NEW YORK — Nebraska’s players have seen the sites in New York all week and on Friday got their first chance to set foot in Yankee Stadium, as Nebraska turns its attention to the game portion of its bowl trip to the Big Apple.
Head coach Matt Rhule said Friday that he believes his team has been focused all week and will be ready for Saturday’s kickoff with Boston College.
Rhule said that the fact the Huskers practiced immediately in New Jersey after landing on the east coast was meant to send a message of the game’s importance.
«The first thing we did when we got here was we literally drive and put on our pads and started to hit,» Rhule said. «That’s the message from day one. We’ve given them some free time, we’ve done a lot of cool things, celebrating Christmas together, but at the end of the day this is an opportunity to finish our season the right way versus an excellent football team at Boston College. As a coach, I trust these guys and I think they’ll be ready to go.»
Nebraska will be playing its first bowl game since the 2016 Music City Bowl, and hasn’t won a bowl game since the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl in Mike Riley’s first year as head coach.
With the transfer portal and new landscape in college football, bowl games have fallen in a bit of a transition point in the college football calendar. Coaches and players are coming and going and programs now spend December setting the roster for the following year’s team.
Rhule said the experience of being in New York is an opportunity to deal with the distractions around a game and having to find the focus to compete.
«You have to earn the right to come to a bowl game and we were able to do that this year and now you have to go win and now we have to play well. We have to train ourselves to show up in moments like this so we can continue to win more games and hopefully qualify for things that come,» Rhule said.
In many ways, Nebraska’s works getting ready for the bowl game has set the table for the 2025 season. Nebraska will have two new full-time coordinators in offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen and defensive coordinator John Butler, and will have younger players stepping into new roles, especially on defense.
Nebraska got double-digit practices in Lincoln before even getting to the bowl site, and Rhule said he has liked the look of his team throughout December.
«You’re walking around in New York City, I mean there are a lot of things to do that could pull you away,» Rhule said. «They’ve been where they’re supposed to be, they’ve done everything right and we practiced well. We started the first Tuesday when we knew when we were in a bowl game. We didn’t wait. We’ve been practicing for several weeks now because that’s what our young players need. Now we’re here in game prep and I think our guys will be ready to go.»