The entire college football world was shocked when the sport’s biggest blue-blood program, the Alabama Crimson Tide, lost to the Vanderbilt Commodores 40-35 on Saturday.
It was a stunning upset, and Alabama was the laughing stock of social media afterward, but one head coach at a major program got into the nuts and bolts of what transpired. Nebraska’s Matt Rhule didn’t hold back in his Monday press conference as he explained how the upset happened, via Outkick.
“It goes back to what I said all training camp of…Looking at the schedule before the season and saying what game is reasonable and games are hard, is not true, and it’s not the way of college football anymore,” Rhule said.
“Everyone’s got to get that, like, how many teams lost to teams that…you never would have thought Alabama would ever lose to Vandy. You never would have thought maybe USC would lose to Minnesota. The portal, transfers, NIL, it’s changed all of it.
“That’s why there’s no undefeated NFL teams, right? So you know, it used to be that a player would say, ‘Man, I got offered from,’ you know, whomever, Ohio State, ‘I’m going there.’ But now, he might get offered from…the top school in the country and they’re offering, hey, you know, we’ll give you X amount of money.
And another school that’s two pegs lower on the pecking order of recruiting will say, ‘Hey, we’ll give you three times that.’ Because for this guy, he’s their 15th best recruit, but for them, they’re like, ‘We can’t get those guys, so we’ll get him.’ So now that kid’s like, ‘Do I go there for $50 grand or do I go there for $250,000?’”
Rhule explained that the current era of college football has spread talent out across the country rather than just in a handful of schools. While it’s shocking to hear, it does help explain how such a crazy upset can come to pass.
As more schools adapt to the NIL and transfer portal era, it won’t be shocking to see programs like the Miami (OH) Redhawks competing for national championships.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.