The Nebraska Cornhuskers hired former Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule to great fanfare at the end of the 2022 college football season. Shortly thereafter, the contract details came out for Rhule’s pay structure and Husker Athletic Director Trev Alberts earned yet more praise for having an incentive-stacked contract that backloaded much of Rhule’s pay in what was an obvious effort to force the Panthers’s ownership to subsidize the salary of Rhule early in his new contract.
Predictably, the NFL franchise balked at the boldness of the contract structure and is now refusing to pay up.