'It's Almost Like a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy': Kevin Kugler on the Groin Kick Era of Husker Football

In a special bonus episode of the Groin Kick Chronicles, the NFL on Fox's Kevin Kugler joined Josh Peterson to discuss his time with the Big Ten Network and Nebraska's Groin Kick Era of football. What has the through line been for this time period, and how does Nebraska break the cycle?

Below is a lightly-edited transcript of a portion of their conversation.

Kevin: Nebraska never was able and seemingly still is not able to get any positive momentum. I mean, you and I are sitting here in mid-July talking about this, and all of the sunshine and lollipop train is starting to roll forward again for the 2025 season. 9-3, 11-1; you hear this every single year. I'm just waiting for fall camp to start so we can hear about these guys are puking like they've never puked. These guys are running through walls. Everybody's in the best shape of their lives. And then they come out in years past, hopefully not the case this year for Nebraska, they come out in years past and just lay a giant egg or figure out ridiculous ways to lose games like that 2019 Iowa game.

Josh: Yeah, and along those lines, the end of it. They have the ball at midfield and there's no two-minute stoppage yet in college football. And so they can, as Matt [Millen] points out, they can run the clock out, and, at the very least, they can go to overtime. Not only do they not do that, they lose in regulation. And then similar things happen in Matt Rhule’s first game vs. Iowa and then in Matt Ruhl's second game vs. Iowa where it's not even that they lost, and it's not how they lost, it's that they lost in regulation. Where you just leave and you're like, you thought at least you had a little bit more time with the game, and then suddenly it's over. And in the case of the 2023 game and the 2019 game, suddenly the season is over, and you leave the stadium just in a total daze.

Keith Duncan looks to the crowd after his game-winning field goal vs. Nebraska in 2019. | Bryon Houlgrave/The Register, Des Moines Register via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Kevin: There was no scenario that game wasn't at the very worst going overtime. That was a given. It’s like, alright, going to overtime, let's figure this out. Here we go. Great post-Thanksgiving. I mean, we'd had our entire crew in Lincoln. We had this big Thanksgiving dinner. It was this great time. It's Friday after Thanksgiving. All eyes are on this game. Oh my gosh, coming down to the wire. Nebraska's have rallied in this game, and everybody's fired up and the place is rocking. You're thinking, all right, the native sun's coming back. He's getting his team to a ball game. He's beaten Iowa. This is the start of something.

And then, Iowa gets the ball back with under 20 seconds. They throw a pass. There's a penalty. They throw another pass. They have seven seconds. They get up to the line. They clock it. They kick a field goal, which by the way, they always make, and Nebraska in this era never did. If they got the chance to kick it in the first place, and they win the game in regulation.

I mean, if there weren't so many of these groin kick games, would have absolutely been higher on the list. And the fact that it wasn't higher on your list just really underlines this whole era of Nebraska football. For a lot of schools, this would be number five, number four. I mean, you're losing to the team that's likely your biggest rival in this conference. And you lose this way for your fifth-straight loss in a game that should have at the very worst gone to overtime. And then that happened.

I mean, painful to watch. And as you walked out of the stadium, you just felt it. Everybody was numb. Everybody was numb leaving that stadium that day.

Josh: Let me ask you this, because you made reference to it at the start of the conversation that you were chatting with the Husker fan. And it's just like, wow, this is an insane run of, it's a decade. And I think I went into this project thinking like, all these 2021 games are going to be near the top of the list. And there are still some 2021 games to come because that was such a strange season. But then I start doing the math, and it's like, whoa, look at all these 2015 [games]. BYU, Wisconsin, Illinois, Miami; all these Mike Riley games. Then the Frost era. And in two years in, the Matt Rhule experience so far has suffered some of the most brutal groin-kick losses.

What is the through line, Kevin, in your opinion, that, you know, it's one thing to lose this way under one coach. It's another to lose under two. It's another entirely to have three coaches where you're losing in very similar ways. Is there a through line to all this in your opinion?

The Groin Kick Era of Husker football has spanned three coaching staffs. Can the Matt Rhule era overcome the last decade of Husker football? | Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Kevin: I think there's partially a through line in that the players provide the through line because you've made so many changes over the course of time in such short order. There's no way to not have players on those rosters who've experienced one of these groin kicks, and it carries over to the next year.

So it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think this is gonna happen, so it's going to happen. You're almost thinking it into existence because you're like, “well, this happened this way, this happened that way.” I mean, you have guys who were part of that 2017 Wisconsin game, which by the way, you remember that day. The ‘97 team is back in town, and it's the reunion, and here comes Coach Osborne and all the players, everybody out of the tunnel. And they fall behind, but they had a little momentum. They were 3-2. They had just won two big conference games. They were feeling kind of good, and then this happens again.

And those players on those 2017 teams then get carried over to the 2018 teams and the 2019 teams and then to the next era. I think Matt Rhule has done almost everything right from a culture standpoint. And I think it's finally the situation where you brought in a guy that you're gonna have to just sit with for a long time to try to shake this culture because at some point, it just lingers and you have to find a way to get over the hump in one of these games so that people understand, “hey, that's not how it has to be,” because it's how it has had to be for over a decade now.

Watch the entire clip below!

Want access to the entire interview? For that, as well as more content like this, become a Patron today for as low as $5 a month: patreon.com/i80club

More From Nebraska On SI

Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.