From 1962 to 2003, Nebraska football never once had a losing season. Even after the dynasty fell to pieces, the program didn’t. They posted three losing seasons in the next thirteen (2004 – 2016) but won nine-plus games in nine seasons and took home four division titles.

But since 2016, the Huskers have lost more than they’ve won, posting a record of 42-62 and eking out just two winning seasons. Notoriously, not one of those 42 wins came against a ranked team.

They haven’t managed a single season with eight wins, let alone nine, which was once their baseline. They’ve been to just two bowl games, winning one and getting run out of the building in the other. They couldn’t even win the famously forgiving Big Ten West.

It’s the worst ten years for Husker football since Eisenhower was in office.

How did the Huskers – once synonymous with consistent winning – fall this far? How did they become so helpless in a conference they once scoffed at?

Here are nine reasons the Huskers have gravitated to mediocrity.

1. Urban Meyer and TV money upgraded the Big Ten

Nebraska’s mediocrity has been a long-brewing storm that’s only swelled since Meyer strutted into Columbus in December 2011 and turned the Big Ten on its head. He condescended to his colleagues’ recruiting efforts, even going so far as to suggest they put on a ‘recruiting clinic’ of sorts to teach coaches how to more effectively fill their rosters with talent.

But while Meyer elevated the Buckeyes into an even bigger talent acquisition juggernaut, the TV money engineered by Jim Delany ramped up simultaneously. This meant the days of bargain-bin hires like Tim Beckman and Darrell Hazell were over. The Big Ten used its new coinage to hire a who’s who of the best coaches in the country – Bret Bielema, PJ Fleck, Curt Cignetti, Jim Harbaugh, James Franklin, Lincoln Riley, etc.

No longer could you chalk up Illinois and Indiana as gimmes on the schedule (not that Nebraska always had an easy time with either). This highly profitable egalitarian structure raised the floor of the league considerably. Nebraska usually dispatches other Power 4 schools – Colorado, Boston College, Cincinnati – but struggles against its domestic foes in the Big Ten in large part because they share most every advantage the Huskers have.

2. Dysfunction at the top

Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst was mercifully shown the door in 2017, amid the program’s worst season since 1961. Longtime Chancellor Harvey Pearlman, who presided over the program’s long, sad decline, retired the year before. They may be the biggest culprits for Nebraska’s sustained mediocrity in this article.

But things didn’t improve once they were gone. Bill Moos was hired as AD and while he was able to make a couple of splashy hires, he was considered a laissez-faire leader when the department sorely needed a firm hand.

Moos himself felt hamstrung by interference from the Regents, namely Jim Pillen, now Nebraska’s governor, who squashed Moos’ pursuit of Dana Altman for the basketball job. By the end of his tenure, Moos effectively had three bosses. “I didn’t know where to look for support.”

Moos described one of his bosses, Hank Bounds, as inexperienced in a system president role and bemoaned the interference he encountered. Bounds was ultimately replaced with Ted Carter, who later left for and resigned the same post at Ohio State after finding himself embroiled in controversy.

At one point, Nebraska power brokers even entertained the idea of leaving the Big Ten for the Big 12 – a move that would have traded the richest conference in college athletics for a league that pulls in about one-third the revenue. How would that move have sat with Husker fans years later when their former conference lost Texas and Oklahoma and Nebraska was rubbing elbows with schools like UCF and Houston? That such a conversation was even entertained says plenty.

Exhibit A of Nebraska’s dysfunction was Scott Frost’s contract extension. As Moos has since said, the deal was done without consulting him. Nebraska’s administration appeared so invested in keeping Frost happy – and so aware of his resilient popularity in the state – that it extended a coach in September 2019 whose tenure had gotten off to a rocky start, to say the least.

I won’t fault anyone for hiring Frost in the first place. Despite his poor tenure as coach, not getting him would have been devastating for the morale of the fanbase. Even if he had flamed out at Florida, Tennessee or UCF, there would have been those who contended he’d do well back home. But renewing his contract when his tenure had been mediocre at best ultimately cost the school precious dollars and prolonged the agony of his abysmal tenure.

Whether the powers governing the program have gotten their act together remains to be seen. In a recent interview with Adam Breneman, Rhule revealed that upon taking the position, he realized there were “systemic” issues within the program that were too big for any one coach to solve. That sounds like a diplomatic way of saying the Husker program is still figuring things out.

3. Riley took Nebraska backwards in strength and conditioning

Dysfunction wasn’t limited to 2018 on.

By the end of Riley’s tenure in 2017, coaches were meddling in the strength and conditioning department. It was a common refrain that became something of a joke on message boards and Twitter: “The players aren’t even doing back squats.”

But there was truth to it. The team wasn’t, in fact, doing the most fundamental strength exercise for football, electing for safer alternatives instead.

“You can’t run fast or jump high without being able to put force into the ground. And you can’t put force in the ground unless you have strong legs,” longtime strength coach at Nebraska, Randy Gobel (1981 – 2001) said. “The squat is still king.”

The fruits of Riley’s strength program showed up in 2017 when Nebraska fielded perhaps the most physically overmatched defense in its modern history. The defensive line faltered against Arkansas State, yielding 497 total yards before allowing 409 rushing yards to Minnesota. The offensive line was not much better, giving up crucial sacks in a loss to Northern Illinois. Those were supposed to be the easy games on their schedule that year. Instead, Nebraska finished 121st nationally with 107.5 rush yards per game.

When Gobel returned to Lincoln in early 2018, he mistook the team’s linemen for guys off the street. He knew right then Zach Duval, newly installed Strength Coach under Frost, had his work cut out for him.

The human body does not get rebuilt in a single offseason. Whether Duval and Frost ultimately made meaningful progress is debatable – and I won’t defend Frost’s tenure – but there’s no doubt they started in a deep hole.

4. Not taking special teams seriously

Fans still remember Riley’s Special Teams coach, Bruce Read, and his $450,000 salary. After his dismissal, few shed tears. But for all the criticism he took, Read’s units were at least ordinary. After he left, ordinary would have been an upgrade.

It seemed inconsequential when Frost neglected to hire a coach strictly dedicated to special teams in 2018. But the third phase of the game cost Nebraska often during his tenure, never more memorably than in 2021 when Nebraska lost nine games by single digits. Remember Michigan State?

The fans practically begged for Bill Busch to be made Special Teams Coordinator in 2022. Frost relented and the unit improved, though not to a level needed to compensate for other deficiencies.

Rhule came in with Ed Foley, who oversaw a pitiful enterprise. A 2024 season that saw Nebraska’s third phase lose them at least two games – Illinois and Iowa – if not more, was capped with an astonishing ten kicks/punts blocked.

It wasn’t until his third year in 2025 that Rhule elected to finally invest in a proven difference maker for that unit, and for once in the last ten years, Nebraska finished above average by SP+ metrics.

Whether he’s repeating old mistakes now with newly promoted Coordinator Brett Maher remains to be seen.

Nebraska has spent much of the last decade treating special teams like an afterthought instead of an area they can gain an advantage. That is how a program loses close games. It’s also how a program convinces itself that it’s unlucky when, in reality, it’s just ill-prepared.

5. Failing to develop

Development is an oft-overused term but there’s no denying that the process of taking athletes and turning them into football players through practice, weightlifting, repetition, and film study has been sorely lacking at Nebraska. Few do less with more than Nebraska while Big Ten neighbors operate as the antithesis.

Despite Trev Alberts’ goal of finding a head coach who could make Nebraska the premier developmental program again, his chosen candidate, Matt Rhule, has had a checkered start. Many of his recruiting class signees have yet to pan out. Not a single one of his high school offensive line signees is slated to start in 2026.

The lack of talent developed was once again on display during the NFL Draft, when only Emmett Johnson was taken (in the fifth round), tied for the second-worst output among Big Ten programs. Rival Iowa had seven.

Development is made even more difficult by the advent of NIL and the Transfer Portal, something that Rhule didn’t deal with when he coached Temple and Baylor. Players now routinely transfer out in search of quicker playing time and richer deals.

Speaking of which…

6. Recruiting and retention from 2017 on has been a disaster

Of the twenty signees in Nebraska’s 2017 recruiting class, just six (30%) finished their eligibility in Lincoln. Only Brenden Jaimes was drafted. You’d like to consider that the low water mark but it’s actually above average compared to what followed.

Five of 24 played out the string from Scott Frost’s transition class of 2018, counting JUCOs. That’s not even 21 percent of the class. A handful failed to qualify, a few were booted, and a few more were lost to injury. Two were drafted in Cam Jurgens and Cam Taylor-Britt.

Ten of 27 lasted from the 2019 class, a Frost-era high 37%, with Ty Robinson getting selected by the Eagles. Only 21% stuck around from 2020 – tying 2018 for the program low – with none being drafted and only Nash Hutmacher making an NFL roster. 25% kept the faith from the 2021 class, with Thomas Fidone going in the seventh round of the draft.

Thirty-three percent are slated to finish the 2022 class in Lincoln as things stand today. The 2023 class retains less than half, though it was a transition class. Things are trending better from there, with the 2024 class mostly intact. Rhule spent a lot of money to retain this offseason.

The problem wasn’t just that players left. Every program deals with that now. It was that too many looked better once they did.

Nebraska had two NFL receivers on its roster in 2019 and 2020, though one (Luke McCaffrey) played quarterback in Lincoln and the other (Wan’Dale Robinson) was asked to run into the backs of linemen. They both departed after 2020.

Princewill Umanmielen notched nine sacks last year playing for Ole Miss, far surpassing the 1.5 he racked up in two seasons at UNL. Defensive linemen Casey Rogers and Jordon Riley did their best work at Oregon with Riley later being drafted. Nate Boerkircher caught a game-winning TD pass against Notre Dame in his last year with Texas A&M and went in the second round of the draft.

*Includes those who transferred elsewhere

Retention matters because college football development is a compounding investment. Nebraska spent years signing players it either could not keep, could not develop, or could not effectively deploy. That led to a roster that constantly turned over while North division rivals like Iowa and Wisconsin kept turning three-star recruits into fifth-year stalwarts.

At the same time Nebraska was stargazing, they neglected to recruit the likes of Breece Hall, Logan Jones, Sam LaPorta, and James Lynch while missing out on hometown prospects like Xavier Watts, Ben Brahmer, Devon Jackson, Chase Loftin, and Darion Jones.

When Coach Osborne was the head man in Lincoln, he often defaulted to offering in-state kids because, along with the talent and desire they’d bring, they’d also stick around long enough for the Huskers to get their return on investment. In the last decade, Nebraska has spent too much time chasing stars while missing players who would have stayed and produced.

7. Psychological fragility

Psychological fragility is subjective and harder to measure than rushing yards or recruiting rankings, but Nebraska fans know what it looks like: one bad play becoming several, a turnover becoming a quarter-long spiral, a winnable game suddenly feeling like an inevitable loss.

It’s infected multiple staffs, namely Frost’s. But Rhule has carried on the legacy despite showing flashes of progress in 2025. Nebraska finally produced a fourth-quarter comeback against Maryland and it battled back against Northwestern and Michigan State. But the old bugaboos haven’t been vanquished. After the safety against Iowa in 2025, Rhule admitted what everyone else saw: “The air comes out of our tires and all of a sudden now you look up and it’s 40-16.”

“Sometimes plays don’t go our way and we kind of get down on ourselves,” Jimari Butler said after the blowout loss to Indiana in 2024.

“They’re going to start getting rattled and start getting frustrated,” IU linebacker Jailin Walker said, repeating Cignetti’s message from before kickoff.

The Huskers’ fragile psyche isn’t new, not to the fans, its current roster, or the coaches.

It predates the last decade. Pelini’s team regularly started strong, as they did in 2012 against Ohio State, 2013 against UCLA, and 2014 against Wisconsin. The Huskers sprang out to a 17-7 lead against OSU, 21-3 versus UCLA, and 17-7 in Madison. The final scores? 38-63, 21-41, and 24-59. “It was like they saw a ghost,” Pelini candidly commented after the UCLA debacle. It was no ghost – it was a team not mentally strong enough to face adversity.

Why is Nebraska so psychologically susceptible to collapse? Until someone answers that, Nebraska will keep confusing talent problems with temperament problems and close losses with curses.

8. Neglecting the run game

I sat in the second row of Nebraska’s loss at Illinois in 2015, watching Tommy Armstrong struggle to complete barely a third of his throws in cold, blustery conditions while Devine Ozigbo ran for ten yards a carry when given the ball. Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. Within earshot of the Husker bench, I stood and shouted, “Riley, run the ball!” Nebraska lost to a woeful team that day in what is still one of their worst losses of the last fifteen years.

But that game is indicative of a larger problem the program has dealt with. Nebraska is geographically, demographically, and culturally suited to run the football. The weather, the available talent, and the fans themselves are all built for a run game. November in the Big Ten is not an environment for seven-step drops and timing routes. Nebraska’s best local and regional recruiting bets are still more likely to be linemen, tight ends, fullbacks, linebackers, and running backs than five-star receivers.

Still, we see Nebraska try to build around pocket passers, with often disastrous results (see 2017). Nebraska cannot build its future around a thrower and his receivers. Build the line. Build the backs. Build the run game. I’ll go to my grave screaming it.

9. Making Puzzling Assistant Hires

Nebraska has had the money to build elite staffs. Too often, it’s built mismatched ones instead.

Start with Rhule’s original staff in 2023. The only coach retained was Donovan Raiola, whose 2022 offensive line had been disastrous but whose family connection to a certain prized recruit was impossible to ignore. Fans criticized the hiring of 23-year-old wide receivers coach, Garret McGuire. Rhule defended the move on Bussin’ With the Boys, but within two seasons McGuire was gone. Ed Foley, as previously discussed, did not stabilize special teams. More perplexing still, Rhule did not even use his entire assistant salary pool.

The Huskers haven’t always skimped on hiring. They fought off Arkansas to land Bob Diaco, a former Broyles Award winner. Former offensive coordinator Troy Walters was once a finalist for the same award. Zach Duval was voted Strength Coach of the Year in 2017.

But by and large Nebraska has failed to make good on its considerable war chest.

Frost arrived in 2018 without a single assistant who had coached in the Big Ten, then was quickly humbled by the league’s size, weather, line play, and week-to-week physicality. He pulled Matt Lubick out of the financial industry to replace Walters in 2020. Lubick failed to move the needle in two years running the offense.

What’s more, Husker assistants have often operated under differing philosophies, signaling a lack of cohesion among the collective coaching brain trust.

Shawn Eichorst pushed then-coach Mike Riley to fire his longtime friend and defensive coordinator Mark Banker after his Iowa “bloodbath” comments in 2016. Eichorst then hailed Bob Diaco as the best coach on campus. Diaco lasted one season and presided over one of the worst defenses in modern Nebraska history.

Trev Alberts later pushed Frost to hire outside his comfort zone, most notably with Mark Whipple in 2022. The two never saw eye to eye on offensive philosophy. “I think our offensive staff has to learn you’ve got to be a little more creative in this league,” Frost said pointedly after the Northwestern loss. That was not just a postgame complaint. It was Frost publicly distancing himself from the offense he had been pressured to change against his wishes.

Rhule also appeared committed to maintaining the 3-3-5 structure under John Butler, despite Butler having little background in the system before arriving in Lincoln. The result was a porous run defense. It remains to be seen whether Rhule’s preferred offensive vision can fully coexist with Dana Holgorsen’s Air Raid roots.

Hiring renowned offensive line coach Geep Wade is a step in the right direction, as is adding up-and-coming coordinator Rob Aurich. But those hires only matter if they are part of a coherent plan. Nebraska has spent too much of the last decade collecting résumés instead of building staffs.

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