The Nebraska football program is well aware of the challenges the transfer portal and NIL era poses, as coach Matt Rhule said last week that the Huskers are unlikely to hold a spring game amid concerns over other programs tampering with their players. Nebraska coaching legend Tom Osborne shared some of the same uneasiness in an interview with KETV and called on the Big Ten and SEC to take the lead in establishing new national oversight over college football while the NCAA lacks enforcement power.
Coaches across the sport spent much of the 2024 season recommending changes to the leadership model, specifically with the implementation of a commissioner role. Nearly all of the outspoken coaches, former and present, voiced the same concerns over the free-for-all college football has become in recent years.
“I think if those two conferences can get together, they may be able to establish some guidelines that will make sense,” Osborne said. “I think the NCAA has become somewhat irrelevant and doesn’t seem to have any clout anymore. And so there has to be some managing agency within college athletics that can interject some common sense.”
With the NCAA losing countless legal battles over the last decade, the fabric of college football changed drastically as its governing body ceded power and caved on many of the frameworks it worked tirelessly to preserve.
Disparity between programs and conferences became abundantly more apparent in the wake of those changes, with the Power Four leagues — and specifically the Big Ten and SEC — pulling further ahead of the pack. Ohio State, for example, won the 2024 national championship with its reported $20 million roster while other schools’ NIL budgets paled in comparison.
“You have a few schools that are going to be able to go to the max, $22 million, or whatever it is,” Osborne said. “There are going to be an awful lot of schools that aren’t going to be able to do that. So competitive balance is going to be an issue.”
Osborne, 87, won five national championships with the Huskers (two as an assistant, three as Nebraska’s head coach) and retired from college football well in advance of its player empowerment era, which began two full decades after his exit from the program. He later served as Nebraska’s athletic director from 2007-13.
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Nebraska has not yet returned to the same heights Osborne reached during his legendary career but is back on an upward trajectory after Rhule oversaw its return to bowl eligibility last season, ending a drought that dated back to the 2016 campaign. Another step forward appears likely in 2025 with the Huskers keeping a strong nucleus intact and bolstering the talent around Dylan Raiola with the No. 11-ranked transfer portal class.
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