{"id":31914,"date":"2023-09-06T17:18:51","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T17:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/coach-primes-matchup-with-nebraskas-rhule-will-be-a-contrast-in-methods\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T07:48:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:48:58","slug":"coach-primes-matchup-with-nebraskas-rhule-will-be-a-contrast-in-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/coach-primes-matchup-with-nebraskas-rhule-will-be-a-contrast-in-methods\/","title":{"rendered":"Coach Prime\u2019s matchup with Nebraska\u2019s Rhule will be a contrast in methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colorado
Colorado head coach Deion Sanders runs onto the field with his team for a an NCAA college football game against TCU on Saturday in Fort Worth, Texas. LM Otero\/The Associated Press<\/span>LM Otero<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

LINCOLN, Neb. \u2013 Deion Sanders\u2019 slogan, \u201cWe Comin\u2019,\u201d suggests he expects immediate success<\/a> at Colorado.<\/p>\n

Nebraska\u2019s Matt Rhule is confident enough to adopt the same motto \u2013 except with the caveat that it might take his program a while to arrive.<\/a><\/p>\n

Two of college football\u2019s high-profile building projects are underway, and the coaches are going about it in two very different ways.<\/p>\n

Is one better than the other?<\/p>\n

The Cornhuskers and Buffaloes \u2013 old rivals from their days in the Big Eight and Big 12 conferences \u2013 meet in Boulder, Colorado, on Saturday for an early measuring-stick game that suddenly surged to the top of the week\u2019s must-see lists.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the Buffs, winners of one game in 2022, have become the talk of the country following their 45-42 win at nationally ranked TCU, last season\u2019s College Football Playoff runner-up.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that the Buffs won as three-touchdown underdogs. It was how, with Shedeur Sanders passing for 510 yards in the best FBS debut by a quarterback since at least 1996, and possibly all-time, and two-way star Travis Hunter<\/a> playing more than 120 snaps.<\/p>\n

The Huskers looked a lot like the floundering teams coached by Scott Frost in their opener, committing four turnovers and a couple of devastating penalties in a 13-10 loss at Minnesota<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Rhule said he was impressed but not surprised as he watched Colorado take down TCU.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach Sanders is a football guy,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s won in everything he\u2019s done in football. He\u2019s won as a player, he\u2019s won as a coach. Everyone maybe thinks on the outside, not me, \u2018Well, this is all a show.\u2019 He\u2019s the most serious person about football. His poster was on people\u2019s walls for a reason when he was a player. He\u2019s one of the hardest-practicing, hardest-playing people that\u2019s ever played the game. Why would we think his team wouldn\u2019t be the same?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhule relishes his reputation as a program builder, having turned around Temple and Baylor before struggling in two-plus years coaching the NFL\u2019s Carolina Panthers. Rhule\u2019s plan at Temple and Baylor rewarded patience. The first couple of years at both schools were rough, and the fruits of his labor didn\u2019t become apparent until the third season.<\/p>\n

His method seems old-fashioned in 2023. He maintains it takes time to build a program with a strong foundation and staying power, and he thinks it\u2019s best to do it with high school recruits who are developed and with select transfers who fill immediate needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I think you build a program \u2013 it\u2019s built to last,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a flash in the pan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transfer portal didn\u2019t exist when Rhule was getting started at his previous two college stops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rules are a little different now, but I respect anybody that\u2019s just trying to figure out how to win,\u201d Rhule said. \u201cThere are different ways of doing it. However Coach Sanders is doing it, however (Wisconsin\u2019s) Luke Fickell is doing it, however everybody is doing it, it\u2019s not for me to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s, \u2018Hey, this is how we\u2019re doing it.\u2019 And this recruiting class that we have right now is a really big one for us as we move forward. But, obviously, (the Buffs) are going to be a ranked team. So what they\u2019re doing is working.\u201d<\/p>\n

The openers for Nebraska and Colorado illustrated the coaches\u2019 different tacts.<\/p>\n

\"Nebraska
Nebraska coach Matt Rhule walks on the field during the first half of the team's NCAA college football game against Minnesota on Aug. 31 in Minneapolis. Abbie Parr\/The Associated Press<\/span>Abbie Parr<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Nebraska had 54 players participate against Minnesota, and 45 of them were on the Cornhuskers\u2019 roster in 2022. Of the 22 starters, only quarterback Jeff Sims and center Ben Scott were at different schools last season.<\/p>\n

Colorado used 57 players against TCU, and only 11 of them were with the Buffaloes a year ago. Of the CU starters, only offensive linemen Van Wells and Gerad Christian-Lichtenhan, linebacker Marvin Ham and safety Trevor Woods were holdovers.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach Prime,\u201d as he\u2019s known, made good on his promise to flip the roster.<\/a> He suggested aloud that many of the CU players who planned to return should consider entering the transfer portal instead.<\/p>\n

He has used the timeworn \u201cus against the world\u201d mantra to motivate his players to prove wrong the naysayers who expect failure from a team made up almost entirely of newcomers. He famously said he \u201ckeeps receipts\u201d to track each time his team accomplishes something no one thought it could do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here and I ain\u2019t going nowhere,\u201d he said after the opener. \u201cI\u2019m about to get comfortable in a minute. Because guess what? These young men in there right now, they believe. Not all of them believed before. But right now, they came up, one-by-one, twos-by-twos, \u2018Coach, we believe.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cNow they believe. Now Boulder believes. People in the front office, people in the building, the fans, the students \u2013 now everybody wants to believe. I\u2019m good with that. We\u2019ve got room.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

college football’s high-profile building projects are underway<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[992,1775,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-college-sports","tag-national-collegiate-athletic-association","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81614,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31914\/revisions\/81614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31914"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}