1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Would you Rather Win the Next 2 Games and Lose Matt Rhule or Win the Next Two Games and Keep Him?: October 16th, 11:00am

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Would you Rather Win the Next 2 Games and Lose Matt Rhule or Win the Next Two Games and Keep Him?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Boom in your face. We're live here on one-on-one on 93-7. The ticket, as you can tell, I am not DP, but I still tried to say, boom, and in your face, as his tradition here on one-in-one. I'm Jake Bachman alongside Austin Orman in here, ready to entertain you for the next hour. Of course, it is $5 bits of broken chair week. It is $5 bits of broken chair Eve, if you will. So Nebraska and Minnesota will be going to battle tomorrow, and we'll talk plenty about that. We've got other things to talk about as well. If you're ready to lay down the mat rule, the Penn State stuff, I think a lot of people we've talked about it ad nauseum throughout the week. I think it was the distraction earlier. We're ready to move on. But then we get a text right away from Nick on YouTube to open up the show. I was just going to ask you, I mean, Austin,

I was going to ask you the biggest question people want to know in sports right now is Cooper flag a point guard. But we can put that on the table for a second. Nick, Texan on the Sartarhamman text line, 402, 4-644-5-6-8-5. He also did so on YouTube, and since he did the double duty, the effort to get his question on here, we can go ahead and try to answer it. Would you rather lose the next two games and keep Coach Rule

or win the next two games and lose Coach Rule by the end of the season? Of course, there's going to be more that goes into it than that. I'm not sure if Penn State's making their decision based off if Matt Rule can beat Minnesota in Northwestern. Or how about Northwestern and UCLA? That might be a little bit more interesting. They might do that. I think that Penn State game certainly could come into question.

But Austin, I'll throw it to you. Seven and one start. No coach rule next year or five and three. And you're going to keep him. I think that, again, without speaking for Matt Rule, I think that he would say, I mean, the program's got to be bigger than one person. And I hope that after the previous eight years,

Husker fans would understand that the coach means a lot, but the coach can't mean everything, you win the games. You win the games. You plain and simple, win the games. That's not to denigrate or minimize the work that Matt Rule has done in Nebraska. DP and I talked about that yesterday on old school.

He's turned around the battleship in a lot of ways. And, you know, it's felt like bluster for a couple years. But now we've seen back-to-back games where Nebraska has trailed late. They found a way to come back and win. And even the vibe I get from the fans box has not been, oh, well, when's the interception coming? When's, when's the fumble coming? It's been, okay, Nebraska's got a chance here.

And they've paid it off. Matt Ruhle has done some great work at Nebraska. But I think fans would be kidding themselves and lying to themselves. And I think it would be just repeating the same mistake they did before if they said, if Matt Ruhle leaves, then who's going to keep Nebraska going? Because that's the same conversation as, well, if Scott, Frost can't win at Nebraska, who can't. He has the alumni behind him.

He has the support of the entire state. Everyone loves him. Look at his previous success. And that didn't work out. That coaching debacle. And really even the Kentucky and North Carolina men's basketball jobs really turn me off of if he can't do it, then who can't. And I think Husker fans for the most part have gotten out of that mindset.

and I think that's healthy. It would be a blow to the program if Matt Rule left when it seems like things are heading in in the right direction. It would. Undeniably so. You want the continuity in a lot of ways. Matt Rule has proven he's a good college football head coach. But the world won't end if he decides that someplace else is better for him right now.

Nebraska will go get another coach. And of course there's risk involved. I'm not going to say the next person if it happens would come in and keep things rolling seamlessly. There might be another transition period. I know Husker fans don't want to go through that and they don't want to hear it, but it's not if Matt Ruhle leaves Nebraska screwed. It's, hey, Matt Ruhl did a lot of good stuff.

There's always a risk when you switch coaches, but the program's not screwed if Matt rule decides that Nebraska's not the place for him. Yeah, I would agree with that. And it all is kind of an interesting backdrop to the whole conversation, which again, I've, you know, it was fun Monday, right? It's starting to dial down a little bit, which I think as it should. you know, like I said, Nebraska, Minnesota will play tomorrow. And this, you know, shouldn't be a distraction, particularly because the decision's not

to be made now. And there's a lot of season left to play out. I have my own thoughts on that. I mean, I think it's, it's a little bit silly. Matt Campbell's back on all these lists. Remember when Nebraska was going through their thing and was looking for a coach. Matt Campbell was high in the list. He struggled that year. And then all of a sudden, he was untouchable.

You can, you know, everything that he'd done in his career at Iowa. He's not good. Yeah, it just was not, you know, he wasn't winning, you know, top 25 games, all that sort of stuff. And here, a few years later, he's rebuilt and they've had the most winning season they ever did last year. Now he's at the top of all those jobs. So I think it is a bit silly to be so within the moment to say, well, we might hire. We'll see what the next three games look like. You should know probably by now if he's a legitimate candidate to you or not.

But at the same time, I mean, that's, that's the approach. That's what's going to kind of happen here over the next several weeks. So no decision is necessarily going to be made. But in this scenario, again, that Nick texts in here, would you rather lose the next two games and keep Coach Rule or win the next two games and lose Coach Roll at the end of the season? If you lose the next two games, I fear the want or the idea that Matt Rule has led Nebraska back to where they need to be and therefore as a candidate for any other job

would dial down quite a bit itself. I think you'd be kind of back until, well, are we going to get out of Pennstripe Bowl again? I mean, Nebraska needs to win these next two games. There's no doubt about it for themselves beyond anything that has to do with Matt Rule. And then the other thing is you win the games. And again, in this scenario, you lose the coach at the end of the season. But in general, I think we hopefully, and Matt Ruh kind of pointed this in his press conference, hopefully we can get comfortable with Matt Rule being

the top of all these lists because ideally if Nebraska or one way or the other if they win nine or ten games this year there's going to be more openings and there's going to be more ideas that maybe Matt Rule could come in and save these other programs again because it will have been his third program that he showed in year three that he can do it and especially at the highest level at Nebraska now there's all right. Terrell always at you know was going to throw in

there's a more difficult schedule all that stuff next year so there's you know there's different things that think about, but that's, that's where it would land. You know, Penn State's always going to be the one opening that's going to scare people the most or, and even in my mind, make, you know, be the one that it would be hard to blame if he took. But ideally, not just him, but everybody on the coaching staff is going to need a raise, need more money, because Nebraska is succeeding.

And if you get to nine or ten wins, again, he's going to be on more than just the Penn State list. Yeah, there's a lot to break down there. I think first and foremost, I start with what Matt Ruhl said about, get used to it. It's part of the deal. Well, it's part of the deal for him as a head coach. And yeah, Husker fans haven't been through it.

I was talking with Tom Chappelle about this on Monday. Nebraska hasn't had a sitting head coach leave to be a head coach somewhere else since 1957. It doesn't happen to this program. But I think he's misguided a little bit because the type of turnover that you can survive as a program more often than not is when your assistance lead. Look at John Cook and his volleyball staff back in the day. They were turning through assistance every couple years because of the success. But what stayed firm? What stayed steady, John Cook. Look at Alabama football.

Same thing. Nick Saban stayed in place. His assistance changed over. That's easier to overcome than losing a head coach. Really, I think the only like school that's been able to consistently lose a head coach and stay good is Utah State men's basketball. I don't know. Are you familiar at all with Utah State men's basketball history at all here, Bach, in the recent years? Mostly just the Craig Smith. Yeah. So, okay, that's a great place to start. So I want to get my my facts straight here. So Craig Smith took over from Tim Durye, who went 1717 as funny year. Craig Smith was there for three years, went to two tournaments. Ryan Odom was there for two years, took over from VCU, 18 and 16, then made.

the tournament. Next year, Ryan Odom leaves, takes a bigger job. Danny Sprinkle comes in and takes over. And if the name Danny Sprinkle sounds familiar, well, should because he's now the Washington coach. So from 2000 and 21 that season through last season, there have been four different head coaches at Utah State, all of whom have taken the Aggies to the NCAA tournament. That's incredible. It is incredible because it's so rare. You can't be turning head coaches like that. It's healthier when your program is winning and your guys get talked about moving up.

It's kind of hard to move up from Nebraska. It's possible for some people. Others would say this is the destination type of job. But I don't think that the head coaching churn is ideal for any program, even if you can, can make it work. And then it comes into the, well, you know, does everyone need a raise? Well, yeah, they probably do. but then college football specifically spends more money as a percentage on coaches than any sport in the world.

You know, at some point, some of that money, someone's going to have to be the leader and say, you know what, you're our coach. We love you. But if you want to have success, you got to knock your salary down. We'll pay for as many assistance as you want, as many analysts as you want. But your personal salary has got to be in the five to seven range, not in the, the, the, eight to 10 range. And even seven might be a little bit high. I mean, look at what, you know, NBA head coaches, NFL head coaches are making. It's not the same. I'm really fascinated to see which school is going to be the first one to to hire a new head coach and say, you're our guy. We love you. But have a head coach comes in with that same vision of, yeah, I can't take up an extra $5 million a year that could be

going to recruiting and retaining talent. That will help me win. It is, it is fascinating overall because I think, you know, all this stems from the fact that, you know, obviously you couldn't pay for play. You couldn't pay players for the longest time. So if you were going to make a financial investment into your program, it was the coach. It was the coaching staff. And so once, you know, once that model has been said, it's going to be hard now to go back and say, well, no, no, no, no, there's better places that we can allocate our funds and to get a coach to agree to that. So, I mean, it is interesting. It is fascinating. And some of these top programs, it's always, it's so interesting to follow the money because, you know, there's, there's different levels.

And that's what Matt Rule was kind of saying the other day, too, is that there's going to be university cuts and stuff like that. And, you know, D.P was pointing out, Penn State kind of shut down one of their satellite colleges out there. That's why Matt Rule was that. You got to, you got to separate that from the, from the football thing. And people, I don't know, there's, there's all different sorts of feelings about that, especially over the years, the student before athlete, all that sort of thing. I think there's been a separation. You know, I'd lean more in more in toward Matt Ruhlin. And in fact, I say it would be healthier for the rest of sports, the college sports,

to kind of break away from football themselves. So that way they can go back to regionally traveling and playing, you know, opponents that make a little bit more sense for, you know, tennis or track and field, wrestling, even basketball. I mean, all these other things, really may be outside of basketball, anything that's not necessarily turning a profit. So, I mean, I think there's, there's all different ways to kind of viewed that. And I do want to be clear, too, you know, it's not just that everybody

automatically gets a raise if Nebraska wins. It's that they would be more, there would be more people calling, asking about if their availability, right? And so that's why you would, you would make that raise. But it wouldn't be necessarily okay, there's certain areas of the football team that struggle, right? I don't, I don't know if, if Nebraska gets a nine and three or 10 and two right now. And it looks the same as it did in the first half of the year, if you necessarily, I'm going to call us something specific, but like the offensive line code. you want to give him a raise if they keep improving maybe and if there's calls for him to get it right but not necessarily if they're kind of overcoming that's that you know that part um to

to have their success so uh very interesting a way to kind of break it down again um this is a topic that just kind of is going to kind of stick around people want to move on to the game there is that again opened up espn.com this morning there's will compton on the front which is something i didn't think i'd ever see uh but uh talking about you know you know math ruling Nebraska job. It's the second video. Actually, after Cooper Flag, playing point card was my lead story there.

Before we get to that, I see one, two, three, four different people pull up the same name for who their next choice for Nebraska's head coach would be. Dana Holgerson. What's your reaction to that box? The idea of Dana Holgerson as coach and people throwing him out there is their preferred candidate. Well, I mean, I think in general,

Let me just first say he's the most fascinating piece to all of this in a way because if Penn State wants Matt Rule, do they also want Dana Holgerson, the offensive coordinator? Because I could argue, and as a Nebraska fan, if you know, just if Penn State fans want to know, I don't know where this team would be without Dana Holgerson. I mean, would the offense, I mean, maybe you make a different hire, obviously, and then maybe that rule would get more credit for that hire if it's a career offensive coordinator rather than a head coach. So, I mean, again, a lot of different ways to look at it. But in my mind, Dana Holgerson has really helped that rule get into this position. And if I am at Penn State and I'm saying, okay, well, who you're going to bring along is your office coordinator, that would be interesting as well. Dana in himself, I've thought for the longest time, I'm not, I don't think he's going to be a 15 year office coordinator at Nebraska. So I think at some point there's an idea that he'll probably want to get back into the head coaching field.

I think it makes a lot of sense for continuity. I don't think he's near the top of just an open list. And that's why he's not coming up for the Penn State. He's not coming up for the Oklahoma State job. Well, to a degree, the Oklahoma State job, but that's because of ties in the past. But like all these other jobs that are open, he's not a top five name.

And therefore, if I'm Nebraska, I wouldn't necessarily put him near the top. But for the level of continuity, that would be, you know, that would be ideal. but I just don't know if you make a decision as serious as that just for continuity's sake. Okay. I could see Dana Holgerson as the next head coach. I could envision that, which again, who knows that's even going to happen.

There's a disclaimer. Kay, folks, I'm not saying this is going to happen. Let's get that out there. I'm somewhere between Dana Holgerson wants to be a head coach again and Dana Holgerson is Chip Kelly 2.0. Chip Kelly tried the head coaching thing. It was really successful at Oregon. Tried it in the NFL. Came back to college.

It wasn't horrible at UCLA. He's not been off in the NFL or college, to be fair. No, exactly. He's downed years. Right. Who doesn't? Right. But I think Chip Kelly,

what you're finding is he's more comfortable as a coordinator in a lot of ways. That would not shock me if that's Dana Holgerson. I'm with you and that I don't think he's the 15-year OC at Nebraska, especially if Matt ruled jumps shit, especially if that happens. But I don't know if Dana Holgerson wants another head coaching job. The right head coaching job, sure. He's an Iowa guy. That's where he's from.

That's where he went to college. I'm not saying he's the next Iowa head coach or anything after Kirk Ferrence or Iowa State. If Matt Campbell leaves, I think Dana Holgerson would be a good fit for Iowa State in some ways, right? Knowing the area, he's seen what it takes to work at a lower level. in that state, I would say he's more in that range for jobs. The one name that I can promise you, absolutely promise you, will not be Nebraska's next head coach after Matt rule, whenever that is, is Lane Kiffin. Railroad or Matt, Lane Kiffin all day, only one name for our new head coach.

Derek in a car, Lane Kiffin is the only candidate rule is not going anywhere. And I think there's one other person that said Lane Kiffin. Why would Lane leave Ole Miss? why he's got all the resources he needs down there he has direct access to talent he's very comfortable in that sort of environment lane would have to button up to come to lincoln he would yeah oh yeah you know that lane kiffin is not leaving oxford for nebraska he was born in lincoln i think that's always the time right i get it but lane is not leaving is the big ten really truly better than the cc they're comparable they're pretty

comparable. You know, it's a lateral move at best. And Ole Miss has had much more, more recent success than Nebraska has. Laine is not leaving Ole Miss for Lincoln. It's not happening. You could talk me into James Franklin coming to Nebraska. I think they would be smart to go after him if Matt Rule takes and just makes that coach swap. I'm not sure James Franklin would do that, but you got to at least ask. But Lane is not leaving Ole Miss for Lincoln. I can. and promise you that. Yeah, I mean, again, it's got to be, it's got to be some, again, to a degree in awareness where the Nebraska job is now. And where old misses now, old miss is the top five team. He's got it built up.

You know, and it's been year, it's pretty stable, you know, from year to year. Unless there is some, something that he's never revealed is that he's got some undying dream to be the head coach at Nebraska. Why is no one talking Joey McGuire? Because Joey McGuire has access to Texas talent and Cody Campbell's Texas Tech money down there. Cody Campbell is not coming with Joey McGuire to Lincoln.

Right. He's a Texas guy. So that's why Joey McGuire with his rule tie is not not coming to Nebraska. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, again, I don't want to get too far. I didn't start naming coaching candidates for a Nebraska job that isn't open. I do think it is interesting.

Hey, I've said Beelma for years. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. See, Bealamo is much more likely to take over Iowa. Yeah. When Ferrence leaves. But still, would Beelma go back to his alma mater over access to Chicago talent, you know, Wisconsin talent, closer access to Ohio talent?

I'm not sure he leaves Illinois. I would probably leave Illinois for Iowa, but he's got a pretty good situation going on right now. Yeah. Yeah. And I was not that far off, though. I mean, that's part of that too with Illinois. I mean, Illinois is obviously having a better season, but you look at look at the team overall i've argued for years if you could get uh be lamma or belima as as he was once called here um to nebraska that'd be a great idea but he's got what he's got a he coached at wisconsin has an iwood tattoo and now coaches in illinois i was not exactly sure if he

you know because played it played it i was why he's got the tattoo um i don't know if you could ever get you know i was like his his fit for nebraska and that's what would be interesting too is um do you if the job did come open would there be would you go after a fit for Nebraska or did you go after the best can all that sort of stuff so you know that again we could kind of table that for many a time when the job comes open because there are all sorts of ideas and all different thoughts there but again coming back to what we're talking about with kiffin and some of those candidates is you just got to kind to understand where Nebraska is on the totem pole and I think we I mean we're not we wouldn't

be the ones to say Nick Sabin again or urban Meyer I mean we've been through the Jim trestle thing. I mean, haven't we? We kind of know that Nebraska needs, again, to be built up. And that's what makes it all interesting, too. And I hate to say this, this is going to get me in a little bit of trouble. But if Matt Rule did have, end up leaving Penn State for Penn State, again, I think he'd have to get the nine or ten wins here this season. And in a way, he'd have succeeded, again, at what the goal was at Nebraska. When you hired him, you know, obviously have long-term goals of winning championships and all that. But even on his resume, that's not what was there.

What Nebraska hired was the program builder. He will have brought them back to that level. And again, I'm going to get a little trouble for saying this, but that's somewhat what Trev did, right? I know Trev, Stead, everybody in the back. He's the, you know, Buccas Award winner, all that sort of stuff. But, you know, we all kind of have the idea that he's maybe has some bigger goals at play.

And his goal to kind of get Nebraska back, you might dislike his decision. but he basically brought, when he took over, the sports at Nebraska were not competitive. And when he left, I mean, he just, he left with the, with the good group of sports going in and competing altogether. So it's kind of interesting, again, to watch all that stuff break down. Thanks for the text, Nick. You got us going into quite a conversation there. We will read more of your texts and continue this conversation along with looking more at Nebraska in Minnesota and a couple of other things in the world of

sports we'll do that coming next year on one-on-one with d p on 93-7 the ticket