LINCOLN, Neb. — As Matt Rhule told the story on his January blitz around Nebraska and various recruiting hotspots, after his wife Julie walked through the building that’s soon to house the Huskers’ football headquarters, she sought him out and didn’t mince words.
“You should be here 20 years,” Julie told Matt, according to his recounting of the conversation to a high school athletic director in the Omaha area. “Do not screw this up.”
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In an interview last week with The Athletic, the first-year Nebraska coach laughed as he remembered the exchange.
He understands the weight of rising expectations. So does his wife.
“She was like, ‘You better win some games,’” Rhule said. “You’ve got no excuses.’”
Quickly, he turned serious.
“We’ve been in a lot of buildings — but never anything like this.”
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In a dream scenario for Rhule and his beefed-up staff, the Huskers are set to move into a $165 million complex — the most expensive undertaking in the history of Nebraska athletics — this summer.
The project is nearly four years in the making, but already is benefiting Nebraska. Hard-hat tours during recruiting visits aided in Rhule’s build of a top-25 recruiting class after his hire in late November and helped the Huskers add a group of 11 transfers that ranks among the best in the Big Ten.
But like the 315,0000-square-foot structure that rose from the ground northeast of Memorial Stadium over the past year and a half, the enormity of this moment remains difficult to gauge without a deep look inside the walls.
Rhule arrived just in time to add his preferences to the final plans of the performance center, as it’s labeled by Nebraska. His input allowed Nebraska to alter a few cosmetics of the facility that matched Rhule’s messaging on culture and placed an emphasis on player recovery — a priority for the 48-year-old coach.
As construction hits the final five-month stretch before the doors open, Rhule and his boss, second-year athletic director Trev Alberts, appear in lockstep on the importance of the building to help elevate Nebraska’s place in college football.
“This is an evolution,” Alberts said. “It’s a modernization. Not in any way to suggest what we had been doing was not right. But we’re trying to innovate every single component of our program.
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“It is almost overwhelming, the totality of the project.”
The Go Big Campaign, Nebraska’s developmental arm that raised more than $100 million in private funds for the complex, survived a one-year delay and a $10 million price hike as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Clear of setbacks, Rhule is moving at full speed. He recently recalled a December weekend on campus with a group of recruits. They were amazed during tours of the facility.
“Basically, everywhere these kids have gone and everything that they’ve seen, there’s not a thing we don’t have,” Rhule said. “When we walk through there, it signals to people the commitment by the university to student-athletes. It just kind of tells them, ‘Hey, we want you to have the best of the best.’”
Dirt and unfinished wood floors did not cloud the vision of recruits.
“I’m going to get lost in it,” said lineman Mason Goldman of Gretna, Neb., a visitor on that Saturday and Sunday who signed with Nebraska less than a week later. “It’s more than any player would ever need. It’s going to be amazing, going in there every day to put in work.”
In some areas of the building this winter, walls are not yet in place. But the school displayed signs and renderings to help prospects and their parents envision how each space would look in a few months.
“We want to perform at a high level, so we’re going to train and recover at a high level,” Rhule said. “We’re going to do academics and life skills at a high level. The building, I think, houses all of those places and signifies that.”
Rhule, as coach of the Carolina Panthers for two-plus seasons, attended meetings and sat through Zoom sessions with executives from Populous. The architectural firm, formerly HOK Sport, was retained by the NFL organization to design a massive training and entertainment hub in Rock Hill, S.C.
The Panthers terminated the deal this year, leaving the complex partially built.
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When he got to Nebraska, Rhule found the same company, Populous, in charge of design, along with the Nebraska-based BVH Architecture. Though he felt familiar with a project of this scale, Rhule said, he didn’t appreciate its size until he walked the construction site in Lincoln.
The Carolina experience helped inform Rhule on the importance of functionality in a new complex.
Star running back Christian McCaffrey and others in the NFL opened Rhule’s eyes to the value of infrared saunas and sensory deprivation tanks. He knew nothing about periodization in strength and conditioning.
He knows now — and Rhule used that knowledge to help Nebraska place the finishing touches on the facility in Lincoln. It will include a temperature-controlled recovery pool that can hold dozens of players.
“All of these things are good for players’ physical and mental health,” Rhule said.
Signee Tristan Alvano, a kicker from Omaha Westside, said he took note on visits to Nebraska that its current facilities rate as some of the best nationally.
“There’s no doubt in my mind now that it’s going to be the absolute best,” Alvano said. “Just knowing I get to have that as a player is a humbling experience.”
So what else is in there?
The weight room covers 32,000 square feet, nearly half the size of the Hawks Championships Center — the school’s indoor practice facility that opened in 2006. The players’ space includes a walkthrough room, with 20 to 30 yards of turf and mounted screens to watch film or scout opponents.
The locker room, according to recruits, is to be three times larger than Nebraska’s spacious confines next door at the stadium. There will be no secondary locker room for lower-unit players. Rhule wanted all the Huskers in one spot, according to Alberts, as the roster size shrinks to accommodate walk-ons with the same amenities and privileges as scholarship players.
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“Coach Rhule has been very clear,” Alberts said, “this is about the players. It’s not about us.”
And so as supply-chain issues threatened additional delays this year, Nebraska shifted resources unevenly to the ground level of the building.
The indoor practice facility connects to the ground level, which opens to the north and faces outdoor practice fields. It contains the locker room, strength and conditioning and recovery areas. All player-specific spaces will be ready for use, Alberts said, when the Huskers open preseason camp about one month ahead of their Aug. 31 opener at Minnesota.
The other two levels, including one for coaching and administrative offices and the other to include the training table and nutrition stations, life skills and academic support for use by athletes in all sports, may take until later in the fall to complete, Albert said.
“It’s a massive move,” the AD said. “You think about all that stuff, it’s going to be disruptive. It’s going to be challenging. We’ll get it done. Obviously, it’s a great problem to have. Our real focus with the move is trying to limit distractions for the football team.”
When Rhule flew to Lincoln on Nov. 26 for his public introduction, he brought Evan Cooper, his secondary coach and chief talent evaluator, and strength coach Corey Campbell.
“I need people who are experts that I can trust,” Rhule said on signing day this month, “who also have my mindset about culture and about development.”
Campbell has all of it, Rhule said. He’ll get the keys to the new weight room and already possesses the greatest amount of access to shape Nebraska players in the offseason. Count Campbell among the staffers in Lincoln who are pleased with all the new building offers.
“It will be the newest and most up-to-date,” Campbell said this month in an interview with the Huskers Radio Network. “But at the end of the day, regardless of the facility, the work is the work. We can have the shiniest toys. We can have the newest modalities. But the guys have got to be willing to put in the work.”
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Before Alberts and Rhule came together on a deal, they talked at length about their vision. Often, they saw eye to eye. Alberts sought a high-level thinker who would delegate and manage a large staff. He was prepared to spend big not just to get Rhule, who received an eight-year, $74 million deal, but also to get his staff.
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In his 12th week on the job, Rhule has hired 41 people (out of 50 listed on staff) in football coaching and administration. His support network at Nebraska exceeds all others before it in size.
They’ll fit well into the new building.
“He was very clear-eyed about what it takes to be, in his words, elite in these areas,” Alberts said. “You’re hiring expertise.”
Alberts said he’s excited by the quality of hires made by Rhule.
Other than his 10 assistants and Campbell, Rhule made big additions in bringing the likes of Susan Elza as chief of staff, Sean Padden as general manager, Kristin Coggin as director of football nutrition and Mitch Cholewinski as coordinator of football sport science.
Cholewinski came from Texas, where he worked as associate director of applied sport science. He is tasked to educate student-athletes on proper recovery techniques and to work with strength and conditioning, the coaching staff and athletic medicine to monitor health, performance and injury risk.
It’s a new-age position for a new-age facility.
Remember, as Julie Rhule said, there are no excuses.
“When you hire leadership,” Alberts said, “many times you can kind of judge him or her based on who they surround themselves with, what kind of talent they’re able to acquire. And clearly, coach Rhule added incredible firepower, not only to our football program, but I would argue to our entire athletic department.
“The beneficiary is going to be all of our student-athletes.”
(Top photo: Courtesy of Nebraska Athletics)
