so the big concern for a lot of people, I think, was, okay, how much are they going to have to pay him to get him to stay. This isn't, this isn't a whole lot more, you know, front-loaded money or anything that's coming out from Nebraska. It's just more security in the long-term for him. And so that's, this is just a big win, in my opinion, for Nebraska football for Troy Danin and for Matt Ruhl. I mean, everybody involved, like I said, Nebraska football. But, I mean, I think if you were, what you might be worried about is that, you know, this would somehow be a monstrous contract.

or, you know, significantly bigger than his first contract, which was already huge. And then you might start to say, well, I mean, why are we paying him top five money? Or, you know, if that's not where the team necessarily lands. And so that's not what's happening here. And so this was, again, not all contract extensions are equal. In my mind, this is a team friendly deal, if you'll put it that way. It secures that Nebraska is able to keep that rule here in Lincoln and moving. and forward. He's at the podium right now. We'll get you some of those clips. I mean,

he went on the Pat McAfee show already. And I've said it before. I think that stuff is fantastic. You know, what you think about Pat McAfee himself or that kind of new wave of sports media is up to you, but one way or the other, it's what a lot of young people are watching. You know, I think it's fantastic for recruiting. I've said for the longest time, I think Matt Ruhle is fantastic speaking. I mean, we know that son of a preacher, all of that. And so the more he's able to get in front of the mic and in and in promote Nebraska the better and you know you kind of got to this point of well if he leaves like he's left before you know his previous jobs is he just doing it for for mat rule or is he doing it for Nebraska well again locking this up anything he's doing now um is is for

nebraska and is for the brand and so this will be a story that will grab some national headlines uh this will be a story that uh will be added to the pregame package uh going into the u s game kind of adds into that And so it's just, you know, it's good for Matt Rule. You know, it's good press altogether for Nebraska. Again, you still got to win the game against USC, but that's kind of a separate conversation for that goodwill to continue. If they lose the game, that's going to be the automatic response from everybody is,

well, they shouldn't have waited. They shouldn't have done this to that. But again, to me, I think this is somewhat about meeting the baseline expectation, the minimum expectation, if you will, for Nebraska to achieve, to get to that the bowl opportunity. They locked up last week against Northwestern proves that regardless of what kind of happens throughout the remainder of the season, that they've at least made that step to get to back-to-back bowl games

in year two and three of Matt Rule. And again, that's not the goal. They're going to be fighting for more. They're talking about college football playoff going into the USC game, whether how realistic that is or not. but I think for me to feel that they really needed to do an extension, in my mind it was they were going to have to at least meet that bottom expectation. And then anything that they do after that obviously was going to be more enticing for Penn State

or another opening to want to take Matt Rule away. So you kind of lock him in at a great time in my mind. He's met the bottom expectation at Nebraska. And you do it before he's kind of the dollar figure might get higher. if you know you go in there and beat USC and then you go in there the next week win a few games in a row all a sudden you are going to have to probably significantly increase his year-to-year contract but they did all that without having to do that so fantastic job i think by troy danin great day for nebraska continuity is in the air and we'll talk about it more with adam carricker next on 93 7 the ticket