Matt Rhule has more than 20 years of coaching experience, beginning his career as a volunteer assistant at Penn State in 1998 before moving up to position coach, coordinator and eventually head coach.
Rhule's latest challenge is the head coaching job with the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The team went 5-7 in his first year with the team in 2023, but expectations are high this fall with the addition of five-star quarterback Dylan Raiola to the team.
Lue and the Cornhuskers will face their toughest test of the season early in Week 2 when the Colorado football team travels to Memorial Stadium.
For Rhule, this will be a matchup against “one of the best football players I've ever coached.”
“The thing you always have to remember when you talk about Colorado is how good Shedur is,” Lue told Fox Sports commentator Joel Klatt on the latest episode of “The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast.”
“He (Shedur) is one of the best players I've ever played against as a coach. We went at him, sacked him like 10 times, got hit a bunch of times and he just stood there.”
Sanders was a major reason Colorado beat Nebraska (36-14) for the third straight time in 2023.
The potential first-round NFL Draft pick completed 31 of 42 passes (74 percent) for 393 yards and two touchdowns (the other coming on a rushing shot) despite being sacked seven times by the Cornhuskers defense, ranked 11th in the country.
Sanders' celebrity status and social media presence can often overshadow his influence on the campaign trail.
“People see Shedur on commercials and see how dashing he is when he plays, but he's incredibly competitive and tough,” Rhule said.
Sanders led the Buffaloes to a win over Nebraska in front of a sellout crowd at Folsom Field. The 73rd Colorado-Nebraska matchup will be held in Lincoln in 2024 and will be nationally televised (NBC).
This will be the first time the Buffaloes will play on NBC since the 1995 Fiesta Bowl.
“When you bring in Shedur, Travis Hunter and all the players they have and coach (Deion) Sanders, they're coming into our team as a really good football team with dynamic players that we're going to have to go up against. How good could it be for the region to have this game being played and being nationally televised at night?”
“How good would that be for the game of football? I don't want football to be limited to just this area of the country and this area. I want football to be played in all 50 states, from the East Coast to the West Coast. What Deion (Sanders) has done, in my opinion, is made football meaningful to people who didn't watch it.”
The Sept. 7 matchup will be a season-defining one for both teams. Nebraska leads the series (49-21-2), but Colorado is 3-3 at Memorial Stadium since 2002.
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