Matt Rhule shouldn't be fired after this loss, and he isn't going to resign over it either. Both outcomes were made impossible months before Nebraska ever lined up against Illinois, and athletic director Troy Dannen is the one who made them impossible.
Nebraska lost 24-13 at Illinois, its fourth straight defeat after opening the season 5-0, and dropped to 2-4 in Big Ten play. Illinois clinched bowl eligibility for a third straight season, something the program hadn't managed since the early 1990s, riding a four-game winning streak. The gap is real, and it's embarrassing for Nebraska fans to watch play out. None of that is in dispute.
What's being argued is whether this loss is the final piece of evidence that Rhule needs to go. It isn't, and anyone demanding his firing has to reckon with the fact that Nebraska's own administration took that option off the table on purpose. Last October, before this season even kicked off, Dannen signed Rhule to a two-year extension running through 2032, explicitly to keep him from leaving for Penn State. Dannen's own quote at the time called Rhule "the right leader at the right time for Nebraska Football" and said he looked forward to him being in Lincoln "for a long time." That extension pushed Rhule's guaranteed buyout past $63 million, with the newer years reportedly guaranteed at a rate that makes walking away from him financially ruinous for the athletic department.
So when fans scream for Rhule's head after a loss like this, they're really asking Nebraska to write a check that would make headlines for the wrong reasons for years. That check is the trap Dannen built with his own signature. It's fair to ask what exactly justified locking a coach in through 2032 off a season that hadn't proven anything yet. The answer looks worse with every fourth-quarter collapse.
The strongest pushback is that one loss, even a fourth straight one, doesn't erase a 5-0 start, and a team this talented isn't actually bad. The job security question was never really about talent, though. It's about whether this staff can close games, and four straight losses after an undefeated start is exactly the kind of pattern administrations are supposed to watch for before guaranteeing a coach seven more years of money. Dannen had the information. He extended anyway.
Rhule himself isn't hiding from the pressure. After the loss to Washington that opened this losing streak, he told reporters flatly: "We're going to keep fighting until the day they tell me to leave. I'm not leaving. I'm not quitting." That's the quote of a coach who isn't going anywhere, and given what Nebraska would owe him to make him go, he has no reason to plot an exit. He also talked about what the losing has cost his family personally, the part of this job that never shows up in a buyout spreadsheet.
Nebraska still has Rutgers, a home game against Ohio State-level competition, and a trip to Iowa to close the season. Those games will just show how bad this stretch gets. The firing-or-resignation debate was effectively settled in October, by the man who's supposed to be holding Rhule accountable. Dannen signed the contract that makes holding him accountable financially impossible for Nebraska.
