Matt Rhule addresses the expectations of the fans at Nebraska

As excitement swells prior to the 2023 season, new Nebraska coach Matt Rhule can feel the buzz in Lincoln.

It’s been seven years since Nebraska last had a winning season and 11 years since the program won double-digit games in a single season. That after decades of dominance.

“I think people, they’re at a point now where it’s been seven or eight years and I think people are just hungry for a step in the right direction,” Rhule said Wednesday on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “And I think people are excited about the things that we’ve done, the way we’ve recruited, the way we’ve tried to get around the state.”

Rhule has certainly been hobnobbing quite a bit, trying to get the booster ranks and the fanbase behind him in an era of college football where that is now critical to recruiting. He seems to have won over plenty of fans.

But ultimately winning over the fans will happen one way: by winning on the field when it matters.

Rhule, though, thinks there will be a bit of a building process, noting it won’t all happen in one year. What he wants to focus on initially is making sure that everything’s being done the right way.

“I know people want to win, but they also want to do things kind of the Nebraska way,” Rhule said. “For me, being here, it’s like college football’s version of like chicken soup for the soul. This is great. Tom Osborne came up the other day just to shake my hand and wish me luck in the first game. You want to talk to someone like me that loves college football, I’m pinching myself.”

Rhule’s hoping he won’t have to pinch himself to wake up from the nightmare the last few coaches have faced. Things turned quickly on Scott Frost in his fifth season in charge, though you’d have to say the Cornhuskers were relatively patient given the results of his first four seasons.

Bottom line: It’s not necessarily easy to win at the level Nebraska fans expect.

How Rhule handles and manages those expectations going forward will be interesting.

“Yes, there’s expectations and people want us to win, but we also need to kind of go back to playing the way that Nebraska’s used to,” Rhule said. “We need to be a physical team. We need to be hard-nosed team. We can’t lose games in the fourth quarter.”

Nebraska will open the Matt Rhule era on Aug. 31 with a Big Ten game on the road at Minnesota.