The minute Matt Rhule and his full Nebraska squad ran out of the visiting team tunnel in Beaver Stadium on Saturday, a little more than an hour before kickoff, the Cornhuskers’ head coach made a beeline for the middle of the field.
Rhule was looking for Terry Smith, a fellow former Nittany Lion football player and Penn State’s interim head coach. Smith had worked for Rhule, when Rhule was in his first year as Temple’s head coach and Smith made the jump from coaching high school football to college ball.
Rhule was wearing a big smile, and was dressed in all black save for gaudy red coaching shoes. When Rhule finally worked his way through hordes of running players, he spotted Smith and immediately gave him a big hug.
In a different world, Rhule may have hired Smith again, after the 2025 season. If Rhule and Penn State AD Pat Kraft had been aligned in thinking that Rhule was The Man to succeed James Franklin. IF. Ironically, that’s the slogan that Smith has employed since he was first employed as Penn State’s interim head coach.
After two or three minutes of chatter and glad-handing and hugs and more smiles, the two head coaches shook hands, parted ways and retreated to their sides of the field.
More than four hours later, when the game was over, Rhule’s Cornhuskers had lost 37-10 to his alma mater in the Nittany Lions’ final home of the 2025 irregular season.
Six weeks ago, some folks thought that beyond this game Rhule would ultimately return to State College, where he went to high school and college, as a conquering hero.
The chronology: Kraft fired Franklin on Oct. 12. For the next 18 days, Rhule — who previously resurrected programs in deep travails at Temple and Baylor, then laid an egg in the NFL — was considered a viable leading candidate to succeed Franklin, in part because of the personal friendship between Kraft and Rhule, who worked together at Temple.
That narrative ended on Oct. 30, when Rhule and Nebraska announced a two-year extension that will make him the Cornhuskers’ head coach through 2032, at an annual value salary of $11.7 million. Meantime, it is Day No. 42 since James was let go, and earlier this week he resurfaced in Blacksburg. I get it.
And now. so does Rhule. So, what looked at one time to be a triumphant homecoming on Nov. 22, was anything but. On Saturday night, Rhule did not conquer. He was not the hero. And he will not be returning for quite awhile, if at all.
When Rhule returns to Lincoln, he will be staying there.
And, by the sound of it, he’s happy about it. Post-game, he seemed upbeat. He wasn’t down. He knew he was playing without his top quarterback, on the road against a team that started the year ranked No. 2 in the nation and playing for a beloved interim HC in a very emotional Senior Night.
Rhule praised the grit of his team, now 7-4, and how it played “in the worst possible situation.” He praised his coaches and players. He promised that, “We’ll come back. We’ll eat this one, deal with it. I told them, when we get on the plane we are on to next week. We have no time to worry about what happened.”
He seemed like a man who may have lost the battle, but won the war. There was no sign of distress or remorse. No handwringing. Rhule decided weeks ago that Penn State was not in his cards, and now Kraft is the one who has been discarding and picking up from the deck, the options in the AD’s hand diminishing seemingly by the day.
Rhule knows Smith well. He hired him to be an assistant on his Temple staff back in 2013, Rhule’s first season as the Owls’ head coach. Smith coached the wide receivers, and the Owls went 2-10. The next season, Franklin hired Smith to return to Penn State, where he was a co-captain in 1991. Rhule went 6-6 in 2014, and in 2015 Temple opened its season by pounding Franklin, Smith and Penn State 27-10 at Lincoln Financial Field, the Owls’ first win over the Nittany Lions in 1974.
Smith is 2-3 as Penn State’s interim head coach, and with a win at Rutgers next Saturday, the Nittany Lions would level their record at 6-6 and be bowl eligible. You know the story.
After the game on Saturday night, in a crowded and noisy post-game press conference in a 6-foot by 2-foot tent, I asked Rhule, “What do you think of the job that Terry has done?”
Rhule was quick to reply: “I think Terry, when you have an interim head coach, people have a tendency to rally around you. They certainly have rallied around him. He’s a Penn Stater. He’s a lifer. I’m proud of him. I gave him his first job. He’s done a really nice job out there. Penn State’s a great place. They have a bunch of fantastic talent. And they played really well tonight.”
And, for Rhule, that was that.
As a coach, Beaver Stadium has never been kind to him. He is 0-7 coaching there on what will forever be, in his mind a bit, the opposite sideline. As an assistant coach at Temple from 2006-11, Rhule lost four times in Beaver Stadium. As a head coach at Temple, he lost two times in Beaver Stadium. And then there was Saturday night. Overall, Rhule is 1-9 when coaching against Penn State. Against Paterno, Franklin and now Smith.
Rhule is 50, and his family — parents, wife, kids — all seem happy in Lincoln. It is his fourth head coaching stop. It is unlikely that he’ll ever be the head coach at Penn State. That dream, if it ever existed, has died. Nonetheless, I think Matt Rhule sleeps soundly at night. Even late Saturday night into Sunday morning, when he is back home. Truly his home now.
The torch has been passed — albeit perhaps only briefly — to Smith, a fellow Penn Stater. And Smith, as Robert Frost once wrote, “has miles to go before he sleeps.”
