By james art 
LINCOLN — They call the college football top 25 rankings released in January “too early” for a reason.
We don’t know how the transfers might connect with their new teams. Or which season-ending injuries sustained in training camp are ruining the depth. Or which players could decide to hit the spring transfer window.
There are position battles to be played, scores to settle and those inevitable surprise teams — Indiana, SMU — possessing far more chemistry than pundits realize.
Too early top-25 lists almost always list the same names to compete for the College Football Playoff.
Ohio State and Texas — who play each other on Aug. 30 — are ranked No. 1 and No. 2 by ESPN. Some writers at NCAA.com listed Texas, OSU, Notre Dame and Penn State as the top four. original! CBS is bullish on Miami in third place.
Nebraska, coming off a 7-6 season, is nowhere near the top five.
However, NU made three of the too-early top-25 lists. 247Sports had the Huskers 21StUSA Today ranks NU 22n.d and On3 had Nebraska 25th.
Two of the three believers are recruitment sites. Well, they’ve always tended to like NU a little more than the results on the field suggest.
The Buckeyes, Oregon and Penn State — which is in the process of getting rid of OSU defensive coordinator Jim Knowles — received the most love among Big Ten teams, with Illinois, Michigan and Indiana next. That doesn’t feel right to me — the Illini and Hoosiers will fall — but these lists are often based on what just happened, not what will happen.
How about the Huskers? Is top 25 a legitimate consideration? Remember: It’s called “too early” for a reason, but here are the factors I’d look at for each team.
»QB Trajectory: Nebraska scores well here. Dylan Raiola did more than survive his rookie season — he looked good for much of it. He has 13 games of film to learn from, and unlike some young QBs who dazzle early because their athleticism only diminishes when defenses figure it out, Raiola isn’t relying on his speed and agility to play in 2024 .
Prediction: He’ll be more agile and athletic in 2025. and will have figured out some things for opposing Big Ten defenses. So there will still be new offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen. Raiola is less likely to have a sophomore slump — or even a sophomore plateau — than most young quarterbacks.
»Playmakers: NU has good results here, assuming new receivers Dane Key and Nizia Hunter outplay the guys they replace, Jamal Banks and Isaiah Neyor. I think Nebraska can be stronger and deeper in the secondary, make more plays up the middle at linebacker and dive into their passing game. Nebraska isn’t Oregon, but it isn’t the Northwest either.
»Play online: Nebraska almost invariably sinks here, as replacing an entire starting defensive line and a sixth-year offensive center is rarely easy. NU’s linemen — both sides of the ball — made some pretty good snaps last season outside of the Illinois and Indiana games, and if it was up to the linemen, the Huskers would likely pull off a stunner in the Horseshoe, as it was Ohio State’s receivers who made the difference in this game.
»Little things that kill momentum: Nebraska has spent a decade licking its self-inflicted wounds, whether it’s special teams mistakes, turnovers or cheap, pesky penalties like false starts, turnover mistakes or mental lapses after the whistle. NU reduced its penalty fumbles in 2024 while embracing the kinds of special teams disasters that separate the good teams from the great ones.
“Special teams, we need a complete and total overhaul of that,” Rule said after the Pinstripe Bowl. “We have to be better at it. I put these things on my shoulders to do it. It wasn’t good this year.”
Ruhl removed Ed Foley from the role. He has yet to finalize a special teams coordinator change, though that seems likely this week.
»Stability of training and composition: Once done, NU will have three new coordinators for the 2025 season, at least five new starters on offense and a brand new starting defensive line. It’s a bit more of a hustle than one might ask for, even though Holgorsen and defensive coordinator John Butler have been with the program for a while and have already called the Pinstripe Bowl together.
In the five categories, Nebraska scores high in two, decent in one, while the jury is still out on small things and stability.
This could be a top 25 team – or one on the fringes. It’s not a giant, but it’s also not easy to crush.
Nebrasketball Blues
Nebraska basketball coach Fred Hoiberg is good at taking an opening question after a game and turning it into an opening statement that one imagines is a cleaner version of whatever he just told his players in the locker room.
Occasionally, tucked into these one-minute analyses, Hoiberg pulls back the curtain a bit, as he did after NU’s 78-73 loss at USC.
“I didn’t like the turnovers early on,” Hoiberg said. “I thought that led to pick-six baskets for them — I think they got three of them — which gives the team confidence. For us, we have to be perfect. We’ve got to come out, we’ve got to play under control, we’ve got to get a shot up on the glass, whether it’s going in or not, so we can prepare our defense.”
Five words. We have to be perfect. narration.
Because perfection is unattainable — and Hoiberg knows it — he instead talked about a strategy that gives NU the best chance to win, as a consistent lack of shots between all players leaves little room for error for the Huskers. Six points allowed on punts or dunks is not six points easily recovered by a Nebraska offense. Heading into Sunday, NU was a top 100 team in arc shooting, a top 100 team in getting to the free throw line and about 220th in a shooting percentage of 3.
Nothing about losing at Wisconsin — the Badgers led 19-2 five minutes into the game — changed those rankings.
As Rewind noted two weeks ago, a similar formula didn’t fit Hoiberg’s NCAA Tournament teams of the past, all of which shot better than 35.5 percent from 3.
NU is currently shooting 33.2 percent this season — 31.5 percent in Big Ten play. Last year’s team shot 37.8 percent in Big Ten play. Hit 14 3-pointers to upset Purdue. Hit 14 and 11 in road wins at Indiana and Kansas State, respectively.
It can be done the rough way — Hoiberg wants it — but it’s like trying to win a football game without explosive plays. You need to turn 50/50 balls into 90/10 and stay extremely patient on offense. You have to be perfect.
“Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us right now,” Hoiberg said on his postgame radio show Sunday after the Wisconsin loss. “We can’t throw a pity party for ourselves right now.”
When you’re building your list year by year through the transfer portal, missing a grade by an inch – say, off the edge instead of a splash – can seem like a mile.
Excluding Hoiberg’s first class of transfers — hastily written off out of necessity, based on Tim Miles, leaving little talent in the closet — just 29.1 percent of NU’s transfers shot better than 35.5 percent from 3. That includes the shooter with 3 points with low volume Josiah Alick . Rienk Mast, at 34.4%, was a great performance for a number of reasons and was a threat as a shooter as well.
Roughly 45% of those transfers shoot the 3 under 30% at Nebraska, and while that list includes posts like Andrew Morgan and Braxton Mee, it also includes Juwan Gary, Dalano Banton and current point guards Roley Worster and Aaron Ulis. None of those four were asked to be 3-pointers, but they didn’t put much pressure on NU’s elite shooters.
Only one of Hoiberg’s NU teams — last season — had balanced 3-point firepower. This version doesn’t, so it should be, as Hoiberg noted, “perfect” on offense. And there are few easy wins on the schedule, other than maybe a trip to Washington.
Nebraska will win some games at home this season — that’s inevitable — but life one transfer portal at a time will lead to roller coaster results.
To achieve solid results, NU likely needs a young core to build around and years of development. Otherwise, it’s been a roller coaster — and the Huskers are currently at a standstill.
Buckeyes among the best?
Ignore the two losses if you can or dare and just look at the product on the field over the past month. The explosive first halves, the unstoppable freshman wide receiver, the quarterback who averaged 10.55 yards per attempt, the defense that had 18 sacks in college playoff games.
Ohio State’s 2024 Team among the three best of the College Football Playoff era?
No. At their peak — which I didn’t see in person when OSU beat Nebraska 21-17 — the Buckeyes could match up against the best teams of the era. In the end, Ohio State was a little underwhelming offensively — especially in games against NU and Michigan — to rank among the top three teams of the era.
Who they are in order: 2019 LSU, 2018 Clemson and 2022 Georgia.
Those two of the former would have quite a fight as well.
LSU won its national title, of course, over Clemson, who beat 2019 Ohio State — who might be in my top five teams of the CFP era. Fans who witnessed OSU’s 48-7 rout of NU five years ago might agree.
Yes, 2019 was that rare year where three great teams competed for the title, and the Tigers — led by Joe Burrow, Ja’Mar Chase and Justin Jefferson — had one of the great offenses in the sport. LSU won at Texas and at Alabama before beating Georgia (SEC title game), Oklahoma and Clemson for the title. Coach Dabo Swinney’s crew won 29 in a row during that time.
That’s because Clemson won the 2018 title. with remarkable ease after surviving the season-opening trip to Kyle Field. After beating Texas A&M 28-26, only one other team came within one score of the Tigers, who smoked Notre Dame 30-3 and top-ranked Alabama 44-16 for the crown.
Georgia’s 2022 team came close to a missed Buckeye field goal to lose the CFP semifinals, but … that field goal missed. And UGA beat TCU’s brakes — 65-7! — in the CFP final.
Jumping Jenna Rogers
Jenna Rogers might be the best athlete on Nebraska’s campus right now. And “maybe” just might be too qualified a statement.
Rogers, a high jumper for NU, just cleared the bar at 6-4¼ to set a Bob Devaney Sports Center record. That mark is better than former UCLA high jumper Amy Acuff, who jumped 6-3 ½ at Devaney and competed in five Olympics.
It’s also the mark that puts her in the conversation — with longtime pro Vashti Cunningham — for a U.S. title. Rogers came out of Rutherford (N.J.) High School with comparable high school grades to Cunningham’s before a mysterious leg injury — which took Rogers to one after another — left her in excruciating pain.
“It feels like someone hit my leg with a hammer,” Rogers said in a 2023 story.
Rogers jumped in pain. Last summer, she finished third at the Olympic Team Trials with a leap of 6-3¼. She surpassed that mark again in December. On Saturday, she jumped an inch higher. Good stuff for a three-time Academic All-Big Ten team captain.