By the time this lands in your inbox, Nebraska volleyball will be a couple of days removed from Wrigley Field.

That feels like enough time to do more than just rehash the whole thing, because most people who wanted to read about the moisture, the towels, the delay and the eventual suspension probably already have. Nebraska and Missouri played 18 points before the court became too much of a concern to continue. That is the TL;DR version. The longer version has more frustration in it because the scene was good enough to make the ending feel worse.

There were 43,067 people at Wrigley (and most of them were in red). To no one’s surprise, there were Nebraska fans everywhere. “Go Big Red” chants echoed through the crowd even before the Huskers took the court. By the time they did, all of those feelings we had three years ago at Volleyball Day in Nebraska came pouring back.

Then the match stopped.

“This was amazing,” Nebraska coach Dani Busboom Kelly said after the match had been called. “I applaud the effort, but there’s a reason our sport’s indoors.”

The idea was big and the setting was memorable. The crowd showed up, and that visual mattered when we talk about growing the game. Unfortunately, no amount of history could overcome the relative humidity as temperatures dropped in Chicago. The playing surface became the story, which is never what you want when the whole point is to showcase the sport.

So, where does Nebraska go from there? Home, finally.

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We wait all offseason for some real information. Due to the anticipation, maybe it’s inevitable that we’ll do too much with the first bit we get. Or too little. It can go both ways.

I spent the first half of Nebraska’s season opening 49-21 win over Ohio thinking these new Huskers didn’t look much different from their immediate predecessors—unforced errors, decent offense without much of a calling card, uneven line play on both sides. I spent most of the second half—minus yet another dreadful offensive drive out of halftime—thinking maybe this NU will be different thanks to in-game defensive adjustments, a strong running game with multiple contributors and maybe the right quarterback for right now.

All those ideas are potentially valid, and that’s the trick of Week 1. It’s the most information we’ve had to this point. In six days, it will be the least amount we have the rest of the year.

Context gets overlooked over opening weekend. That’s the anticipation, too. Fans can’t wait to watch their teams and then process and discuss what they saw. Beyond looking at the scores, there’s not a lot of room to consider what’s happening everywhere else.

Unless you keep reading this newsletter, of course. Let’s try to put some context to the Huskers win and some of what we saw.

All 18 Big Ten1 teams were in action in Week 1. The opening slate across the country does offer a good bit of commonality in that most power conference teams are playing a team they’re expected to beat handily. Nearly half the Big Ten was expected to win by between three and four touchdowns. The teams and opponents are different, but a lot of these games are kind of the same.

So, let’s start there. The table below includes each Big Ten result from Week 1 along with how the Big Ten performed against expectation (i.e. the spread) and—using Bill Connelly’s majestic2 Top 772 ratings, which ranks every NCAA and NAIA team in one list—the overall, offensive and defensive ratings for the Big Ten opponents. The darker the shade in those last three columns, the less resistance a team was projected to face.

Nebraska’s 49 points Saturday were the second-most3 it had scored against an FBS opponent in the Matt Rhule era. The Huskers’ 523 total yards ranked fourth in the Big Ten4 and they were one of five conference teams to score a touchdown on every red zone opportunity. This all came against the seventh-best defense any Big Ten team faced in Week 1. The team one spot ahead of Ohio in the Top 772 ratings, Western Michigan, held Michigan to 13 points.5

The Blackshirts had an easier projected path against just the 12^th-best offense to face a Big Ten team this weekend. At 303 yards allowed, NU ranked 10^th in the conference after one game, though more than half those yards came on the first three drives in a game that included 12 possessions for Ohio.

The social media barbs were flying as Nebraska stumbled to a 14-13 lead over Ohio, but its fourth quarter surge helped the Huskers exceed the market expectation slightly. It was enough to put NU in the top half of the Big Ten for Week 1.

Some of the time there’s value in zooming in. Most of the time, I’ve found, there’s overlooked value in zooming out. Bottom line: Nebraska won about as expected while facing a defense slightly above and an offense slightly below the conference averages for the week. In 10 of the 11 main statistical categories at Game on Paper, Nebraska ranked at or above the 77th percentile compared against all FBS vs. FBS games in 2025.

You’ll take that6 in an opener. On to some individuals…

Anthony Colandrea

I didn’t see a lot to take issue with in the transfer quarterback’s NU debut. Colandrea was a little off his typical completion percentage at 18-for-32 (56.3), but I benchmarked 8.5 yards per pass attempt as a good day going into the game and he finished with 8.6 and three touchdowns. His air yards per throw (depth of target), 7.1, was about average nationally7 for Week 1, but at 9.2 average yards after catch,8 Colandrea ranked ninth among the 320 QBs with at least 20 attempts. Most of the credit might go to the receivers there, but some of it goes to the QB for the putting the ball in places where the pass-catchers can run.

Colandrea also made what felt like a reasonable number of plays with his legs. Take out two sacks and he rushed for 48 yards on eight carries (6.0), including a 13-yard touchdown. Overall, Colandrea’s 0.502 Expected Points Added (EPA) per play ranked 66^th out of 320 QBs playing Week 1. Not jaw-dropping, but plenty good enough.

Jamal Rule

You won’t stop hearing about the freshman this week, and it’s merited. Rule carried 15 times for 122 yards with two touchdowns, averaging 8.1 yards per carry. He also made two catches for 47 yards, and scored that way, too.

Roll it all together and Rule averaged 1.151 EPA per play. That ranked third among the 409 backs with at least 15 total touches. Rule trailed Iowa’s Kamari Moulton, who rushed for 183 yards on 11 carries in a 40-0 win, and Nevada’s Dominic Kelly, who tallied 152 yards on 11 carries in a 49-14 win over Western Kentucky.

Against a defense that’s expected to be something this year, Rule helped power Nebraska to 248 rushing yards, the second-best total of the Rhule era.

B1G winners, losers & others

I’m taking more of a conference-first approach this season for two reasons: 1) it’s 75% of the games a Big Ten team is guaranteed to play, and 2) it’s where NU has fallen mostly short so far under Rhule (and for most of the past decade).

Winners: UCLA gets my top honor this week, beating Cal 45-24 in an impressive debut for Bob Chesney’s new team. Northwestern isn’t far behind after pulling away from a dangerous South Dakota State team. And maybe this was because it was on Friday night, but hat tip to USC which blanked what should be a good Fresno State team, 3-0. The Trojans are already 2-0.

Losers: Rutgers, obviously. The Scarlet Knights lost to UMass as nearly a 30-point favorite in what was probably the Minutemen’s biggest win as an FBS program. Rutgers will only be favored in one game the rest of the way, a Sept. 25 visit from Howard. Michigan controversially beat Western Michigan on a Hail Mary, but the Wolverine offense was dominated by its MAC opponent. Plenty of time to change things, of course, but this was a serious sign of trouble. Quarterback Bryce Underwood was 12-for-22 for 170 yards, but that includes a 50-yard Hail Mary.

Others: This is the category for the teams that were mostly fine, which includes Nebraska, though I’d put the Huskers at that designation with a slightly upward trend based on one game. Iowa scored more points than I thought it would against NIU. Illinois allowed more points than I thought it would against UAB. Oregon looks like an underachiever by the spread for a 7-point win over Boise State, but maybe the Broncos are just good…again. Not worried about the Ducks. Sunday’s Apple Cup was a mildly surprising scuffle for ranked Washington. Wisconsin hung tough for a while against Notre Dame at Lambeau Field—maybe a sign of life in Luke Fickell’s fourth season—before it looked like it was expected. Finally, Maryland played Hampton, the only game I have no thoughts on.

The season is here and you know what that means: Game Day guides are back for another season. You can expect to find these in your inbox every Saturday morning to get you ready for the day ahead.

Nebraska opens the 2026 season later this morning against Ohio, and there is plenty to sort through before kickoff: a new quarterback, a veteran roster, a familiar name connected to both programs and a very hot September morning at Memorial Stadium.

So grab water and maybe some sunscreen. Let’s get into it.

Nebraska vs. Ohio

When: Saturday, Sept. 5 | 11 a.m. CT
Where: Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Nebraska
TV: FS1
TV crew: Eric Collins, Spencer Tillman
Radio: Huskers Radio Network
Radio crew: Kyle Crooks, Jay Moore, Jessica Coody
Streaming audio: Huskers.com / Official Huskers App

Records: Nebraska 0-0; Ohio 0-0
2025 records: Nebraska 7-6; Ohio 9-4
Series: First meeting
Weather note: It’s going to be hot. Nebraska is allowing fans to bring one sealed bottle of water into Memorial Stadium and empty personal water bottles are still allowed for refill inside.

Setting the scene

Nebraska starts Year 4 under Matt Rhule with something it has not always had in recent years: experience.

The Huskers went 7-6 for the second straight season in 2025, but this roster looks more seasoned than the ones Rhule had earlier in his tenure. Nebraska has 115 players on the roster, and 83 of them are at least in their third season of college football. The Huskers return six starters on offense, six on defense, their punter and their place-kicker.

They also added 16 transfers, including 15 from FBS programs. That transfer group brings 200 career starts, with 188 at the FBS level and 112 at Power Four programs.

As for Ohio, the Bobcats are not showing up as some throwaway Week 1 opponent in Lincoln. They went 9-4 last season, won six of their final seven games and beat UNLV in the Frisco Bowl.

That UNLV part is relevant, of course, because Anthony Colandrea was on the other side of that game. Now Colandrea gets Ohio again, this time as Nebraska’s starting quarterback.

Rhule on the moment

On opening the season against Ohio and Frank Solich’s connection to both programs:

“I don’t think you can talk about a Nebraska vs. Ohio football game without talking about Coach (Frank) Solich. I think it was my first spring here when Trev (Alberts) and I talked to Coach and got him back into Memorial Stadium, into the fold.”

On what usually decides first games:

“In the first games, you have to focus more on yourself than the opponent and make sure that you’re doing the things. If you all watch college football this weekend, the first games are usually either won or lost in four areas. Usually in special teams blunders, usually in penalties, turnovers, and you see a lot of bad tackling out there.”

On leadership and captains:

“Leadership is not speeches, it’s quiet conversations in quiet moments. We have a lot of guys on our team. This is the most guys I’ve ever been around where I’ve been like, this guy can be a single-digit or this guy can be a captain. We aren’t doing captains. That might change, but we are going to go with game captains and give guys multiple chances to lead and let the tenure of the season let us see who is there.”

On the defense:

“It feels right, it looks right. I believe the defense is connected.”

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Storylines to remember

Anthony Colandrea gets Ohio again

You really could not draw this up much cleaner if you tried.

Colandrea’s final game at UNLV was a 17-10 loss to Ohio in the Frisco Bowl. His first game at Nebraska is against that same Ohio program, only now he is in Memorial Stadium, in a Dana Holgorsen offense and leading a team with much bigger expectations.

Holgorsen said Nebraska went back and studied that bowl game.

“The last game he played was against Ohio, right?” Holgorsen said. “We went back and studied that game, and I see a different kid right now.”

That is probably the biggest thing to watch on Saturday. Colandrea has arm talent and he has confidence. Nebraska didn’t bring him in to play scared, but Holgorsen has also talked about reeling him in at times, making the routine play and not letting one wow throw turn into two dangerous ones.

For his part, Colandrea is not making the Ohio rematch too complicated.

“I would say I’m the same person, but quarterback-wise I’m playing with a whole new team in a way,” Colandrea said. “I’m just super excited to play them again.”

Ohio is not coming in scared

Nebraska should win this game, but Ohio is not some mystery program wandering into Memorial Stadium just happy to be there. The Bobcats played Power Four opponents last year, battled back at Rutgers1 and closed the season strong.

Holgorsen made sure to point that out this week.

“They’re gritty, they’re tough,” Holgorsen said. “They aren’t going to come in here scared. One of the most impressive things that I’ve seen from a Group of Five team going to a Power Four school was what they did at Rutgers last year. They were down 31-14 at halftime. Most Group of Five teams are going to quit. That group didn’t. Then they beat West Virginia the next week… We know they’re going to come in here and play their tail off.”

That should be enough to get Nebraska’s attention.

Season openers can get weird, if we’re being honest. There’s new personnel, new coordinators, new special teams units, first-game tackling, heat and nerves. All of it can show up on Saturday. Nebraska’s job is to keep the game boring in the right ways.

A veteran roster should look like one

The Huskers have 1,467 combined career games played and 494 starts on the roster. They return production. They added transfers who have already played real snaps elsewhere. That means that the offensive line has experience. The quarterback room does too. The defense has veteran additions at multiple levels.

That obviously does not guarantee anything but it does change the expectations a bit.

Nebraska should not look overwhelmed by Week 1 details. It should tackle well, protect the football and avoid turning special teams into an adventure. It should look like a team with enough older players to handle an opener cleanly.

Rhule said Nebraska is focusing heavily on the things it can control, which feels like the right approach in Week 1 and Week 12.

A new-look defense gets its first public test

Rob Aurich’s first game as Nebraska’s defensive coordinator comes with plenty of curiosity.

The Huskers were good defensively last season, ranking in the top 30 nationally in total defense for the third straight year. Now Aurich takes over with a standard to maintain and a roster that added experience through the portal.

Rhule’s description of the defense this week was less about scheme and more about connection. That will matter Saturday, especially early. First games are when pursuit angles get sloppy, communication breaks down and missed tackles can turn routine plays into problems.

Ohio will have some unknowns but Nebraska should still be able to set the tone physically. If the Blackshirts are connected, as Rhule said, it should show up quickly.

Run the backs and sort it out from there

Nebraska has multiple backs it believes can play and Rhule did not sound interested in narrowing the conversation too much before kickoff.

“Everything we do, we play to win,” he said. “This is a fantastic football program that we are going against; we have three backs that we feel like are all in that upper realm of playing, so we will play all of them.”

That will be worth watching, especially with Colandrea making his first start in a Nebraska uniform. A steady run game would help everyone. It gives the quarterback easier answers, lets the offensive line settle in and keeps Ohio from turning the day into a scramble.

The other part is simple: Nebraska needs to know what it has. Week 1 is not the time to get cute just for the sake of it, but it is a chance to see how the running back rotation looks when the lights come on.

What the numbers say

2 — Nebraska has finished 7-6 in each of the last two seasons, giving the Huskers back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2013 and 2014.

10 — Nebraska is one of 10 teams to rank in the top 30 nationally in total defense each of the last three years.

16 — Nebraska added 16 first-year transfers this offseason, including 15 from FBS programs.

69% — According to the Big Ten Network, Nebraska ranks third in the FBS by returning 69 percent of its production from 2025.

105 — The temperature could feel close to triple digits by halftime, so the water-bottle exception is worth remembering if you’ll be in Lincoln.

173 — Frank Solich won 173 games as a college head coach, including 58 at Nebraska and 115 at Ohio.

Odds and ends

>> Gates 1, 6 and 8 will be closed throughout the 2026 season. Gates 18, 19 and 21 will close after kickoff. Gate 11 will be used only as an ADA and service entrance.

>> Nebraska Athletics and the City of Lincoln are encouraging fans to use Waze for traffic updates because of construction and changes around Memorial Stadium.

>> The Big Red Rebuild will not fully begin until after the 2026 season, but some walking paths, parking areas and gate entries may be affected this fall.

>> Nebraska has won 99 of its 136 season openers, including an 86-14-3 mark at home.

>> Ohio coach John Hauser is in his first full season leading the Bobcats after guiding them to a bowl win last year.

So, here we are. It’s officially the first Saturday of Nebraska’s football season. It’s the first chance to see Colandrea in a Nebraska uniform, as well as to see what a veteran roster actually looks like in practice.

It is going to be hot though, so maybe not football weather just yet but that’s OK. Football is still back regardless.

Drink water. Wear sunscreen. See you later.2

Nebraska volleyball has already had a full week but it’s not over yet.

The Huskers officially opened the season with a Players Era Showcase title, Bergen Reilly earned Big Ten Setter of the Week and now Nebraska gets another made-for-TV volleyball moment: DePaul at Wintrust Arena on Friday and then Missouri at Wrigley Field on Sunday for the Big Ten/SEC Challenge.

That said, volleyball is not the only thing happening around Nebraska athletics though. Flag football already has a national showcase before its first season, basketball has a date to mark on the calendar, Isabelle Bourne is headed to the World Cup and baseball has its fall schedule set.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

1. Flag football gets a CFP stage

Nebraska flag football will compete in the first College Football Playoff Flag Football Showcase in Las Vegas from Jan. 22-24, 2027.

The event will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center during College Football Playoff National Championship week. Nebraska will play in the varsity division with Manhattan University, Eastern Michigan and Cal Poly, while USC, Cal, Oklahoma, UCLA, Arizona and Arizona State are set for the club division.

If it feels like flag football is moving quickly for Nebraska, you wouldn’t be wrong. The Huskers announced women’s flag football in January as the school’s 25th varsity program and originally planned to begin competition in 2028. That timeline has since been moved up to spring 2027.

“Flag football is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, and we are excited that our student-athletes will get to participate in this fast-paced sport one year earlier than previously planned,” athletics director Troy Dannen said. “Our coaches have done an outstanding job assembling a talented roster and with the recent change in NCAA rules granting student-athletes five years of eligibility, we determined that we were prepared to play in 2027.”

Worth noting: Nebraska’s first roster includes 16 players from seven states.

2. Basketball gets an Opening Night date

Nebraska basketball season is still a month away but the first public date is now on the calendar. Opening Night is set for Friday, Oct. 2, from 7-8:30 p.m. at the intersection of R Street and Canopy Street (AKA, right outside Pinnacle Bank Arena). The event is free and will include both the men’s and women’s programs, with team introductions, comments from Fred Hoiberg and Amy Williams, player remarks, contests and autographs.

The Husker men are coming off a 28-7 season and the program’s first NCAA Sweet 16 appearance. Pryce Sandfort is back after averaging 18.1 points and setting Nebraska’s single-season 3-point record. Braden Frager also returns after earning Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year honors.

The women are chasing a fourth straight NCAA Tournament appearance with Britt Prince back after a freshman season in which she led Nebraska in points, assists and steals. Amiah Hargrove, Logan Nissley and Natalie Potts give the Huskers more proven pieces, and Ashlyn Koupal arrives as the first McDonald’s High School All-American in program history.

3. Isabelle Bourne is on the World Cup stage

Former Husker Isabelle Bourne will represent Australia at the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin. Bourne, who played at Nebraska from 2019-20 through 2022-23, was added to the Opals’ roster as they enter the tournament ranked No. 2. Australia opens Group C play against Puerto Rico on Friday, then faces Turkiye on Sunday and Belgium on Monday.

For Nebraska fans, this is another chance to follow one of Williams’ former players on a major international stage. Bourne was a three-time honorable-mention All-Big Ten selection and three-time captain as a Husker, finishing her Nebraska career with 1,221 points and 648 rebounds. She has continued to build from there.

Bourne helped Australia win the FIBA Asia Cup in 2025, averaging 6.8 points and 3.2 rebounds off the bench as the Opals went 5-0. She also averaged 16.0 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.0 assists for the Southside Flyers in Australia’s WNBL last season.

Next up, she will join the Sydney Flames, where she will reunite with former Husker teammate Jaz Shelley.

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4. Baseball has its fall schedule

Nebraska baseball released its fall schedule this week and there are a few dates worth keeping note of.

The Huskers will travel to Wichita State on Saturday, Sept. 26, then host Creighton on Friday, Oct. 9. After that, Nebraska will hold its annual Red-White Series from Oct. 13-15 at Hawks Field at Haymarket Park.

Start times for the Red-White Series are still to be announced, but the Creighton exhibition and the Red-White games will be free and open to the public.

5. Bergen Reilly honored before another big volleyball weekend

Bergen Reilly was named Big Ten Setter of the Week on Monday after helping Nebraska sweep UNLV and No. 2 Texas at the Players Era Showcase.

Reilly was also named MVP of the event and it was not hard to see why. She set Nebraska to a .315 hitting percentage over the weekend and helped change the Texas match from the service line, where her 10-0 run in the first set put the Longhorns in a hole they never really escaped.

Against UNLV, Reilly had 32 assists, 10 digs, five kills, three blocks and an ace. Against Texas, she added 30 assists, five digs, two kills, two aces and a block.

It was her 14th career Big Ten Setter of the Week honor.

Now Nebraska’s road swing continues. The Huskers play at DePaul on Friday at 5 p.m. on FS1, then face Missouri at Wrigley Field on Sunday at 8 p.m. on FOX.

The Wrigley match is the obvious attention-grabber but both matches say something. Since Volleyball Day in Nebraska in 2023, the Huskers have kept showing up in professional venues. This weekend they add Wintrust Arena and Wrigley Field to the list.

Nebraska is also still No. 1 in the latest AVCA Coaches Poll, with 57 first-place votes. It is the Huskers’ 125th week all-time at No. 1, the most of any program nationally.

Through three matches, Nebraska has held opponents to an .068 hitting percentage, which ranks fourth nationally and first in the Big Ten. The Huskers have also been excellent once they get to 20 points first, going 105-0 in sets under Dani Busboom Kelly when reaching the red zone first.

That is a bit of a ridiculous number. It also says a lot about how quickly Nebraska can close when it gets control of a set.

July is a bad time to have to hire a football coach, but so it was at Ohio in 2021. Frank Solich, citing health concerns, stepped down two months ahead of the season opener. The Bobcats promoted offensive coordinator Tim Albin. He was sort of Solich’s Frank Solich, starting as a GA at Nebraska and then spending 16 seasons as an assistant in Athens. Albin did well, going 33-19 and winning a MAC title before making the odd decision1 to depart for Charlotte.

Ohio again kept things in-house, hiring offensive coordinator Brian Smith ahead of 2025. That was going well enough at 8-4 before an internal investigation found “professional misconduct” that led to Smith’s firing. Defensive coordinator John Hauser took over as interim and landed the head role after a bowl win.

That’s a lot for five years, so maybe it’s no surprise as Ohio prepares to visit Lincoln that Hauser seems to have chosen stability. He chose last year’s backup QB over the FCS star transfer. The Bobcats will start a running back from Cologne, Germany, also last year’s backup, over a transfer from UConn. The top-line receivers are all returnees. A first-year transfer won three of 22 spots outright on Ohio’s first two-deep of the season.

Nebraska’s depth chart includes 10 such transfers alone in the top spot. It feels far removed from Matt Rhule saying the Huskers had their “own portal” in spring 2024, referring to how much NU had retained from its previous roster.

Times change. Context changes. Pressure changes.

We get our first look Saturday how this all might come together. All this roster churn across the sport makes the kind of preview I want to do nearly impossible for an opening game. So, instead of three keys to the game, here are three signs of “health” I think we need to see.

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Volleyball season is officially here in Nebraska and the Huskers had plenty to take from their first official weekend of the season. The Texas match in particular probably gave us the cleanest answer to one of the biggest preseason questions: could the Huskers’ serving actually become a weapon?

Against No. 2 Texas, the answer looked like yes.

Nebraska swept the Longhorns 25-19, 25-19, 25-16 on Sunday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, moving to 2-0 in official matches and closing out the Players Era Volleyball Showcase with a solid weekend performance. The Huskers hit .293—while holding Texas to .152—and out-blocked the Longhorns 10-4. Setter Bergen Reilly was named showcase MVP after running the offense with 30 assists, two aces, two kills and five digs.

That said, the match really tilted from the end line.

Nebraska finished with seven aces and six service errors. Texas had eight service errors and no aces. That’s a pretty simple place to start when reviewing what we saw over the weekend.

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College football is back. There were eight games involving an FBS team on Saturday. If you weren’t able to clear your schedule, here are the big takeaways from Week 0: Bill Belichick is back, Virginia is winning the ACC, USC has some cool freshmen but fell three touchdowns short of covering the spread, North Dakota State still might be good at this level and Florida State still might not.

We’re always working with a small sample size in this sport, but it’s still strange to see the college football media machine start on its first pull and run flawlessly even though everyone acknowledges we still know nothing. The live reaction shows must go live on YouTube. The recaps and columns must be written. The only reaction with any traction at this early stage1 is overreaction. “North Carolina beat TCU in a foreign country, which is something but not everything,” isn’t a very strong take, but it is my take.

There was, however, one angle into these eight games that interested me—experience. Nebraska has put some chips on this facet of football being a winner in today’s game. A lot of teams are. Indiana’s two years of success under Curt Cignetti are setting the agenda. It’s probably an oversimplification, but you can’t deny the Hoosiers had their two best years in program history, in the coach’s first two years, by not trying to recruit better players and develop them.

No, Indiana just “got old” right away—a familiar coaching cliché—and the on-field results make this the new strategy anyone can notice and adopt. And it might not be a bad strategy, despite its obviousness. The eight games we saw over the weekend certainly didn’t refute it.

If you just went by ESPN’s returning production rankings, the more experienced teams went 6-2 in Week 0. The exceptions were North Carolina grinding out a win in Ireland over TCU and North Dakota State drilling Jacksonville State in Fargo in the Bison’s FBS debut. Outside those two examples, the more experienced team won in the first eight games we’ve seen in 2026.

But returning production is something we only measure in the offseason. How did the actual games go? I compared the experience angle against three other real-time stats I consider pretty important: success rate, explosiveness and turnover margin.

The teams that won success rate in Week 0—meaning they “won” more plays than their opponent based on specific thresholds—went 8-0. This is the calming part of college football. It is the world working the way you assume it should work. Win more plays, win more games.

Explosive plays and turnovers are the more talked about parts of college football, and they didn’t fare as well over our 2026 introduction. The teams with an explosiveness edge went 3-5 on Saturday. North Carolina, USC, Stanford, Florida State and Memphis all got out-exploded but won.

The teams with a positive turnover margin went 4-3. North Carolina, USC and Memphis won despite losing the turnover battle, and two of those games (UNC-TCU, Memphis-UNLV) were close enough on the line to be considered tossups.2

You’re never going to top the ex post facto value of determining which team won more plays.3 More random aspects of the game—explosive plays and turnovers—get more attention, but both fared worse than a simple approximation of experience over the first college football weekend.

This isn’t bad news for Nebraska as we kick off game week. The Huskers rank third in ESPN’s returning production tally.4 The only “more experienced team” they’ll face will be Maryland, and that’s a game at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 3. Nebraska is eight spots ahead of the next most experienced team it will face, Oregon, based on returning production.

By The Athletic’s unit of measure—which tallied career snaps and starts—NU is the 16^th-most experienced team in the country by snaps. It will face three “more experienced teams” based on that list: Michigan State, Indiana and Rutgers.

It’s still too early to tell if experience is the trump card in today’s college football. What we can say is it worked pretty well as that through all the (scant few) games we’ve seen thus far. We can also say that Nebraska has it. It will be the more experienced team, based on multiple preseason measures, in most of the game it will play in 2026. That was an intentional decision based on the current market.

The Huskers will (presumably5) release a depth chart later today. I don’t expect many surprises. Most everyone in the two-deep—outside maybe running back—will have plenty of past to point to. That was also intentional.

It’s a reasonable decision. The start to 2026 did nothing to diminish it. We’ll find out if it was the right decision for Lincoln soon enough.

It’s Friday, and you know what that means. It’s time for the Friday Five.

Before we get into it, we have to start in Arlington. Nebraska volleyball took part in the inaugural Spikes Under the Lights at AT&T Stadium, alongside SMU, Penn State and Florida. The Huskers faced Florida in their first match and SMU in their second. By the time this lands in your inbox, we’ll know a little more about what that first public test looked like.

That said, it was still an exhibition. We don’t need to make too much of one night. Still, it was the first chance to see Nebraska against another team and that is worth something before the Huskers officially start the season.

Now, onto the rest of the week.

1. Nebraska flag football is arriving sooner than expected

Nebraska women’s flag football will play its first competitive season in the spring of 2027, one year earlier than originally planned.

The Huskers announced flag football as their 25th varsity sport in January, with Liz Sowers later named the program’s first head coach. Katie Sowers is serving as associate head coach, Amy Stephens is the director of operations and Associate AD Jami Hagedorn is the sport administrator. The first roster includes 16 players, with 11 transfers and five freshmen from seven states. Nebraska will play home games at Barbara Hibner Stadium, which is also home to Husker soccer.

“Flag football is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, and we are excited that our student-athletes will get to participate in this fast-paced sport one year earlier than previously planned,” athletic director Troy Dannen said. “Our coaches have done an outstanding job assembling a talented roster and with the recent change in NCAA rules granting student-athletes five years of eligibility, we determined that we were prepared to play in 2027.”

It is a pretty big move for a program that, not that long ago, was still more idea than reality.

“When we arrived at Nebraska, we couldn’t wait to get started so we are thrilled to bring flag football to Husker fans this spring,” coach Liz Sowers said. “We are excited about the roster we have built over the last few months, and we are excited for Husker Nation to watch our team. We are blessed with a beautiful facility, amazing resources and we can’t wait to represent the N in front of the greatest fans in the country.”

Women’s flag football was approved by the NCAA as an emerging sport in January, with the first NCAA championship expected in 2028. Nebraska will now get a season under its belt before that championship arrives.

2. Bowlin Stadium gets the Big Ten spotlight

Nebraska softball will host the 2027 Big Ten Tournament at Rhonda Revelle Field at Bowlin Stadium.

“We are honored that Nebraska and Bowlin Stadium have been selected as the host site for the 2027 Big Ten Tournament,” head coach Rhonda Revelle said. “Our staff will take pride in putting on a first-class event. The environment at Bowlin Stadium will be electric.”

Nebraska’s softball crowds have been building in a real way that makes this decision make a lot of sense. The top 10 attendance marks in program history have all come in the last two years, and Nebraska averaged 2,780 fans per game in 2026, which ranked third nationally.

The Huskers also hosted the Big Ten Tournament in 2013 and now become the first program to host it twice since the tournament returned that year. For a program entering Revelle’s 35th season, this feels like a fitting reward for both the current momentum and the foundation that helped create it.

3. Tennis will have plenty happening in Lincoln

Both Nebraska tennis programs released fall schedules this week and Lincoln will have plenty of chances to see high-level tennis at the Sid and Hazel Dillon Tennis Center.

The women will host three events this fall: the Husker Invitational from Sept. 25-27, the UTR Pro Tennis Tour Tournament from Sept. 28-Oct. 2 and the ITF W15 Lincoln from Nov. 9-15. Nebraska also has ITA events on the schedule, the TCU Jae Foundation Battle of the Boot and the NCAA Individual Championships in Athens, Georgia.

The women return seven players from last year’s team, including seniors Maria Taranova, Reya Lee Coe, Tiziana Rossini and Emma Rizzetto. Conley Raidt, Catherine Gagnon and Katie Spencer are also back, while Neda Rahimkhani is set to make her Nebraska debut after transferring from Baylor.

The men will also host the UTR Pro Tennis Tour Tournament from Sept. 28-Oct. 2, then bring the ITA Regional Tournament to Lincoln from Oct. 7-11. Their fall schedule also includes the Creighton Invite in Omaha, the Big Ten Individual Championships in Ann Arbor and NCAA Championships in Orlando.

The men’s roster has three returners—Henry Lamchinniah, Niels Van Der Sijs and Jeri Lassila—plus three freshmen and four transfers.

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4. Danny Odem gets an early national nod

Nebraska cornerback Danny Odem III was named to the preseason list for the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award this week. Odem is one of 37 players on the list and one of 12 defensive players. The award includes both true freshmen and redshirt freshmen, with semifinalists set to be announced Nov. 3 and the winner named Dec. 28.

For Nebraska fans, Odem is already one of the more interesting young names on the roster. He arrived from The First Academy in Orlando, where he was a five-star prospect and ranked by 247Sports as the No. 19 player in the 2026 class.

Of course, freshman honors in August are mostly about potential and Odem still has to turn that potential into something on the field. But it is a positive sign of the type of young talent Nebraska has added no matter what. For a defensive back room that has been worth watching all offseason, Odem gives Husker fans one more reason to keep an eye on the freshmen once the season begins.

5. Former Huskers are back on the international stage

A group of former Nebraska men’s basketball players is back in action this week for the second round of 2027 FIBA World Cup qualifying.

Rienk Mast is playing for the Netherlands, Thorir Thorbjarnarson for Iceland, Keisei Tominaga for Japan and Tai Webster for New Zealand. Each team has two games in the qualifying window, which runs Thursday through Monday.

Mast’s return is especially notable because it is his first official national team appearance since 2023, when he played in the FIBA Pre-Olympic Qualifying Tournament. He also played for the Netherlands in World Cup qualifying in 2019. Most recently, he was with the Indiana Pacers in NBA Summer League, where he averaged 15.3 points and 9.0 rebounds over four games in Las Vegas.

Thorbjarnarson, Tominaga and Webster all played for their national teams in the previous qualifying window. Tominaga has appeared in all six of Japan’s qualifiers, while Webster helped New Zealand reach the second round with wins over the Philippines and Guam.

There is also a Jack McVeigh note here, even though he is not on Australia’s 12-man team for this week. Australia sits at 6-0 in Group E, while New Zealand is 4-2 in the same group. Japan is also 4-2 in Group F.

It is always fun when Nebraska connections show up internationally and this week gives us a few.

Indiana entered last year’s Big Ten Championship game averaging 44.3 points per game. Ohio State wasn’t far behind at 37. Yet oddsmakers put the total for this game around 46.5 points with the Buckeyes favored by 4 or 5. The expectation for this game was basically something close to 26-21, Ohio State.

Instead, Indiana won a rock fight, 13-10.

This might be important for Nebraska in 2026 as it tries to maintain modest gains in Matt Rhule’s first season. The Huskers are one of a handful of teams with five AP preseason top 25 opponents on the schedule.

Increasingly in college football, winning those games—the ranked win that has infamously eluded NU since 2016—means winning a rock fight.

Is Nebraska ready to do it?

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We don’t typically send newsletters on Wednesdays, but I wanted to pop in with something a little different. This morning—as in the moment this newsletter arrives in your inbox—my new podcast with Amie Just called Six Zone Duo will have launched. It’s a weekly national women’s volleyball show and our first episode is out right now.

Before I get too far into that though, I want to make one thing clear: Counter Read is still Counter Read.

This newsletter is not suddenly becoming Six Zone Duo. Brandon and I are still doing what we set out to do here, which is tell good sports stories, ask better questions, go a little deeper when we can and build something that feels worth opening when it lands in your inbox.

That part still matters deeply to me.

When Brandon and I started Counter Read three years ago, we really believed there was room for thoughtful sports coverage that did not always have to fit into the usual boxes. We wanted a place for stories that could breathe a little. We wanted to write about Nebraska, women’s sports, college athletics and the things around sports that deserve more care and context.

And because so many of you have subscribed, read, shared, paid, encouraged us or simply kept showing up, Counter Read has become something that has opened other doors.

Six Zone Duo is one of those doors.

When Split Zone Duo approached me about helping launch a national women’s volleyball podcast, I could not say no. The sport is having such an interesting, exciting moment, and I do not mean that in a vague “women’s sports are growing” kind of way, even though they absolutely are. I mean, you can feel it.

You can feel it in the arenas. You can feel it in the TV numbers. You can feel it in the way people talk about the players now. You can feel it in the fact that college volleyball has become appointment viewing for more people and that professional volleyball is getting more investment, more attention and more room to grow.

The audience is already here. The coverage should be here, too.

That is what Amie and I are hoping to build with Six Zone Duo. It is not specifically a Nebraska volleyball podcast, although Nebraska will obviously be part of the conversation. It is a national women’s volleyball podcast at its core. We’ll talk through matches, teams, players, coaches and the bigger things happening around the sport.

The show is presented by Homefield and executive produced by Split Zone Duo co-founders Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner. If you know college football podcasts, you probably know what Richard and Alex have built. To be part of their first expansion beyond Split Zone Duo is honestly pretty special.

It also feels special because of the way these worlds overlap.

Counter Read has always been part sportswriting, part curiosity project and part community. Six Zone Duo comes from that same place for me. It is another way to cover something I care about with the kind of seriousness, joy and attention I think it deserves.

There will naturally be some crossover here and there. Heck, you might even see Brandon make an appearance over there or a Six Zone Duo piece make its way over here. Volleyball is already part of what we cover at Counter Read1, after all, and that will not change. The podcast is its own thing, with its own feeds, its own social accounts2 and its own rhythm.

I mostly wanted to tell you about it here because you all are a big reason I get to do something like this in the first place.

Counter Read exists because people decided to support it. Some of you have been here since the beginning. Some of you are newer. Some of you pay for subscriptions, some of you read for free. All of it matters. Truly.

So consider this a thank you, an introduction and maybe an invitation.

The first episode of Six Zone Duo is out now—we recap the weekend that was of the AVCA First Serve—and new episodes will release every Monday after that. You’ll be able to find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get podcasts.

If volleyball is not your thing? That is OK, too3. Counter Read will still be here. But if it is your thing, or if you are curious, I hope you’ll check it out.

This sport is getting bigger. The conversation around it should, too. I’m really excited to be part of that.

Nebraska’s season does not officially start Thursday night, but it still feels like Thursday night matters. To some degree, at least, even if the result doesn’t factor into the final record.

The Huskers are headed to AT&T Stadium for Spikes Under the Lights, where No. 17 Florida is waiting. It’s an exhibition, yes, but it’s also Nebraska’s first match this fall against someone else. It’s also the first chance to put the Red-White Scrimmage in better context and the Huskers’ first step into a season that already comes with No. 1 attached to it.

The Big Ten Conference has technically already started. Wisconsin went 1-1 at AVCA First Serve, losing to Kentucky and then sweeping Louisville. Penn State is also in Arlington with Nebraska this week for a ranked match with SMU.

That said, it’s going to be a bit before Nebraska needs to worry about the Big Ten. That’s a positive too, because the Huskers can use this time to get their own answers to questions that may feel unanswered.

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We’re getting close now. Later this week—on Thursday or Friday according to Matt Rhule—Nebraska will transition from camp mode to an in-season schedule. The Huskers will have a “mock game” Saturday, not just with refs but with a game clock simulating when they come out for warmups, when they exit, etc. Then it’s on to Ohio officially.

With Rhule still honoring offseason omertà, let’s use this transition time to take a quick look at the other teams on Nebraska’s schedule. The goal here is to give you one big development from fall camp for each opponent, though big is somewhat relative. As has thankfully been the case with Nebraska’s camp thus far, sometimes the developments are big-picture small.

Either way, you should still learn something about the teams standing in NU’s way this season.

Ohio: The Bobcats named Nick Poulos their starting quarterback over the weekend. That’ll make his first career start next week’s opener in Lincoln, but Poulos has appeared in 12 games for Ohio over the past two seasons. That makes him sort of the safe option as John Hauser takes over the head coaching role after spending the last four seasons in Athens as an assistant and coordinator.

Bowling Green: The Falcons have yet to make a call at QB with Oregon transfer Austin Novosad and Jay Kastantin, an addition from Division II Assumption University in Massachusetts, battling it out. Make of that what you will. I make of it that Bowling Green might not be in a great spot behind center right now. The good news: The Falcons open the season at home against an FCS opponent. The bad news: They’re only 2.5-point favorites over preseason No. 5 Tarleton State, which will already have a game under its belt.

North Dakota: Not a lot of breaking news out of the Fighting Hawks camp, but they did name five captains and two of them are Nebraskans—Edge Lance Rucker (Millard South) and offensive lineman Trace Thaden (Millard West). Quarterback Jerry Kaminski, a fellow captain, won the skills competition at the Manning Passing Academy over the offseason. That might only remind people here of the Tanner Lee era, but Kaminski did have to beat out a number of FBS QBs for that award. North Dakota opened at No. 10 in the FCS rankings, and I remain convinced this is the toughest of NU’s nonconference trio. It has the potential to be that kind of game.

Michigan State: Pat Fitzgerald said last week that MSU could have up to nine wide receivers in its rotation. That’s (probably) too many receivers, man, but it’s a useful indicator of where the Spartans sit early this season. They’re attempting an overhaul with 29 incoming transfers. You could convince me almost anything is possible in East Lansing this season. Nebraska’s best edge in the Big Ten opener might be catching this team early, when it might still be mulling the merits of nine receivers.

Maryland: This is the most unfortunate development for a team on the schedule so far as the Terrapins lost sophomore edge Zahir Mathis for the season. He ranked second on the team in 2025 with 6.0 sacks, trailing only fellow true freshman Sidney Stewart, and it was a bit surprising Maryland was able to hang on to both after such strong debut seasons in the Big Ten. The NIL Standard estimated Mathis’s roster value at $760,000, fourth highest on the team.

Indiana: For a moment in early August, it looked like the nouveau riche were getting plus riche thanks to a court injunction that meant the NCAA’s new “five-for-five” eligibility rule could be applied to 2022 recruits who had already played four college seasons. That allowed edge Kellan Wyatt and defensive lineman Stephen Daley to return to Bloomington. Wyatt was a seven-game starter for last year’s national champions before being injured, and Daley ranked third nationally with 19.0 tackles for loss. Pretty notable additions for the sixth-ranked Hoosiers, but now that’s on hold after an appeals court granted the NCAA a stay of the previous injunction. The Hoosiers will still be fine up front, and probably across the board, but a court may decide if they’re plus Indiana in 2026. College sports are fun right now.

Oregon: Nothing much to see in Eugene and nothing at all if you’re quarterback Dante Moore—he’s taking a break from social media. You know you’ve got a program in a pretty good spot when this is a prominent headline for the No. 2 team in the country.1 This still seems like the least winnable game on the schedule.

Washington: “Our guys know who’s playing,” head coach Jedd Fisch said over the weekend after the Huskies’ latest scrimmage. Maybe that’s not a surprise given Washington ranked 15^th nationally in Bill Connelly’s returning production, but the knowns here might include at least four true freshmen at key spots, including two on the defensive line, the left tackle(!) and a cornerback. This might be a good encapsulation of the Huskies in 2026—upwardly mobile but not inevitable.

Illinois: For as solid as Illinois has been over the past two seasons, Bret Bielema’s been doing some wheeling and dealing this August, adding transfers at tight end and wide receiver this month. Both were accomplished FCS players who were out of eligibility, so their status is up to the courts. Again, college sports are fun right now. Either way, I was a bit skeptical of the amount of turnover for the Illini this offseason and that it’s continuing this close to the season makes me feel better about that skepticism.

Rutgers: No starter at quarterback for the Scarlet Knights yet. Rutgers held its second big scrimmage over the weekend and is still deciding between AJ Surace (third year, nine career pass attempts) and Boston College (by way of Alabama) transfer Dylan Lonergan.

Ohio State: The Buckeyes are talented (the constant) and healthy (the variable). The schedule remains beastly, however, with road games at Texas, Iowa, Indiana, USC…and Nebraska?

Iowa: No quarterback decision here so far as Wake Forest transfer Jeremy Hecklinski and Hank Brown can both throw the ball approximately 20 times a game if called upon. One maybe notable injury thus far: SMU transfer wide receiver Lance Beeghley will miss “a big part” of the season according to Kirk Ferentz. He didn’t come in with a ton of production, but he was one of two power-conference transfers in the Hawkeye’s 15-man class. He was probably brought in to do something, but who knows? Iowa just Iowas, and this will all be sorted by Black Friday.

Nebraska officially starts the fall semester on Monday and the fall sports calendar is starting to fill up. That means the Nebraska news cycle is picking up right alongside it all.

This week’s Friday Five moves around the Husker calendar a bit: Amy Stephens is back at Nebraska to help build the new flag football program, Jillian Martin made even more bowling history, Nebraska softball’s staff earned more national recognition, Justin Evans added another preseason football honor and 18 current and former Huskers walked away with degrees.

Let’s get into it.

1. Amy Stephens is back at Nebraska

Nebraska flag football is still in the early stages of becoming an actual program but it added a familiar name this week.

Amy Stephens, a former Nebraska women’s basketball player and assistant coach, was announced Tuesday as the program’s director of operations. Stephens played for the Huskers from 1985-89 and has spent much of her career in coaching, including assistant stops at Nebraska, Iowa State, Saint Louis and Memphis.

She also has head coaching experience at Nebraska-Kearney and Drake, putting together a 348-173 record across 17 seasons.

“As the new director of operations for flag football at Nebraska, I am thrilled to be part of building a championship culture, empowering our student-athletes and growing the game of flag football in Husker Nation,” Stephens said in a statement.

It’s also worth remembering that Stephens was one of Nebraska women’s basketball’s best, earning a spot on the program’s All-Century Team in 2000 after helping the Huskers win a Big Eight title and reach the NCAA Tournament in 1988.

“We are so excited to have Amy joining our staff as we build this program from the ground up,” head coach Liz Sowers said in a statement. “She has valuable coaching experience and knows how a successful program runs. She is also familiar with Nebraska and its athletics culture and bleeds Husker red. She will be a great asset for us.”

2. Jillian Martin keeps making history

Former Nebraska bowler Jillian Martin won the PWBA Tour Championship on Tuesday night, defeating Germany’s Birgit Noreiks, 247-221, at Yorktown Lanes in Parma Heights, Ohio. With the win, Martin became the youngest bowler in PWBA history to win three career majors.1

The Tour Championship also gave Martin the Triple Crown: the United States Bowling Congress Queens, U.S. Women’s Open and PWBA Tour Championship. She is the first bowler to clinch that since the PWBA Tour relaunched.

“It’s shocking,” Martin told PWBA.com. “I would not necessarily expect to be here. Have I imagined being here? Did I know it could happen? 100%. But I never truly, truly was like, ‘Wow, this is going to happen, and it’s going to happen now.’”

At Nebraska, Martin was a four-time All-American and the 2025 NTCA Bowler of the Year. Now she is doing the same thing professionally, and quickly. She was also the only bowler to win twice during the 2026 PWBA National Tour season.

3. Nebraska softball assistants get national recognition

Lori Sippel and Diane Miller were named top 25 finalists for D1Softball’s 2026 Assistant Coach of the Year. The winner, along with the Pitching Coach of the Year, will be announced Aug. 31.

It is another nod to Nebraska softball’s historic season.

The Huskers went 52-8 overall and 23-1 in Big Ten play. The 52 wins tied the program record, and Nebraska also put together a school-record 27-game winning streak. The 23 conference wins were the most in program history and tied a Big Ten record.

Sippel, who retired this offseason, helped lead a pitching staff that ranked near the top nationally in several major categories, including second in strikeouts and strikeout-to-walk ratio, fourth in ERA and fifth in WHIP. Under her, Jordy Frahm earned her fourth First-Team All-America honor and Alexis Jensen was a Third-Team All-American. Frahm was also the NFCA and USA Softball Player of the Year.

Miller, who was promoted to associate head coach, oversaw an offense that finished in the top three in school history in several categories, including batting average, hits, runs, doubles, home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage and on-base percentage.

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4. Justin Evans adds another preseason honor

Justin Evans was named a second-team preseason All-American by The Athletic this week, his second preseason honor after being named to the Rimington Trophy Watch List earlier this month.

Evans is one of the most experienced players on Nebraska’s roster, with 31 career starts and 38 appearances as a Husker. He started every game at center last season and helped pave the way for Emmett Johnson’s first-team All-America season. Before that, Evans started all 12 games at guard in 2024 and appeared in every game as a redshirt freshman in 2023, including five starts.

5. Eighteen Huskers added degrees to the résumé

Eighteen current and former Nebraska student-athletes received their degrees during summer commencement at Pinnacle Bank Arena this past weekend.

The group covered a lot of ground, both in sport and geography, with graduates from nine states and three foreign countries. Football was represented by Emmett Johnson, Dasan McCullough and Gunnar Gottula, while baseball added Dylan Carey, Jalen Worthley and Cooper Katskee. Carey’s graduation comes after an All-America season, a Brooks Wallace Award and the start of his professional career in the Mets organization, which is a pretty full sentence all by itself.

The list also included Allie Sczech from volleyball, Chance Lamer and Brandyn Van Tassell from wrestling, Kendall Blue and Braxton Meah from men’s basketball, Jack Critz from men’s gymnastics, Arden Louchheim from women’s golf, Kellyn Kortemeyer and Sakena Massiah from women’s track and field, and three tennis graduates in Reya Lee Coe, Nikolay Sysoev and Joan Torres Espinosa.

Over the last three graduations, Nebraska has now had 108 student-athletes earn degrees.

It’s important that we don’t lose that number, even when the calendar starts to get busy. After all, seasons end, eligibility runs out2 and awards get handed out and moved beyond.

The degree is the part that lasts.

The preseason Big Ten title odds equate to Nebraska being the 10^th-best team in the Big Ten. Conference sports writers picked the Huskers 11^th. The Massey composite rankings—a roundup of more than 20 predictive models—slots NU at 10^th as well.

Those are all just projections, and we’re close now to finding out how accurate they are. But in today’s college football, unfortunately, we also must consider another factor in our perception of teams—the spend.

If 10^th-best in an 18-team league is close to a consensus expectation for 2026 Nebraska, you’d hope the Huskers are at least getting what they’re paying for from a roster perspective. If NU was 10^th while ranking 15^th in roster spend, that’d be great. If it was 10^th while ranking fifth, that’d be awful. But 10^th while ranking 10^th is a square deal.

According to The NIL Standard, Nebraska ranks ninth in the Big Ten for 2026 with a roster valued at $23.7 million. That’s a projection, too, because maybe the most ridiculous thing right now about what has always been our most ridiculous sport1 is that while every coach in the country is lobbying for more money for their roster, we don’t actually know what the teams are spending. The coaches are all telling us it’s the most important front in today’s game, and yet we get very few reports, real information, from the frontlines.

I put some stock in The NIL Standard’s numbers because a) it does incorporate those real reports when they’re available, and b) it’s remarkably transparent about what it does when those reports aren’t available. This is probably the best available estimate for the thing nobody talks about with any specificity.

Today, we’re thinking about the upcoming Nebraska season through the lens of $23.7 million dollars.

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The Huskers’ annual Red-White Scrimmage is always a little strange to evaluate because both teams are, well, Nebraska. At all times, one side is the opponent making the other side’s life a little more difficult

That was especially true Sunday at Pinnacle Bank Arena, where 10,753 fans showed up for the Huskers’ unofficial start to the 2026 season. The Red team beat the White team 3-1, but you have to take that with a grain of salt. Coach Dani Busboom Kelly shuffled the lineups halfway through the match, so it’s not exactly easy to compare perfectly.

What mattered the most was what Nebraska put on tape before it leaves Lincoln for a loaded opening stretch away from home. What stood out was not necessarily clean offense or a perfect first public showing. It was how hard Nebraska made things on Nebraska.

The combined hitting percentage for the afternoon was .074. Red hit .121, while White hit .023. If you only looked at the offensive numbers, you could probably talk yourself into being concerned. The Red team had 31 attack errors, while the White Team had 32. Plenty of swings went just long, just wide or found a block.

Busboom Kelly knows how that can look to those watching.

“I do think Red-White (scrimmages) are hard because when you look at the stats, you can be disappointed in one thing, but it’s probably because of something else you’re doing well, so it does get tough to evaluate …” Busboom Kelly said. “I hope it’s very hard to get a kill in our gym, and I hope it’s more because of that and not because we can’t get kills. I do think the defense is a little bit ahead of the offense right now.”

Basically, Nebraska’s offense was not sharp enough yet but Nebraska’s defense also had a lot to do with that.

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Nebraska is through two weeks of fall camp with two more to go before game week. Even though this has been the case all offseason, it’s still jarring to watch previously talkative Matt Rhule keep things squarely on cliché highway, hands at 10 and 2.1 Defensive coordinator Rob Aurich is still new enough that he can get away with saying most anything, and offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen has still been doing this long enough—and is still Holgo enough—that he can keep saying whatever’s on his mind.

It’s an interesting mix. I wondered all summer when this strange offseason would flip and feel more typical. Still not there yet following the Huskers’ first big scrimmage of August.

So, to pass the time that typically moves more quickly, let’s play a level-setting game for 2026 Nebraska football. You’ve got 40 confidence points to assign to the following eight position groups: quarterback, running back, offensive line, wide receivers and tight ends, defensive line, linebackers, secondary and special teams. If you feel the same level of confidence in every group, that’s a 5 across the board.2 That’s your starting point.

Here’s where I landed, in descending order, after tinkering with this all weekend.

LB – 7

In its base 4-2-5 alignment, there are only two of these guys on the field at a time. Maybe that’s part of why I have this group at the top. It’s also because I’ve purchased all the Owen Chambliss stock I can and I’ve held on to all the Vincent Shavers Jr. stock I purchased after his freshman season. Add to that Oregon State transfer Dexter Foster, a healthy Dawson Merritt and a wildcard like walk-on Derek Wacker and you have a nice blend of production plus upside. I also believe Rob Dvoracek is one of the more underappreciated assistants on the staff, and Aurich, a former college linebacker, seems to be part of the fan club, too. I’ll be shocked if Nebraska doesn’t get great linebacker play this season.

WR/TE – 6

The Huskers return their top two receivers in Nyziah Hunter and Jacory Barney Jr., and the top three seems mostly set with the addition of UCLA transfer Kwazi Gilmer, the Bruins’ leading pass catcher in 2026. Sophomore Quinn Clark is one of buzziest players of the offseason, and I still have high expectations for sophomore Cortez Mills Jr. It might have put this group a point higher if Holgorsen didn’t say the tight ends didn’t have a very good summer, but beyond Luke Lindenmeyer there’s not a lot that’s proven, so I also considered bumping this group down. A breakout from freshman Luke Sorensen would be a big deal, and Holgorsen does still love him some Janiran Bonner, a wide receiver on the roster who can play big or small.

QB – 6

UNLV transfer Anthony Colandrea comes with some risk, but I’m confident Nebraska will get more upside than downside with last year’s Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year. Given the attention on the program, it takes extreme confidence to succeed at Nebraska at any position. Double that for quarterback. It’s what makes Colandrea’s swashbuckling style so intriguing. And if that swashbuckling style—via bumps, bruises or a risk reassessment—forces the Huskers to turn to the bench3 for a game or two, NU has two QBs, TJ Lateef and Daniel Kaelin, who have at least started games before.

Interlude

The above are the three groups I assigned a number greater than 5. This is all relative to the rest of the team, but I think an important question still emerges: Can you win, say, 8 games playing a Big Ten schedule with strong linebackers, receivers and a quarterback? Anything’s possible, but it feels volatile.

DBs – 5

I might have this group a notch too low. Nebraska got a “quarterback” for this group with safety Dwayne McDougle III, who played for Aurich at Idaho and San Diego State. Cornerback Andrew Marshall also has familiarity with the new DC. Then you’ve got a fleet of high-upside options like Jamir Conn, Rex Guthrie, Jeremiah Charles and Donovan Jones. Get a big breakout from one of those, plus the expected steady play from McDougle and Marshall and I’ll regret not putting this group higher.

ST – 5

Mike Ekeler set a pretty high bar last year, and the question is if Brett Maher can maintain it despite having a completely different personality type. But Maher has some nice pieces here. Kicker Kyle Cunnan was top 30 nationally with an 84.7% make rate on field goals. Jacory Barney Jr. was an all-conference punt returner. For all of the excitement4 around punter Archie Wilson, Nebraska ranked 127^th at 39.43 yards per punt, though maybe the point of finding this type of punter was ranking 13^th nationally by allowing 3.8 yards per punt return, an improvement of 8.5 yards over 2024. It would be nice to have Kenneth Williams back returning kicks, but instead Nebraska will face him, and Michigan State, in the conference opener. Overall, I’m not expecting a serious dropoff from this unit, but there’s not a ton of room to go up.

OL – 4

On the one hand, I think this is the best this group has looked on paper since maybe the Bo Pelini era. On the other hand, it’s more “on paper” than it’s been talked about this offseason. NU is banking on a new position coach to pull together a strong unit from center Justin Evans and likely, four transfers with P4 starting experience. That includes left tackle Elijah Pritchett, who arrived from Alabama last year and isn’t completely “new,” guards Brendan Black (Iowa State) and Paul Mubenga (LSU) and potential5 right tackle Tree Babalade (South Carolina). Collectively, it’s a group that’s played a lot of high-level football. It’s also a group that doesn’t have an all-conference award despite playing a lot of high-level football. I’d make Evans the favorite to earn such an honor in 2026, but if Nebraska wants to get where it’s going it probably needs two All-Big Ten caliber lineman. If new position coaches Geep Wade and Lonnie Teasley can tease that out of this room, things will have gone about as well as they can in their first years on campus.

RB – 4

It’s the most talked about position battle of the summer. So much so that Rhule tried to get out ahead of questions about the running backs on Saturday by just offering a fairly general statement on the group. (He needs to watch the tape.) Between Mekhi Nelson, Isaiah Mozee and freshman Jamal Rule, I think Nebraska has enough in the backfield to be fine. It’s trying to replicate, however, a season that earned Emmett Johnson Big Ten Running Back of the Year. Is it fair to expect this group to collectively have a season like Johnson did individually? Maybe, but I can’t go higher than “maybe.”

DL – 3

It would be a mild surprise if this group wasn’t the lowest in any such rankings, which makes me concerned I’m being too conventional to be interesting but here we are. Nebraska is pinning a lot on a coordinator change plus two new position coaches to produce a unit that actually troubles Big Ten opponents. There’s still plenty of upside with a lot of players up front. Riley Van Poppel, Kade Pietrzak, Williams Nwaneri and Pitt transfer Jashear Whittington would be at the top of my list. It’s also the unit where Nebraska has a converted wide receiver (Jeremiah Jones) and tight end (Mac Markway).

There’s my 40 points assigned. Feel free to share yours below.

Coda6

I’m trying to stay out of the uniform game for reasons more completely explained here, but Nebraska revealed its blackout uniforms for the Washington game on Oct. 31. They’re not for me, which is fine, but they did help me arrive at a unifying theory of why the Husker alternates are always so inconsistent. There have been good ones, but they’re not the majority.

Here’s part of what Rhule said about them Saturday, when they were revealed: “I think the process here is just to do one alternate uniform a year, being black and having a blackout, and then having our iconic uniforms—red and white, white and red—every other game.”

I think this is actually the problem. There are still some programs that are basically alternate-free. Auburn, USC, Texas and Alabama come immediately to mind. Many others are all the way on the other end of the spectrum. But Nebraska is in this middle ground, willing to leave that stuff to others 95% of the time.

And this is why the other 5% of the time, fans often get everything, everywhere, all at once. That’s how I’d describe the new black uniform. It has Nebraska across the chest for, I believe, the first time since the 1974 Cotton Bowl (and maybe only the second time ever). All of the red accents on the jersey are metallic, as is the Huskers script7 on the side of helmet. There’s a red N on the back of the jersey, but also a perforated N, cleverly referencing the drone shows that have become a fixture of home night games. The latter looks cool, but why the same logo twice? Why is there almost never any editing8 with Nebraska’s alternates?*

It’s too much. Nebraska spends most of its time not being an alternate program. But when it does go there, it’s like a rumspringa for every design idea that has ever existed and good design is more often about restraint.

So is good writing, which clearly, I’m still working on by adding this coda.

But that’s why I think most people never like whatever is unveiled.

Nebraska volleyball gets its 2026 season started on Sunday with the Red-White Scrimmage. That means we can officially start talking about what this team is (and what it is trying not to get distracted by).

The Huskers met with the media on Thursday and the theme was pretty clear: Nebraska knows what people expect.

Here are five things to take into Red-White weekend.

1. Nebraska is No. 1, but the Huskers aren’t exactly basking in it

Nebraska was together in the locker room Monday when the AVCA preseason poll dropped. The Huskers were ranked No. 1, which was not all that shocking after a 33-1 season and so much of the roster returning. The reaction, however, was a little more interesting.

“(It was) almost more like, ‘We don’t want it,’” setter Bergen Reilly said. “‘We don’t want to see that. We would rather be unranked than that.’ We love that people have confidence in us and that’s great, but it’s some outside noise. We want to go in every day and have a chip on our shoulder and prove ourselves.

“Yeah, we’re No. 1, but that means nothing at the end of the year and we’ve seen that in the last couple years.”

The Huskers were also preseason No. 1 in 2025. As you remember, they went on to win 33 straight matches before losing to Texas A&M in the Elite Eight. The Huskers aren’t ignoring that loss, but they aren’t letting it dictate too much heading into 2026.

“We just talk about finishing,” Reilly said. “We don’t necessarily go back and watch every single thing we did wrong in that game, but we just say, ‘How can we find a way to finish this year? How can we finish the drill or finish the lift when we’re tired?’”

2. The schedule gets serious fast

After Sunday’s scrimmage, it’s full steam ahead for Nebraska.

The Huskers head to Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, Aug. 27 for the Spikes Under the Lights showcase at AT&T Stadium. They open exhibition play against No. 17 Florida, with a possible second exhibition against No. 10 Penn State or No. 11 SMU.

Then Nebraska goes to Las Vegas on Saturday, Aug. 29 to officially open the season against UNLV before facing No. 2 Texas the next night in the Players Era Showcase.

No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the second match of the season? Sure, why not.

“I grew up in the Big 12 and played here in the Big 12, and so that Texas rivalry runs pretty deep,” Busboom Kelly said. “That is a great call by both myself and Jerritt (Elliott) to renew that and showcase the sport even more. They have everybody returning. We have most everybody returning, so it should be a really fun match.”

There is more after that too: South Dakota State and DePaul on the road, followed by Missouri at Wrigley Field for the Big Ten/SEC Challenge. It is a lot of travel, a lot of event-style volleyball and, as Busboom Kelly said, maybe heavier than she would have liked.

Her read on it is that Nebraska will need that discomfort later.

3. This is a familiar roster but not the same team

Nebraska did not lose anyone to the transfer portal for the second straight season. The Huskers return five starters and both liberos from last year’s team, while adding three freshmen to replace four outgoing seniors.

That is a lot of continuity but Busboom Kelly still does not see this as a copy of 2025.

“It honestly feels a lot different this year for me,” Busboom Kelly said. “Maybe it’s because I was so new last year and had a lot going on but this feels a little bit different. I don’t really look at last year like, ‘OK, where are we continuing from last year? What are we doing piggybacking off last year?’ It feels like a new team.

“We still have great depth, but I think the margins are even closer this year than they were last year as far as starters, non-starters, who’s going to contribute and what kind of roles players are going to carve out. I think our staff, we’ve been together now a year and a half, and a little more cadence, and it just feels different.”

That’s an interesting roster note too. Nebraska has so much back but roles still have to be earned. The five-for-five eligibility model also gives younger players a chance to get live reps instead of automatically redshirting.

That includes sophomore setter Campbell Flynn, who had planned to redshirt.

“I’m excited because redshirting was the goal, but then I wouldn’t be able to play,” Flynn said. “I think getting reps, even if it’s just a little bit in games, will help to boost my confidence on the court.”

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4. A strong review for Sean Smith

One of Nebraska’s biggest offseason additions was not a player.

Busboom Kelly hired Sean Smith as director of volleyball player performance and development in June. The two worked together at Louisville from 2018 to 2023.

“Sean’s so awesome,” Andi Jackson said. “He is a great strength coach, obviously, but he’s also just a really good person. He’s very easy to talk to, and you can just tell from day one that he’s in our corner and he wants the best for us, and he’s going to do what it takes to help us excel both on and off the court, which we all really appreciate … We’ve been with him for a while now, and it’s been awesome. We go really hard at lift, and not that we didn’t before, but it’s just it’s a different program …

“He’s so awesome, and we love working with him. I hope you guys get to talk to him, because he has so much knowledge. He’s cool. He’s really cool to talk to because he’s just very friendly and he’s just great to talk to. So he’s awesome. We love him.”

That is a strong review.

5. The seniors are setting the tone

Nebraska lost one of its loudest voices when Rebekah Allick graduated after last season. Busboom Kelly said leadership has become more collective among the four seniors: Laney Choboy, Harper Murray, Reilly and Jackson.

“Andi and Bergen, I think they both really took jumps with their leadership roles, but Laney and Harper are great leaders too,” Busboom Kelly said. “Our whole senior class is pretty vocal, and they’ve done a good job of letting each other be vocal at appropriate times, which I think is really unique. Whether they’re captains or not, named captain or not, you can’t really tell who’s a captain, which I think is really important, especially when you have such a great senior class. So they’re all leading in different ways and being vocal at different times.”

Whether this is the final season for all four is still unknown because of the new eligibility model. Either way, Busboom Kelly is not framing the year as a forced march toward a perfect ending.

“They’re pretty motivated, but I also think they’ve felt disappointment for three years in a row, so I don’t think the right method to go about that is just hammering home winning or leaving legacy,” Busboom Kelly said. “It’s more leaving and feeling great about what you did here. Jordan Larson’s been helping us a little bit as sort of a consultant, and she talked about you can win or lose at the end of the year, and it might feel terrible both ways. So you want to make sure that how you leave and how we end the season feels great.”

That is a pretty grounded place to be at this moment in time. After all, the goal is obvious. Nebraska wants to win the whole thing.

But for now, it starts with a scrimmage, a first look and the official return of volleyball season.

New Nebraska defensive coordinator Rob Aurich spoke with reporters for approximately 13 minutes this week. During that time, he said he loved cornerback Andrew Marshall, safeties coach Tyler Yelk, the media, linebackers and, out of context, ‘em.

So, the media love was more of a qualifier. “As much as I love and respect you guys, I’m with these [players] every day. I spend most of my time taking influence from what I see on the tape,” he said, answering a question about the popular offseason narrative that Nebraska has questions on the defensive line.

And the ‘em referred to the Huskers who called Aurich a “mad scientist” last week, though he joked he can “barely read.”

The love for Marshall, Yelk and linebackers is easier to trace. Aurich recruited Marshall to Idaho before they were reunited in Lincoln. He played with Yelk at Minnesota Duluth, finishing his career there second in career tackles to the current safeties coach. Aurich played linebacker.

Whether the word was softened with humor or not, how often Aurich said he loved someone struck me as the first big positive sign for NU in 2026. I think this is gonna work.

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“This offseason we added 677 pounds of lean mass. At the same time, they lost 188 pounds, as a team, of fat,” coach Matt Rhule said this past Saturday. “This will be the biggest and leanest team we’ve had.”

I understand the instinct to roll your eyes a little (and I’ve seen plenty of it on social media). It is August. Every program is stronger, faster, closer, more bought in, more physical and more connected than they’ve ever been at this point.

But Rhule put actual numbers on it and I am unfortunately exactly the kind of person that heard that and immediately started wondering what the roster says.

I’ve done this before with Nebraska. I’ve also done it across the Big Ten. It is never a perfect exercise. Listed heights and weights are not body-composition scans and they do not tell us who can (and cannot) win games.

They do give us something, though.

If Nebraska’s head coach is going to say this is the biggest and leanest team he has had here, I think it is only fair to ask what part of that shows up publicly. So I went through Nebraska’s official rosters from 2023 through 2026—you know, Rhule’s teams—and compared the 2026 Huskers against the rest of the Big Ten.

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Over the last five years, 60% of power conference teams have finished within 1.5 wins of the preseason win total set by oddsmakers.1 You could consider that the “breaks of the game” allowance. If a team is projected to win 6.5 regular season games, anything between 8 wins and 5 might be randomness; having or avoiding key injuries, terrible turnovers luck, bad in-game decisions, difficult travel, etc. It’s only when a team’s actual total is more than 1.5 wins off the expected total that I start to wonder, “Did something great/horrible happen here?”

And I guess that’s the good news for Nebraska fans entering the 2026 football season: None of Matt Rhule’s three seasons in Lincoln have fallen into the “something horrible” category. The Huskers were -1.5 wins off the projected total in both 2023 and 2024, and -0.5 last season. The 2021 and 2022 teams, Scott Frost’s last two, were both -2.5 wins against expectation

And maybe that’s the bad news here. Of the 68 power conference teams, including Notre Dame, only three have failed to hit the projected win total in each of the last five seasons: Nebraska, Wisconsin and Auburn. No team has gone over on the total in all five seasons.

This is what I’m wrestling with as the time for a season prediction draws near. Is betting2 on Nebraska to be different the sucker’s bet or is betting on it to be the same the wrong play? I don’t know—and probably won’t until someone puts me on the spot—but here’s what I can share from having looked at the last 340 individual seasons, over five years, of power conference football.

Over that span, Nebraska is 8.5 wins below expectation. That’s tied for worst among the power teams with Wisconsin. Virginia Tech isn’t far behind at -8, and Clemson and Boston College are at -7.5. The five teams to exceed expectations the most are BYU (+11), Duke (+9), Illinois and Mississippi (+7.5) and Vanderbilt (+7).

That should highlight a few important things about win totals, which I still find incredibly useful for trying to make sense of things that haven’t happened yet. One, this is a projection that is then shaped by an open market. Public perception and attention are part of the recipe here given almost anyone can make almost any bet they want. The average college football fan is more likely to have opinions on Nebraska or Clemson than Duke or Vanderbilt.

Two, we’re dealing with ceilings and floors at the extreme ends of the scale. Oregan can go undefeated in the regular season and only exceed its win total by 1.5 while UMass could win one game and only fall short by the same amount.

The first factor applies to NU to some degree, the second doesn’t right now. Nebraska will be back when we’re all thinking, “Well, they can only be so much better than expected because the expectation is so high,” but that’s not now.

Nebraska’s win total has held steady at 6.5 after being hammered up from an opening number of 5.5. That’s what we’re talking about, a middle-of-the-pack team where anything between 5 and 8 wins could be considered normal.3

But we’re also trying to talk about something different, something better, and I had a few takeaways from the data compiled:

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• Nebraska is one of three power conference teams to have gone under in each of the last five seasons, but really that streak extends to 2016, a common endpoint in Lincoln for current ignominious streaks. But my data for all power teams only goes back five years, so I decided to explore the teams that were as “disappointing” as Nebraska over the four years entering 2025. The Huskers were 8 wins below expectation entering last season, and there were 10 teams that were -5 or worse. Five of those teams went over in 2025, including Playoff qualifiers Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Miami as well as two teams that beat NU, USC and Utah. Five of that group were under their preseason projection: Nebraska, Wisconsin, UCF, Clemson and Virginia Tech.

• What are the chances for a special season in Lincoln? At 9-3, NU would be +2.5 over its expectation. That would likely require either Nebraska winning every game it “should” and every tossup, including wins over Washington and Iowa, or it would require at least one win over Indiana, Oregon or Ohio State. Choose your own adventure on the latter. A team being +2.5 or better over projection has happened 17.3% of the time over the last five seasons.

• The chances of bottoming out—being 2.5 wins or more below expectation—would be about the same at 17.6% based on the last five years. If Nebraska goes 4-8 in 2026, there’s real reason to panic and that’s not based on any local context, just how the sport has worked since 2021.

• We should return to Oklahoma and Texas A&M from 2025. Both represent the best-case scenario for Nebraska’s season in 2026. The ’25 Sooners were coming off a 6-7 season, had a host of staff changes, a transfer quarterback and a defense that needed to improve from pretty good to darn good, which is where it had been early in Brent Venables tenure. Texas A&M, entering its second season under Mike Elko, didn’t go with a transfer quarterback, didn’t drastically improve on a good defense from the year before, saw its turnover margin go from +5 to -9 and somehow still tied for third for the biggest wins over expectation value of +3.5. Sometimes a special season is traceable to decisions made (OU). Sometimes it’s more random (A&M).

None of which might give you a better idea of what’s about to happen in 2026. It didn’t make me more confident about whatever record prediction I give whenever I get asked.

But that wasn’t really the point anyway. If this story is useful eventually, may it be so in how you consider whatever happens in 2026. We have a baseline for the average power conference team over the last five years.

Nebraska will probably land there, which is true for 60% of teams playing at this level, but this is hopefully context for wherever the Huskers might be going.