A quiet spring portal could tell us a lot about NU's progress

Prudent-not-panicked is Nebraska's preferred approach. Now we'll see what happens with the spring window open.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

How hard do you want to portal? It’s an important question for every college football coach, but it’s perhaps extra important for coaches early in new tenures.

We’ve seen extreme examples of roster reshaping work right away (2022 USC, 20 additions) and sort of work for a few weeks (2023 Colorado, 51). We’ve seen new coaches have little choice due to attrition beyond their control (2023 Arizona State, 31).

The risk with making transfers a feature, not a debugging, of a program’s code is it can be tough to get off that treadmill once it’s dialed up to full speed. Mississippi—under the direction of self-proclaimed “portal king” Lane Kiffin—has brought in 56 transfers the last three cycles and will probably add a few more as the spring transfer window opens today. It’s working for the Rebels, who are 19-7 over the past two seasons and projected to start 2024 in the top 10, but how many coaches can or even want to go that route?

We know Matt Rhule doesn’t. His Nebraska, as he’s said on multiple occasions, is a developmental program. Last year he tried to schedule the Huskers’ spring game with some consideration for the transfer window. This year Rhule opted to focus on “coaching the guys that are here.” Nebraska’s spring practice ends, with the spring game on April 27, just three days before the spring portal closes.

That might make for a newsy couple of days at the end of the month as the Huskers are almost certain to be heavier in the export business than the import business this time around.