As if Indiana weekend wasn’t already very likely to be a big recruiting weekend in Lincoln, the luck of streaming release dates provided another huge bump Sunday night when the premiere of the season finale of Lanterns featured an appearance by Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule.
While a huge surprise for most, one can go back and read the tea leaves with 20/20 hindsight and see that the signs were sort of pointing to it all along.
Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy is an Omaha native and Westside grad and executive
producer Tom Wood has northwest Nebraska ties with his grandparents being from Rushville, NE.
Guess where the show takes place.
Rhule’s appearance was in the season finale, but Nebraska Cornhuskers football figures strongly from the jump. Current Green Lantern Hal Jordan shows up in Rushville suspecting alien activity and quizzes a suspected outworlder on – you guessed it – Huskers football.
Later in the season, it turns out the Rushville’s sheriff’s son, Noah, is basically a 5-star QB recruit. No spoilers on the final episode (I haven’t even seen it yet.), but it isn’t too hard to make the jump to Rhule’s appearance if we weren’t following the potential destruction of Rushville and, well…earth plot a little harder.
I mean, Hal Jordan is already giving aliens Husker quizzes and later swearing to Tom Osborne he is telling the truth. Then there’s a highly-ranked in-state QB recruit introduced, and his big game is coming. In retrospect, how did we not 100% (okay 95%) see Coach Rhule showing up in Rushville for the big game??
So what did Rhule have to say about it?
First of all, and many may know this, it was not filmed recently – “So I filmed that, not this past summer, but the summer (of ‘25) before.”
He spoke of having already known Mundy saying “We’d become friends, and they were doing the show, and it was obviously based in Nebraska. He asked if I would want to go out and film that role, and so I did. And it’s a great show, by the way. I’ve enjoyed trying to catch it here and there.”
Does Rhule intend to follow Ceyair Wright’s lead and begin working on an acting career?
”I don’t know that I’ll be taking my talents to Broadway anytime soon,“ he deadpanned to some laughs.
But, to be sure, he spoke well of the experience: “But (it was) really cool to see Nebraska on HBO and have a chance to do it. You know, my daughters were probably more fired up than I was. They were very concerned I would not get my line right. But really cool experience. Very grateful to Chris and his wife Nilu and all the people that I met on the set. You know, really cool people.”
And it wasn’t missed on Rhule that it was a great chance to get the brand out there.
“Anytime someone’s asked to do something, you know, nationally, I think it’s about getting things, getting our brand out there as much as possible. Like this week, you guys know me pretty well – I probably just want to be in my office (working), but they come to me and say, ‘Can you do this? Can you do that?’ I think it’s (the attention) really good. I had recruits text me last night, and say, ”Coach, I just saw you on HBO.“
What about those who wonder if it took away from his football duties?
I just think part of this job, whether it’s Coach Hoiberg, DBK, Coach Revelle, Jordy (Bahl), Harper (Murray), Andi (Jackson). I think all of our jobs is just make sure we try to continue to put Nebraska, anytime we can, out there in the forefront of everything. So sometimes people are concerned about my personal time. It (the filming) was after recruiting was over during my summer vacation. I don’t know if anybody works harder than me in the world, but I’m sure they do. But I just took a couple day off days and went down there and did that.“
Lanterns has been a very well-reviewed series in the DC Universe’s resurgence since James Gunn took over their showrunning. Series and movies like The Suicide Squad, The Peacemaker and Superman have been very well reviewed and received. In Lanterns, Nathon Fillion from Superman made an appearance alongside stars Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights) and John Stewart (Rebel Ridge).
In any case, now you know about Matt Rhule, TV star, and our attention can focus on Indiana, Curt Cignetti and the defending national champs coming to Lincoln Saturday – the first defending champs to do so since Texas in 2006.
