Echoes of a Dynasty: Rhule, Devaney, and Nebraska Football’s Repeating History. From Devaney’s culture shift in 1962 to Rhule’s rebuild today, the parallels are hard to ignore.
He was the anointed savior – a former star player with fire and vision. The one who would end two decades of mediocrity and restore Nebraska to the success they’d grown accustomed to in decades past. A coach who had mentored a Heisman winner as an assistant — and seemed destined to crown another in Lincoln.
Instead, he left with five straight losing seasons and a confounding record of just 15 wins against 34 losses.
I’m talking of course about Bill Jennings, Nebraska head coach from 1957 to 1961.
What, you were expecting someone else?
As Mark Twain once said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.’ And from a 50-foot view, the arc of Nebraska football history does follow a rhythm: five decades of early dominance (1890–1940), followed by two decades of struggle, four decades of clockwork winning (1962–2001), and the two-plus decades of mediocrity we’re still living through.
If history does rhyme, Nebraska may be due for another long, sustained resurgence.
That resurgence would have to start the same way the last one did: with a head coach who can wake the Big Red giant from its long slumber. The parallels between Matt Rhule and Bob Devaney are striking. Both rose through the ranks turning around lower-tier schools. Both ended long bowl droughts with wins in New York City – Devaney with the Gotham Bowl in 1962, Rhule with the Pinstripe Bowl in 2024, though Rhule did it in his second season.
But the similarities start with their immediate predecessors.
Frost and Jennings
Bill Jennings, a former Oklahoma Sooner, was a widely praised hire when he was promoted to the head role in 1957. He had coached Billy Vessels to a Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma, just as Scott Frost had coached Marcus Mariota to the big prize at Oregon. But despite recruiting ample talent, Jennings couldn’t get the Huskers out of their own way. They were mistake-prone and undisciplined, capable of toppling Oklahoma and their 74-game conference win streak one week and then losing to perennial doormat Iowa State the next.
And though he was given five full seasons to turn the ship around, Jennings rarely accepted responsibility for the team’s shortcomings. In 1960, he famously said he didn’t believe the state of Nebraska could be good at anything, much less fielding a major college football program.
Frost similarly dodged accountability as Nebraska’s head man, rankling fans most recently by referring to Nebraska as a “meat grinder” of a job in yet another subtle defense of the mess he presided over in Lincoln.
Devaney and Rhule
But while their predecessors mirror each other in failure, Devaney and Rhule share their own reflections in success, or at least in promise.
I know, I know. Comparing anyone to the legendary Bob Devaney is sacrilege, a foolhardy exercise that will surely result in lots of eye rolls and maybe even a foul word or two.
After all, Devaney never had a losing season as head coach. Matt Rhule did in his very first year.
More immediately, if history was repeating, Rhule would have also defeated Michigan in 2023 like Devaney did in his first season, a monumental victory that sparked the Husker dynasty. However, that 1962 Michigan team, ranked highly to start the season, finished 2–7. The 2023 Wolverines won the College Football Playoff.
And Rhule wasn’t gifted the same talent Devaney was from Bill Jennings. He certainly didn’t have a generational talent like Bob Brown – a future Hall of Famer whose number 64 is still retired – on his roster like Devaney did.
But more important than perfect symmetry are the real parallels that do exist.
Both men are considered players’ coaches — motivators more than disciplinarians, known for their ability to connect. Their pregame speeches are the stuff of legend (and now internet fodder).
In a similar vein, they’re both renowned for their near-limitless social energy and public presence, though Devaney was famous for holding court at local watering holes while Rhule is more often seen supporting other Husker programs from the bleachers or sidelines.
This makes them stand out in Nebraska’s coaching lineage as their gregarious, approachable styles contrast with Tom Osborne’s quiet stoicism, Frank Solich’s introversion, Bill Callahan’s cool detachment, and Bo Pelini’s combustibility. Similarly, both Devaney and Rhule operate as true CEO-type coaches, not serving as de facto coordinators over the offense as Callahan and Frost did, or the defense as Pelini did.
As Henry Cordes put it in Devaney: Birth of a Dynasty, the Bobfather’s early success stemmed from “the considerable force of his personality. Players simply loved to play for Devaney and relished his physical, hard-nosed style of football.”
That’s another shared trait: philosophically, both men preach toughness and culture.
Rhule’s notorious “mat drills” are kept largely under wraps, but players describe them as among the most grueling in the country, designed to crush ego and foster team unity.
Devaney’s spring practices featured similar culture-setters. None was more infamous than the ax-handle drill, in which players wrestled over a wooden bar in a no-holds-barred clash.
“We had some pretty bad collisions and injuries doing that,” Tom Osborne once recalled.
Both coaches combine their emphasis on toughness with a strict adherence to structure.
Devaney once neatly summarized his coaching formula as: “Recruit like hell, then organize.” An Omaha-World Herald writer noticed the difference between Devaney and Jennings’s approaches in his very first game versus South Dakota. “In contrast to the confusion which has appeared to keep the Cornhusker bench in turmoil during recent seasons, all was in order and businesslike.”
Rhule is cut from the same cloth. His practices are precise, his evaluations structured. Everything is process oriented. Some insiders believe he’s the most organized head coach Nebraska has had since the famously meticulous Bill Callahan.
His administration is a clear departure from the chaos that preceded him. Under Frost, backup quarterback Luke McCaffrey haphazardly burned a game of redshirt eligibility on a single snap. By Frost’s final year, his recruiting operation was so disorganized that even assistants weren’t sure who could extend offers.
Devaney knew Nebraska’s recruiting operation had to start at home. He retained Clete Fischer, a well-liked assistant from Jennings’ staff, and together they toured the state rebuilding trust, ensuring the next Gale Sayers would become a Husker and not a conference foe.
Rhule followed suit. In his first year, he and his staff visited over 100 high schools across Nebraska, rebuilding the bridge between the program and its in-state talent base.
Devaney didn’t conquer everything. He had a losing record against Oklahoma, the one Big Eight opponent who got the better of him.
Rhule has similarly struggled against his team’s chief rival, having yet to solve the Iowa problem. His Huskers have lost two straight to the Hawkeyes’ black and gold magic, both on improbable last-second field goals.
Finally, both are fiercely loyal to their staff. Rhule has not fired anyone, technically, though coaches have resigned and departed due to outside circumstances. Most recently, he declined to terminate underperforming coordinators in Marcus Satterfield and Ed Foley, electing instead to place them in other roles. Likewise, calls for Devaney to make coaching changes after the 1968 season were loud and contentious. He refused to give in. “I won’t make anyone a sacrificial lamb,” he reportedly told his assistants.
Still, both coaches knew when to break free from their usual way of doing business. In 1969, Rhule put Wide Receivers coach Tom Osborne in command of the offense. Osborne, a former wide receiver himself, opened the offense up and passed more than the conservative Devaney had previously. Likewise, Rhule hired Dana Holgorsen as his offensive coordinator late in the 2024 season, a move that opened up the passing game more than Rhule had before.
The move likely saved Nebraska’s season and may have longer implications on the program’s trajectory. In Devaney’s case, the change in offense, among other things, led to national titles.
History Rhymes
It’s not just Devaney and Rhule – Nebraska football is riddled with rhyme schemes over its long, illustrious history.
Devaney once recalled how in his first game, the Huskers opened with a pass that fell incomplete and the crowd gave a standing ovation, such was their exhaustion with the heavy run scheme they ran under Jennings. Devaney was likely joking or at least exaggerating. But if you remember, the same thing actually happened during Bill Callahan’s first Spring Game in 2004, a sign that the fans were ready to move on from predecessor Frank Solich’s ground-bound scheme.
The triumphant victory over Missouri the Huskers claimed in 2009 was eerily reminiscent of Nebraska’s loss to Colorado in 1990. In both cases, the eventual victor trailed 12-0 heading into the fourth quarter before a 27-point deluge secured the win.
They weren’t always as fortunate as that rain-soaked night in Colombia. The Huskers boasted breakthrough victories over Oklahoma in 1978 as well as Washington in 2010, only to begrudgingly face both again in the post-season, repeat efforts the team was less-than-enthused about. They lost both.
Going back even further, the Huskers’ long unbeaten streak under Devaney began and ended with Coach Pepper Rodgers in a fun bit of symmetry. Nebraska beat his Kansas team in 1969 thanks to a suspect pass interference penalty, leaving Rodgers furious after. Then in ‘72, the two-time reigning national champion Huskers faced 18-point underdog UCLA Bruins coached by Rodgers and lost a stunner. Some might call it karma for the dubious call in ’69.
A Familiar Test
Rhule himself has banked much of his career on how his teams historically follow the same rising scale, notching more wins each season on the way to a crescendo of double-digit victories by Year Three. Much will be made of how much this season resembles the arc he completed at Temple and Baylor.
To steer the Huskers to a breakthrough season, though, he’ll need to first vanquish a familiar blueblood, as Devaney did in his first season.
“We felt that to get the program going again — to sell people on what we were doing — we had to beat Michigan.” Devaney said years after his pivotal win in the Big House September of 1962.
Rhule will again have the same opportunity to inspire belief come September 20th of 2025.
If the Huskers win – and history is any guide – they could be bound for an epic run.
