by Last night, Nebraska led Washington 7-3 with two minutes left. Washington then moved 81 yards in 12 plays and scored with 1:30 remaining. Alex McLaughlin scored on a 48-yard interception return. Only 15 seconds had passed. Nebraska lost 17-10 at Memorial Stadium after adding a field goal with 31 seconds left. The takes only a few lines to record the collapse. It is still miserable reading. This was the third straight game Nebraska lost after leading in the fourth quarter.
The previous two games taught the same dread. Nebraska led Indiana 17-6 early in the fourth quarter on October 10 and lost 20-17. On Indiana’s winning fourth-down play, the Huskers had their goal-line defense on the field against three receivers. Rhule said they should have called a timeout. “The organization is my fault,” he told the . Nebraska led Oregon 14-6 entering the fourth quarter a week later and lost 17-14. Oregon won with an 82-yard drive that consumed 20 plays, according to . A bye separated Oregon and Washington. The extra week did not change the ending.
Rhule once built a team that finished. His says Rhule emphasized closing out games entering his second season at Temple. Temple allowed only 23 fourth-quarter points in 12 games in 2014 and became bowl eligible. That detail sits uncomfortably beside these three Nebraska losses. Finishing games was part of the rebuilding record that made Rhule attractive. Nebraska hired a coach who had fixed this problem before.
Nebraska needed his early successes. Rhule inherited a program coming off five consecutive losing seasons. His first three teams went 5-7, 7-6 and 7-6. The 2024 team won Nebraska’s first bowl game since 2015 and posted the highest team grade-point average in program history. The 2025 team gave Nebraska consecutive winning seasons for the first time in a decade. Those gains belong in an honest assessment. They gave people a reason to believe the rebuild had roots.
The larger record is harder to excuse. Nebraska is 5-3 overall and 2-3 in the Big Ten after Washington, as the show. Add this season to Rhule’s first three and he is 24-22 overall. His conference record is 12-19, calculated from records of 3-6, 3-6, 4-5 and 2-3. The Indiana loss made him 0-10 against ranked opponents at Nebraska and extended the program’s AP Top 25 losing streak to 31 games. Six of those ten losses under Rhule were decided by seven points or fewer. Close defeats have become the price of watching this team test its progress.
Late games keep finding Nebraska unprepared. Indiana’s extra lineman suggested a run, but three receivers were on the field when Nebraska stayed in its goal-line group. Oregon needed 20 plays to erase an eight-point deficit and still reached the end zone. Washington drove 81 yards before Nebraska’s next possession ended in a defensive touchdown. Players bear their share of these failures. The staff owns the personnel choices, the timeout that never came and the preparation for those moments. Three games have supplied enough evidence to stop treating the pattern as random.
Carolina belongs in this story with accurate numbers. The Panthers fired Rhule with an 11-27 record in October 2022. ESPN reported that he was owed on the seven-year, $62 million contract he signed in 2020. Owner David Tepper said Carolina could not “get over the hump.” The claim that Carolina paid Rhule $70 million to leave is wrong. That season does not prove Nebraska must fire him now. Nebraska has enough evidence without borrowing an inflated figure from his old job.
Nebraska chose this obligation at 6-2. The school gave Rhule a two-year extension in 2025 while he was being linked to the open Penn State job. ESPN reported that the deal runs through 2032 and remains . Its widely reported $15 million buyout applied to Rhule leaving for another job, not Nebraska dismissing him. Rhule said his goal was a “perennial championship contender.” That promise supplies a better standard than mere improvement over the last losing staff.
The university’s own contract gives a lower figure. Nebraska posted a effective April 1, 2026. Its base-salary schedule lists $4.78125 million for April through December 2026, $7.5 million in 2027, $8.625 million in 2028 and $9 million in 2029. The figure is $9.375 million for each year from 2030 through 2032. Section 13 guarantees 90 percent of the remaining base salary after a dismissal without cause. The agreement also provides monthly payments and mitigation when Rhule finds other work.
This arithmetic can be reproduced. The 2026 payment covers nine months, so the remaining two months add about $1.0625 million to a November 1 calculation. Scheduled base salary from 2027 through 2032 totals $53.25 million. Together, those figures make $54.3125 million. Ninety percent produces approximately $48.88 million. This is a public-base-salary model, not a final invoice. Payroll conventions, a negotiated settlement or separate compensation documents could change the university’s complete obligation.
The published estimates do not match. put the buyout at $63 million after this season, $54 million after 2027 and $44 million after 2028. Those estimates exceed what the amended base-salary table produces in the model used here. The sources reviewed for this article do not reconcile the difference. Nebraska should publish a complete calculation before anyone uses a rounded $70 million figure to argue that the school must remain stuck.
The contract does allow monthly payments. Rhule must make reasonable efforts to find comparable employment, and income from later work reduces Nebraska’s post-termination payments. This structure still leaves a large obligation. It also means the school would not have to write one check for the entire amount on the day of dismissal. A negotiated separation could alter the payment schedule too. Nebraska should explain those terms when it explains the price.
Waiting through 2028 barely changes the obligation. Keeping Rhule through December of that year would pay about $18.19 million from this November onward. That figure includes the remaining 2026 base salary, two more full seasons and the $1 million retention bonus due in March 2027. A later dismissal would leave about $33.41 million in the public-base model. Salary paid during the wait plus that severance comes to $51.60 million. Dismissal now produces $48.88 million under the same assumptions. Two more years add roughly $2.72 million to the total commitment to Rhule.
A third year makes the arithmetic worse. Keeping Rhule through December 2029 adds another $9 million in base salary and a second $1 million retention bonus. Nebraska would have paid him about $28.19 million from this November through that date. The remaining public-base severance would be about $25.31 million. The combined figure reaches $53.50 million, approximately $4.62 million more than acting now. These models exclude playoff raises, mitigation and separate compensation because those amounts depend on future events or other documents. A 90 percent guarantee offers little reward for spending another year on the same coach.
The buyout sits inside a much larger business. a $71 million Nebraska football budget for 2024-25 and cited roughly $30 million in current direct player spending from The Athletic. A flat planning model uses those figures without adding Rhule’s salary twice. Two seasons at that rate would put $202 million of operations and player compensation under him. Three seasons would put $303 million under him. The $48.88 million dismissal model equals about 24 percent of the two-year amount and 16 percent of the three-year amount. A successor and assistant buyouts would add costs, and those costs deserve a place in the decision.
Nebraska has spent heavily on Rhule’s program. Flatwater counted 81 people on the football staff and an $11 million upgrade to the grass practice fields that Rhule sought. The football budget had more than doubled in three years. This support makes another two-year commitment a substantial football decision, not a cheap holding pattern. Each delayed season leaves the same staff in charge of another roster and another nine-figure spending cycle. Nebraska should not call that patience merely because the buyout arrives in a different column of the ledger.
Football revenue makes inaction expensive too. Flatwater placed Nebraska’s 2024-25 football revenue at $122 million and reported that athletic officials credit football with about 80 percent of department revenue. A five percent decline in that football figure would cost $6.1 million in one year. A ten percent decline would cost $12.2 million. Across three years, those scenarios reach $18.3 million and $36.6 million. No evidence cited here shows that either decline has already happened. These calculations describe exposure, not a forecast. Nebraska cannot give that exposure a value of zero while discussing only the buyout.
Nebraska fans have held up their end. Flatwater ranked the school 11th nationally in average home football attendance over the past five years while its teams averaged slightly more than five wins. Its comparison found no major-conference fan base that turned out more and saw less winning. Nebraska Athletics then reported a record from 16,815 donors. Fund members represent 47 states. The department also counted 1,344,465 attendees across seven sports and led the Big Ten in that measure. This loyalty has been expressed through tickets, donations and years of attention.
T.J. Birkel put the frustration plainly. The Lincoln native and co-host of The Common Fan podcast had welcomed Nebraska’s increased spending on players and operations. “There should be no excuses at this point,” he told Flatwater. His comment came from someone who wanted the investment to work. After Indiana, Oregon and Washington, it reads like a fair description of the school’s obligation to its supporters. Another extended wait needs better evidence than hope that the fourth quarter will eventually change.
Paid players change the cost of a wasted season. The set the initial revenue-sharing cap at $20.5 million and scheduled four percent increases in the second and third years of each three-year period. Nebraska also won approval for $7.5 million in restructured third-party NIL opportunities for 18 football players, according to the . The same report put the 2026-27 school cap at $21.3 million. At the top of the market, . Nakos reported an agreement worth more than $6 million with incentives included. A valuation is not an audited salary. It still shows the scale of the money surrounding one player.
The roster still needs someone to finish games. Nebraska’s players produced fourth-quarter leads against Indiana, Oregon and Washington. Their work did not protect them from the wrong defensive group, a 20-play answer or a late interception return. No NIL valuation could call the timeout Nebraska missed against Indiana. Players need preparation and organization from their coaches after the money has been spent and the roster has been assembled. The players did enough to lead three times, and the record gives them three losses.
December gives Nebraska a practical deadline. The opens Division I football’s early period on December 2 and closes it on December 4. Acting on November 2 would give the school a month to organize an interim plan and begin a search. The search may continue past that date. Recruits still deserve an honest account of who is making the decisions. Waiting until after a bowl would compress that work. Waiting two or three more years would spend several recruiting classes on a staff now in its fourth season.
Another buyout will hurt because the others did. Flatwater reported that Nebraska spent $37 million on buyouts for Bo Pelini, Mike Riley, Scott Frost and their assistants from 2014 onward. Fans are justified in dreading another search and another guaranteed salary. The response should be a better search and a less generous guarantee in the next contract. A new coach may fail, and Nebraska would have to respond to that failure too. Keeping a coach who is failing now offers no protection against it.
Players should not pay for administrative caution. Nebraska should protect its revenue-sharing commitments and honor every restriction attached to donor support. The monthly payments and mitigation language in Rhule’s contract can shape a separation plan without treating the roster as a reserve account. Assistant contracts and roster retention belong in the full accounting. Administrators created the 90 percent guarantee, and they have an obligation to manage it without asking athletes to accept less support.
Rhule can leave with some dignity intact. He improved Nebraska’s record, won a bowl game and presided over the program’s highest team grade-point average in 2024. He accepted responsibility for the organizational failure against Indiana. Those facts make this decision unpleasant for anyone who wanted him to succeed. They do not erase a 24-22 record, a losing conference mark or three consecutive late collapses. Nebraska can honor every dollar it owes him and still choose a different coach.
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