Matt Rhule on ‘Lanterns’: Five Memorable Past Movie and TV Cameos From College Football Coaches

Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for season one of HBO’s Lanterns.

Chris Mundy—the co-creator and executive producer of Lanterns, HBO’s True Detective-indebted superhero hit—is from Omaha, and in Omaha (and Nebraska more broadly), there’s only one game in town that truly matters.

That’s how Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule ended up in “Dirt and Stars,” the show’s Season 1 finale. Mundy and Rhule became friends through ESPN reporter Pete Thamel, and Rhule dutifully lured Manhunter/quarterback Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard) to play for the Cornhuskers on the show.

“I don’t know that I’ll be taking my talents to Broadway anytime soon,” Rhule told reporters Monday self-deprecatingly, adding that his daughters were concerned he’d flub his line and that recruits texted him after seeing him on the show.

Rhule is hardly the first college football coach to dabble in film or television acting. Here’s a look back at five worth remembering.

Mack Brown and Mike Leach in Friday Night Lights

The greatest scripted sports drama featured appearances from two Lone Star State coaching icons under very different circumstances. Brown, Texas’s coach for the series’s entire run, cameoed in the show’s first episode as the father of a player (“There wasn’t a script,” Brown told reporters. “[Director] Peter Berg said, ‘You’ve heard fathers for 32–33 years, so you know what to say’ ”). Leach, on the other hand, played a stranger who approaches Kyle Chandler’s Coach Eric Taylor as a gas station and cryptically implored Taylor to “swing [his] sword.”

Every coach ever in The Blind Side

The Blind Side is a bad movie that plays facts fast and loose, but it assembled an impressive cast of coaches: Hugh Freeze (protagonist Michael Oher’s high-school coach), Phillip Fulmer (Tennessee), Lou Holtz (South Carolina), Houston Nutt (Arkansas), Ed Orgeron (Ole Miss), Nick Saban (LSU) and Tommy Tuberville (Auburn). As in real life, Orgeron ultimately lands Oher—but as in real life, Saban ultimately steals the show. “I find him extremely handsome,” Sandra Bullock’s Leigh Anne Tuohy declares, much to the chagrin of her husband (played by Tim McGraw).

Barry Switzer in every movie and TV show ever

Even before making the jump from Oklahoma to the Dallas Cowboys, Switzer owned a filmography. He appeared in Coach in 1990, and after his resignation from the Cowboys, went on an appearance spree that included hits in Any Given Sunday and Varsity Blues. His most recent acting role was in The Turkey Bowl, a 2019 comedy directed by Oklahoma graduate Greg Coolidge.

Jim Harbaugh in Detroiters

Harbaugh’s charisma won him acting roles during his playing days (such as Screech’s cousin in Saved by the Bell: The New Class), but his 2018 turn in the Tim Robinson-Sam Richardson-Zach Kanin vehicle Detroiters was something else entirely. Harbaugh plays himself at a charity “fowling” (hybrid football-bowling) event in a since-closed warehouse in Hamtramck, Mich. His agonized screams while Richardson and Robinson pitch a Little Caesar’s bigwig are not to be missed.

Lou Holtz in Special Agent Oso, a cartoon about a stuffed panda bear

Not just any stuffed panda bear! A stuffed panda bear voiced by Rudy himself, Sean Astin. It was only right that Notre Dame’s most recent national championship coach, then on ESPN, lend his vocal and football talents as “Uncle Lou”—the resemblance is uncanny.

PODCAST: Listen to Sports Illustrated’s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, hosted by Pat Forde, on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s college YouTube channel or on SI TV.

Add us as a preferred source on Google