Nebraska
Nebraska Football 2024: The MVPs, Best Wins, and What Could Have Been
Chris Fort offers some superlatives for the 2024 Nebraska football season
Offensive MVP: Dylan Raiola
To be sure, the offense struggled for much of 2024, finishing on the wrong side of the national rankings in most every category. But Raiola, while he had his share of freshman moments, was not to blame. Rather, he was the straw that stirred the Huskers’ drink, piloting them to wins over the Badgers and Buffaloes with stellar outings. He finished with the most yards passing of any true freshman ever at NU, surpassing Adrian Martinez’s 2018 effort in the bowl game against BC.
Runner-Up: The Offensive Line
Defensive MVP: Ty Robinson
Cue Ty as the team’s overall MVP to boot. He was a heart-and-soul leader that never shied from reporters after a tough loss and collected his best season as a Husker, grabbing 37 tackles, 13 TFLs, 7 sacks, and forcing defensive coordinators to gameplan around him. He also added a couple pancakes on offense for good measure. For his efforts, he garnered second-team All-Big 10 honors and even snagged an honorable mention on the SI All-American squad.
Runner-Up: John Bullock
Special Teams MVP: Brian Buschini
Boom-Schini as he’s affectionately known by fans, Nebraska’s senior punter had a big rebound year after a frustratingly mixed 2023. He nearly edged Sam Koch’s single season record for punt average in a season but fell short after a disappointing Iowa performance. Still, he was a rock for the Huskers in 2024 amid an otherwise bleak Special Teams season. Bonus points for completing two fake punt passes for first down, as he did against Rutgers and Boston College.
Runner-Up: John Hohl
True Freshman of the Year: Jacory Barney Jr.
Let’s take Dylan out of contention this round. Barney was every bit as good as the hype that surrounded him pre-season, as he led the team in receptions while acting as the Huskers’ gadget guy and occasional kick returner. He tied JD Spielman’s freshman record for receptions (55) to boot. A big game against the Badgers also earned him Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors. It doesn’t hurt that he seemingly loves being a Husker.
Runner-Up: Vincent Shavers Jr.
Transfer of the Year: Ceyair Wright
The USC Trojan/Space Jam actor left Hollywood for Lincoln and made a big impact, earning PFF honors after a huge game against Rutgers and filling in nicely for Tommi Hill and Blye Hill after injuries slowed them in 2024.
Runner-Up: Dante Dowdell
Costliest Injury: Tommi Hill
The Husker senior was being penciled in as a first-round draft pick by some after a hot start to the season that included a pick six of presumptive number one pick, Shedeur Sanders. But a stubborn case of planter fasciitis resulted in missed games and tough outings against the likes of Illinois and USC. A healthy Tommi may have been the difference in nailing down a seventh or eighth regular season win.
Runner-Up: Teddy Prochazka
Best Win: Colorado
The Huskers hosted their old conference foes, winners of the last three matchups in the renewed rivalry, and demoralized them from the first drive, resulting in 28-0 margin at halftime. Only some second half miscues and questionable officiating calls robbed them of running up the score further. This was the most complete game by both the offense and defense and the result was a rousing victory over a team that finished with a 9-4 record on the season.
Runner-Up: Wisconsin
Turning Point: Wisconsin
The narrative going in was that Nebraska may sit at home again for bowl season, having lost four straight games when trying to achieve their bowl-clinching victory. The pressure sufficiently mounted, the Husker offense put on its best game. Time shall soon tell if this was the page-turning performance some felt it was.
Worst Loss: UCLA
Indiana was a playoff team, so the 49-point loss, as humbling as it was, is still more justifiable than their inexplicably flat effort against the Bruins of LA. The Huskers were playing for bowl eligibility against a team that finished with 4 wins. This would be Nebraska’s only loss to a team that finished with a losing record.
Runner-Up: Indiana
Best Coaching Job: Donovan Raiola
The offensive line didn’t get enough praise this year. Their running yards and sacks allowed don’t necessarily show it, but the O-Line played better than they have in a long while, putting it all together against a good Wisconsin defense on Senior Day. Just two years after fielding arguably the worst O-Line in modern Husker history, Raiola put together a dependable unit despite being without both top left tackles and often without their best offensive guard in Micah Mazzccua.
Runner-Up: Terrance Knighton
Most Disappointing Coaching Job: TIED between Garret McGuire and Ed Foley
The Huskers appeared loaded at receiver in pre-season, and early outings against UTEP and Colorado demonstrated as much. But a mid-season slump, highlighted by a receiving corps that couldn’t – or wouldn’t – run block, or get off press coverage emphasized their offensive woes. That falls on McGuire, who now coaches with his dad in Lubbock.
Foley likely deserves to occupy this distinction outright, but Nebraska’s Special Teams have been awful since before his arrival so he’s merely carrying on the legacy he inherited from Frost and co. Still his lack of coaching acumen resulted in Nebraska giving up ten – 10! – blocked kicks on the year, three alone against Purdue. Going into the bowl game, the Huskers ranked in the hundreds nationally in net punting, punt returns, and punt/kick return defense. His unit cost Nebraska the victory against Iowa and nearly handed Boston College the win in the bowl game. Shame.
Best Offensive Performance: Wisconsin
As if it could be any other game. The Badgers came into the game winners of 10 straight in the series and having just taken number one Oregon to the wire at home. Nebraska proceeded to pile up nearly 500 yards of offense, not allowing a negative yardage play until the final kneel down. Emmett Johnson and Jacory Barney had career days, with Barney garnering Big Ten freshman of the week honors for his exploits.
Runner-Up: UTEP
Best Defensive Performance: Colorado
The Blackshirts harassed Shedeur early and often, nabbing a touchdown on Tommi Hill’s pick in the first quarter. The Buffs only managed 260 yards of offense, most of which they piled up in garbage time. Eventual Heisman winner Travis Hunter was held without a touchdown in a frustrating outing for Coach Prime’s ballyhooed charges.
Runner-Up: Rutgers
Most Heartwarming Performance: Rahmir Johnson vs. Boston College
The New York City native, who battled through a litany of injuries and a bizarre position move in 2022, ended his Husker career rather poetically, taking home game MVP honors after securing his first rushing touchdown in three years and sealing the victory with a tough run on 4th down. Only after the game was it revealed that Rahmir lost his mom to illness during the season. The sixth-year do-everything senior stuck with the team throughout the ordeal and capped the season with a trophy.
Runner-Up: James Williams vs. Rutgers
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Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
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.
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