Nebraska Football's Matt Rhule Shares His Transfer Portal Philosophy

The Huskers' head coach still values traditional recruiting and development.

Matt Rhule / Nebraska Athletics

College football is starting to become entirely reliant on the transfer portal.

Some programs are starting to put even more emphasis on recruiting transfers from the portal than they do on traditional high school recruiting. Developing talent from the high school ranks used to be the most surefire way to build a program from the ground up. Now, rebuilding your roster by using the transfer portal is the most popular way to quickly revamp a program.

Along those lines, some head coaches encourage players who are lower on the depth chart to transfer away in favor of bringing in a more highly rated player from another school. During his press conference Monday to kick off Indiana game week, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule spoke about his philosophy when it comes to building his roster through development rather than the transfer portal.

“I just don’t believe in running kids off," Rhule said. "They’re still associated with the university. I don’t think that’s what Nebraska wants. If I was coming from another college, it might have been a little different. I just was coming from the NFL. I think we did the portal pretty well this year. Isaiah (Neyor) has been good, Jahmal (Banks) has been good. We’ve done the right things. The teams that I want to be like in terms of their records recruit really well. I think we can recruit really well. I think recruits are figuring out that they can come here. I think our recruiting will get better and better and better."

Rhule is not a coach who believes in giving up on players so early. He does not want to simply replace backup players on his roster with starters from another team. However, he is pleased with some of the transfer portal signees he has had during his time at Nebraska but emphasized that the portal is not the be-all and end-all for his program.

He also acknowledged that winning is the best tool for recruiting. Being relevant as a program is the first step toward competing at a higher level. However, he hammered home his point that he does not want to simply replace the players that he already has.

"You just have to win, you have to win a little bit," Rhule said. "You go back to this year, you ask me what my goals were, they were to be relevant. This is a relevant game. Next game is a relevant game. The game after that is a relevant game. They’re all relevant, based on what we’ve done the first six games. I just am not here to run kids off and get rid of kids. That’s not my deal. There’s a time and a place for that if the kid isn’t doing the right things, but I want to be their coach.”

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