Clear eyes, fraught hearts

With the Dylan Raiola era ending at Nebraska, the Matt Rhule era gets the rare opportunity to choose a new path entering Year 4.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

It so happened that I was a midway through a rewatch of Season 3 of Friday Night Lights when the not unexpected news of Dylan Raiola’s impending transfer surfaced Monday.

For those who may not know or remember the show, FNL is a soapy teen drama¹ set in the world of Texas high school football that, in what still feels like a major upset, gets a lot right about its sport and setting. Season 3 is the one in which Dylan Dillon head coach Eric Taylor benches senior quarterback, Matt Saracen, the try-hard, modestly-talented backup from Season 1 who led the Panthers to a state title and is stand-up enough to date the coach’s daughter. In his place, Taylor picks the new kid in town, J.D. McCoy, an undeniably talented freshman whose natural gifts are compounded by every advantage his Marinovich-like father can provide—personal coaches, a nutrition regimen, the mansion they live in, the ability to move to Dillon because that’s the program they want.

Faced with the choice of effort personified and talent amplified, Coach Taylor chooses the latter. He even changes the offense mid-season, from the I-formation to the spread, to facilitate the change.²

Dramatic Dillon is not real-life Lincoln, of course. Not exactly, anyway, but Matt Rhule chose a path for Nebraska two years ago. It produced two one-win improvements per season and two bowl games, but it was not a fast track to something more. Not for Raiola, not for Nebraska.

Now Rhule gets to choose a new path, and this one has to be the right one.