What Would a Win Over Michigan Mean for the Nebraska Football Program?

It's Big Game Week in Nebraska.

The Cornhuskers welcome the Wolverines into Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoon with a chance to pick up their biggest win in years. But how big is it? Josh Peterson and Jack Mitchell discussed that and more on this week's After Nebraska Football.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Jack: If they do it, how big is it? Put it in context for me. How big is it if they do it? And, I don't know if you need to compare it to another game; if you can just explain it on its own. What would you say?

Josh: That's a great question. It would be the first ranked win since 2016. Of course, everybody knows that that is against Oregon. I feel like that's low-hanging fruit to say it would be that. No, it would not.

Jack: It's bigger than that. It's a conference game, and after a decade of hell. It's bigger than the Oregon game.

Josh: So the last ranked win before Oregon was Michigan State [in 2015]. That was a bad Nebraska team. Fun, enjoyable, beat a playoff team, but they were 3-6. It made them four and six. That was a bad football team. All right, so the previous ranked win before that, I don't know what it would have been, Jack. The 2014 Miami game would come up in terms of monumental wins.

Jack: Miami wasn't ranked, I don't think.

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule talks with linebacker Javin Wright before the Huskers' game against Akron on Sept. 6, 2025. — Matt Rhule and Nebraska have a big chance to pick up the program's biggest win in over a decade. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Josh: They were not ranked. Now it was a nice win, but it was also not a conference win. And so the reason that I'm kind of just going through some of these games right now in the Rolodex is to show, in terms of a monumental win for the program, big picture, and conference win at the same time, you're going back a ways.

[Subscriber] Alex brings up 2010 Missouri and 2011 Michigan State. Matt brings up 2009 against Oklahoma.

Jack: All good ones. That trio is what that would feel like. I agree on all three of those.

Josh: I like this from [subscriber] Ryan. He says, “I think it'd be akin to Nebraska winning the 2009 Big 12 title; taking the next step as a program.” Yeah, Jack, is this a poor man's version of that? Because at the time, “next step” meant breaking through the ceiling and getting a conference title again. And that was the world that Nebraska lived in, essentially the entirety under Bo. They needed big wins, and those big wins needed to mean something for literal hardware.

Nebraska's 2009 win over Oklahoma was a big boost to Bo Pelini's second team. Would beating Michigan on Saturday mean the same to Matt Rhule and the 2025 Cornhuskers? | Bruce Thorson-Imagn Images

Nebraska's not in that conversation right now. So what they need, though, is a win that will move them forward. And this is a game that has the chance to move them forward. And so I do kind of like some of these comparisons that we are seeing right now, even if those ones meant more hardware-wise than this one will, because it's also the fourth game of the year in Michigan is barely inside the top 25.

Jack: I like that Oklahoma game. And here's especially why I like it, because that was a game where Oklahoma, although very revered at the time. They were a power, but they had Landry Jones starting at quarterback. And so Nebraska had a little luck on its side going into it as well. That's a good comparison. The Matt O’Hanlon interception game against Oklahoma.

Josh: Yeah, because that's been a lot.

Jack: Yeah. It felt huge at the time to me. Obviously, it was Oklahoma, but Michigan kind of feels like the Oklahoma, the Big Ten, you know?

Josh: And here's where maybe we can take this a step further. That Oklahoma [team] was a step back from the Oklahoma that they had been, but it did not diminish how important it was to get that win. This Michigan is a step back from two years ago, three years ago, and four years ago.

Certainly, the last two times that Nebraska has played Michigan, they have gotten absolutely destroyed. The 2022 game in the rain, where Mark Whipple literally got destroyed on the sideline, and then Matt Rhule’s fifth game ever as a head coach at home, when they also got destroyed. I like that comparison because it's a blue blood. It's a name brand. It's a conference team. It's a little step back from where they have been recently. But golly, it would just be so big for the program to be able to get and to move forward.

And Jack, you don't have to answer the questions anymore about it. Just like after they beat Oklahoma in 2009, you didn't have to answer the questions about, can you beat Oklahoma? Can they beat a school like this that recruits as well as this; X, Y, and Z? You beat Michigan no matter what state they are in, it answers that question of can they do this? Are they able to get a win over a team like this version of Michigan?

Jack: Yeah, because I mean because Oklahoma in 2008l the year before they're 12-1, right?

Josh: They lost in the national championship. That team was really, really good.

Jack: They lost to Florida, right?

Josh: Correct.

Jack: So it’s two years with Michigan. Two years, but very similar. And they're not the same as they were then, and they also have some different handicaps. That's the best combo by far. By far.

Josh: Mike writes on YouTube with a super chat: “Hopefully, it doesn't feel like 2016 Wisconsin or Ohio State.” Well, those are two different possibilities, but yes.

Jack: Ohio State, I didn't expect to win. That was that was like, “whoa, if everything goes wildly right, it could.”

Josh: “And Ohio State forgot to get off the bus.”

Jack: 2016 Wisconsin's not a bad comparison either. It was on the road.

Josh: There [are] two things that are hard to kind of fit the exact puzzle we’re trying to create right now; on the road and that Wisconsin team was in the top ten. Whereas again, this Michigan team is not is not in that.

But it is a top-25 win, and Jack, I don't know if we can say enough about how important it is for Matt Rhule to get this particular monkey off of his back. Jack, last year, it was game four. So it's literally the week that we were entering into when Nebraska played on a Friday night. It was Sept. 20, 2024, when Nebraska played on a Friday night. And [a top 25] Illinois came into town. And I remember saying, it is not important for me at this point in time for them to get the ranked win thing going just yet. I wanted them to beat Illinois just because they needed to beat Illinois and prove that they're continuing to climb. The ranked component of it, though, I didn't really care about that.

Illinois' win over Nebraska took the shine off the first month of the 2024 season. Can Nebraska avoid that happening Saturday? | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

I do now. And I said that at the moment. I said, I don't care just yet, but I will at some point in time. We have reached that spot now. We have reached a spot where you cannot continue losing to ranked teams. And especially a team on the edge of the top 25. They are not playing Penn State [Saturday]. Like, there's been all this conversation in the chat tonight, and there will be over the next week about this team and this team and how good are they and how good are they?

This Michigan is not Ohio State. They are not Penn State. They are certainly not Oregon. They aren't Georgia or Tennessee. They are a diminished version of themselves. It's time to take advantage of that. Like they have to win the game if anything, because of those types of things. They have to do that. They have to get a win like this. It's time.

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