Nebraska head football coach Matt Rhule is a fan of Michigan football head coach Jim Harbaugh and the way in which he has built his football team. When Rhule met with the media earlier in the week, he highlighted how the Wolverines are a template for how he wants to build his Nebraska teams.
“Everything. You think about when Coach (Jim) Harbaugh first came in, he was taking over after a couple of years of not being a great program after being a great program. He’s recruited. I worked at one of his camps when I was the head coach at Temple. You guys probably don’t remember, but he was the guy that started the satellite camps. It was a big controversy at the time. He was the first person to go at 12:01 to someone’s house for recruiting. I did that. I didn’t like doing it, but I did it, because he was doing it. He’s had a real impact on the game.”
Rhule also talked about some of the differences between the two programs as well.
“Sometimes I’ll have recruits say to me ‘well, Coach, are we going to be good? Should I go to Michigan?’ Well, he did it. And that’s what we’re doing. His blueprint for building that program, for the way that they play, a lot of those things are similar. Obviously, we want to have a little bit of an option element at times, too. So there’s differences, but the overarching blueprint for being great on the o and d-lines, having good quarterback play, being physical at tight end, all those things – that’s what we’re doing.”
Haarberg has been at Michigan since 2015, and in that time, he has a record of 75-25 (52-17) with two Big Ten Championships (2021 & 2022) and two College Football Playoff appearances (2021 & 2022).
Find a photo gallery of Jim Harbaugh’s career against Nebraska below.