LINCOLN, Neb. — Even after a somber Nebraska New Year’s Eve that featured a 44-22 beatdown at the hands of Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl, the turn of the calendar to 2026 brings a fresh start.
The next 12 months promise to deliver drama at various venues for the Huskers. While several programs under the watch of athletic director Troy Dannen set their sights on runs at a national championship, others are fighting to break through. The latter includes Nebraska’s cash cow, football.
It did not arrive in 2025 as a resurgent power in college football. In fact, despite playing the season finale without many stars from the three months prior, the last loss for coach Matt Rhule’s third team with the Huskers ensured that they would fall short of most external expectations.
Another seven-win season with three blowout defeats and a ninth consecutive year without a win against an AP-ranked team? It’s not anybody’s idea in Lincoln of how to usher in a happy new year.
As is tradition, I will wipe the slate reasonably clean and peer into the crystal ball to offer predictions for 2026. As usual, let’s hold on win totals and other details for the next football season. Rhule’s roster still needs to come into focus.
First, though, a look back at my forecast for 2025: I fared well in envisioning the winter arrivals of new starters on the offensive line and an assistant coach in Mike Ekeler, who shook up the special teams. I hit on a few aspects of quarterback Dylan Raiola’s story arc in 2025 — but certainly not all of it.
Who could have predicted that the Nebraska basketball team would not lose in the final 297 days of the year? Or that it would win the first-ever College Basketball Crown? Not me.
I didn’t foresee John Cook’s January retirement as volleyball coach after 25 years. I also swung and missed by picking Cook’s former team to win a national championship in December.
So here we go with the 2026 predictions.
1. No fewer than five players widely seen as key contributors, in addition to Raiola and safety Malcolm Hartzog, will enter the transfer portal over the next two weeks. We’re talking about starters or promising young pieces.
Rhule said Wednesday in Las Vegas that he feels good about Nebraska’s position to retain its top talent. However, he also acknowledged the reality that some of the Huskers whom Rhule would like to retain may decide it’s not in their best interest to stay.
As the portal taketh from Nebraska, it will also giveth. As of the first day of this year, the Huskers have 15 to 17 spots open for transfers or other additions yet to sign. And that’s taking into account only the players who’ve made known their intentions to leave. With each departure, another spot opens.
The number will soar past 20, though Nebraska may elect to carry a roster in 2026 smaller than the 125 who filled the locker room last year. Expect Nebraska to target multiple quarterbacks, a running back and a collection of linemen on offense and defense who can reshape the Huskers’ play at the line of scrimmage.
2. Rhule will add a big piece to his staff to coach the defensive line. The Huskers made a run last month — and not for the first time — at Elijah Robinson, the D-line coach who elected to return to Texas A&M.
In bowl prep, Nebraska used a patchwork system to coach the front four on defense with Rhule, Phil Simpson and Ekeler in addition to Dave Tollefson, the former NFL lineman who joined the Huskers as a guest coach.
Roy Manning is on the way with new defensive coordinator Rob Aurich to coach the edge rushers. But Rhule needs someone other than “Coach Matt” to hold down the middle. As we saw in 2025, to stop the run, Nebraska needs an experienced coach for the interior D-line with an ability to develop, instruct and motivate.
3. Aurich will bring more than just Manning from the Aztecs. Today in college, part of a coaching candidate’s appeal involves the players who might follow him.
Look for Aurich, who’s adept at directing defensive turnarounds, to infuse an attitude back into a Nebraska defense that it lost when most of its D-linemen left Lincoln after the 2024 season. Aurich might also attract a few former San Diego State defenders to join him.
Notably, SDSU’s defensive end Ryan Henderson, All-Mountain West linebacker Owen Chambliss and safety Dwayne McDougle are expected to enter the portal late this week.
4. The first legitimate quarterback competition of the Rhule era will extend into August. What about 2024, when Raiola beat out two others to win the job as a true freshman? Rhule needed him to win it. He did. But there was never any suspense around that competition.
Not the case this year, with TJ Lateef scheduled to return after he started the final four games in 2025. Lateef performed better than Nebraska’s 1-3 record indicated. He made mistakes and struggled for extended periods in each of the three defeats, but Lateef earned the right to get a shot at the job as a sophomore. He’ll battle new contenders for most of the offseason.
5. The Big Ten will give Nebraska a schedule that includes one College Football Playoff participant from last year in each month of the regular season.
Yes, that’s right, in case you forgot, dates for next season’s Big Ten games have not been announced. How about Indiana in September at Memorial Stadium, Oregon in October in Eugene and Ohio State in Lincoln in November?
It ought to be fun. Right?
6. Somehow, some way, a sensible proposal to reform the college football calendar will gain traction. Maybe the threat of Congressional intervention will get administrators to act. Or maybe when the dust settles after this portal season and the CFP is over, the right group of people will listen to complaints that the current calendar is a jumbled disaster.
The simple fact that the coaching carousel coincides with the postseason is enough to mandate change. And there’s only one reason for the overlap? The timing of portal season. Move it to May and June, I say. Coaches want more time to work with their roster before August. So restructure the offseason practice and training schedules.
Nebraska men’s basketball is 13-0 and beat Wisconsin and Illinois to start the Big Ten season. (Dylan Widger / Imagn Images)
7. Nebraska basketball will suffer its first loss Friday night at home against Michigan State. And a few games from now, the Huskers will say it helped them. Nebraska is 13-0. It beat Wisconsin and Illinois to start the Big Ten season. It’s hard to nitpick, but this group has found ways to look disjointed in the first halves of several home games.
It’s going to catch up to them. The Spartans and coach Tom Izzo will be ready and motivated. Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg could use a loss to re-emphasize his message about the importance of preparation and playing for 40 minutes.
Nebraska goes on the road to play Ohio State and Indiana next and would do well to split those games. The Huskers still have to play Michigan, Purdue and other Big Ten beasts. There will be defeats. But as long as Nebraska is moving in a positive direction toward March, it’s all worthwhile, because …
8. Hoiberg’s team will win a game in the NCAA Tournament. I predicted this last year before the Huskers lost seven consecutive games in January and fell off the bubble with five straight defeats before the postseason.
This team, if it stays fairly healthy, won’t experience long skids. The Huskers are in a good position to worry mostly in February and March about their tournament seed, a rare place for Nebraska basketball. The absence of bubble stress can aid in the quest to win once the tourney starts, a feat never accomplished by the Nebraska men.
9. Jordy Frahm will take Nebraska to the Women’s College World Series for the first time since 2013. Frahm (formerly Jordy Bahl) is a senior in her last run with Nebraska.
She was the NFCA Division I Player of the Year in 2025 for her pitching and hitting exploits. Frahm carried Nebraska through regional play at LSU before the Huskers beat Tennessee to open super-regional play, then suffered a pair of excruciating one-run losses.
Frahm will end her collegiate career in Oklahoma City, where it started with two national championships as a standout pitcher for the powerhouse Oklahoma Sooners. And she’ll match against her ex-teammates.
10. Nebraska volleyball will cut down the net in San Antonio in December. For Bergen Reilly, Harper Murray, Andi Jackson and Laney Choboy to stake their spot among the best class of players ever to wear the Huskers uniform, they need a national championship. Already, they’re perhaps the most impactful group ever to play at Nebraska.
But their work is unfinished. Their legacy is incomplete despite three Big Ten titles and two Final Four trips. Nebraska will again rank among the favorites in 2026, but it won’t be seen as invincible after Texas A&M won in Lincoln in 2025 en route to the Aggies’ first national title.