Nebraska
Huskers at Halfway Point of Promising Season
This is Part One of looking back at Nebraska’s first half of the 2025 season. Coming Monday: Five coolest plays of 2025, plus honorable mentions.
Back in the summer, the weather was warm and preseason expectations were running hot for Nebraska football.
This is the year, Husker fans thought. For once in recent times, there was actual evidence to back up the feelings and the faith. Look out Big Ten, here come the Huskers, many thought, back to where they belong.
The roster was experienced with increased talent. Coach Matt Rhule’s system seemed to work. He went 7-6 the year before — the first winning season in seven years — and the Huskers won their first bowl game since 2015.
The all-important quarterback position was in good hands. Sophomore Dylan Raiola was another year experienced and had shown promise and poise the previous year to instill hope of a big 2025 season. The reasonable hope was he would overcome the inconsistencies he showed in 2024.
Even the schedule cooperated. The non-conference schedule was soft with two FCS teams and a challenging game with FBS Cincinnati.
Missing from the schedule: Big Ten monsters Ohio State and Oregon, and late-blooming monster Indiana. Michigan was a home game for the Huskers, and they played Penn State so late in the season that the game either would have little bearing on the season, or it could mean everything. Penn State would be dealt with when the time came, and not something to worry about in the summer.
Recruiting picked up. Nebraska wasn’t a favorite of those internet recruiting sites, but it was attracting football players and athletes with whom Rhule could win over.
Reports from summer camp were positive. There was talk of team unity. In the summer, all was good.
Armed those good vibes and that empirical evidence, all the football team had to do was, you know, win football games.
Nebraska proved something to itself in its 34-31 win at Maryland on Saturday. The Huskers twice had 10-point leads but were down 31-24 in the fourth quarter.
Raiola, who threw three interceptions, including a pick-six, led the Huskers on two fourth-quarter scoring drives to pull out a game they could have lost.
Maryland was an uncertainty because of talented freshman quarterback Malik Washington and a program that seems headed in the right direction. Normally, in Big Ten hierarchy, this wouldn’t be a big sweat for Nebraska. But, as the Husker faithful know, everything these days can be a big sweat.
But Nebraska showed it could win on the road, and that it could win when it didn’t bring its best and brightest game. Teams accustomed to winning tend to do that — they win.
Nebraska’s opening game, against Cincinnati at neutral-site Kansas City, was a contest that could go either way and experts thought so weeks before the game was played.
The Huskers survived, 20-17, on a last-minute interception by Malcolm Hartzog Jr., in the end zone. Husker fans took a deep breath. Hey, the season wasn’t ruined! Onward!
Nebraska’s next two games were against overmatched opponents and that’s what the results revealed — 68-0 over Akron; 59-7 over FCS Houston Christian.
Now, with the Huskers sitting at 3-0, the 2025 season was ready to being in earnest.
Michigan came to town on Sept. 20 as a 2.5-point favorite. But what Michigan represented was more than a potential victory and a continued undefeated season for the Huskers. Michigan was a monster, too. The Wolverines haven’t been great every season but they were a standard for every opponent. Beat Michigan, and your season meant something.
It’s the way lower-tier Big Ten teams look up to Nebraska.
Nebraska had every chance to defeat Michigan on that beautiful Saturday afternoon. That the Huskers didn’t says more about the Huskers than the Wolverines. As in many football games, the Huskers needed to make a play, or a couple of plays, and today they would be undefeated, ranked probably in the high-teens in the AP Top 25.
Nebraska couldn’t allow Michigan, leading 27-20 in the fourth quarter, to keep the ball for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, and drive 77 yards in 16 plays for a killer field goal and a 30-20 lead. Make a play somewhere in those 16 plays.
Three times on that drive, Nebraska had Michigan in third downs and couldn’t make a stop.
The Huskers couldn’t allow Michigan to score on three excruciatingly long touchdown runs — the Wolverines’ only touchdowns of the game. Shed a block, make a tackle, have a better scheme.
Make a play.
On offense, the Huskers made an amazing play — the 52-yard Hail Mary from Raiola to Jacory Barney Jr. at the end of the first half. It wasn’t enough.
Next, Nebraska handled Michigan State — well, the Huskers won, 38-27, in a mistake-filled game. That was like a March Madness game — win and survive. The Huskers won. Aesthetics, step aside.
Nebraska is 5-1. The Huskers were 5-1 in 2024 and lost their next four games.
There are clear strengths on this year’s team (nation’s No. 1 pass defense going into the Maryland game; passing game; running back Emmett Johnson) and weaknesses (rushing defense). There is inconsistent play and some brilliant play. It feels as if Nebraska is trying to find out what kind of football team it is.
The Huskers have six regular-season games to play. Optimists might have thought the Huskers would be undefeated at this point. A measured look in August at Nebraska and its schedule might predict a 5-1 start without being accused of frenzied fandom.
Five-and-one. That’s about right.
Nebraska’s remaining schedule is fascinating — as most future Big Ten schedules will be. Can the Huskers win out? How about 5-1, or 4-2?
There are season-making or season-breaking games ahead. Let’s be optimistic and say Nebraska will defeat Minnesota — that’s going to be a dogfight. Next is Northwestern, which just won at Penn State. UCLA has joined the party with two consecutive victories after starting the season 0-4. Nebraska travels to UCLA in November.
But think about this: Nebraska still has USC, Penn State and Iowa on the schedule. USC looked unstoppable in beating Michigan on Saturday. Penn State’s wheels have fallen off with three consecutive losses and quarterback Drew Allar reportedly out for the season, but it’s still Penn State on the road. Think about what a win over one of those teams will mean to the Huskers. Or more than one win.
Nebraska met expectations in the first half of a season when much was expected. It was rarely pretty, but it didn’t have to be.
Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
Submit your weather photos and videos below.
Click here to subscribe to our 10/11 NOW daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.
Copyright 2026 KOLN. All rights reserved.
Mandatory evacuations have been ordered near Crawford, including Fort Robinson State Park, as the South Fork Fire continues to spread in western Nebraska.
According to the City of Crawford, evacuations are currently underway for an area north of Crawford that includes the area south of Dodd Road, west of Dodd Road, and FF Street.
Fort Robinson has also been evacuated.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission said Fort Robinson State Park and Peterson Wildlife Management Area have been temporarily closed due to the fire.
The fire has burned approximately 9,000 acres and is currently 0% contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Nebraska Game and Parks said the park and the WMA will remain closed until further notice to support firefighting operations and protect public safety.
-
Business6 minutes ago
AI is cutting hours of office work, but also creating a new kind of busywork
-
Entertainment8 minutes agoReview: ‘The Little Sister’ finds a young Muslim woman taking risks to show her true self
-
Lifestyle13 minutes agoL.A. Affairs: Dating an L.A. braggart taught me a lesson in positive self-talk
-
Politics21 minutes agoHouse Democrats ask new ICE director to roll back policy limiting oversight visits
-
Science23 minutes agoWarning of cuts to medical services, L.A. health officials ask state for emergency funds
-
Sports28 minutes agoCommentary: Cameron Brink is trying to navigate a fouled-up situation
-
World39 minutes agoNigeria killed more than 13,000 ‘terrorists’ in past year, president says
-
News1 hour agoWhich billionaire said they learned a ‘significant lesson’ this week? The quiz knows
