Matt Rhule is handing one of the more important off-field jobs on his staff to a familiar Nebraska name.
Earlier today, Rhule announced that Damon Benning will take over as the Huskers' director of football player development. He replaces Gus Felder, who held the role in 2024 and 2025.
For Benning, it's a return to the building where he made his name. An Omaha native, Benning was a four-year letterwinner at running back for Nebraska in the mid-1990s, part of back-to-back national championship teams and the MVP of the 1996 Orange Bowl. Few people around the program carry the kind of standing with the fan base and the letterman network that he does, and that reach matters in a job built almost entirely on relationships.
Player development, the way most programs run it now, is about the stuff that happens away from the field. Life skills, financial literacy, NIL education, career preparation, community engagement, and the long transition from football to what comes after it. It's a role that lives at the intersection of the locker room and the outside world, and it leans on someone who can connect with players and open doors for them.
Benning has spent his post-playing career doing exactly that kind of connecting. He got into high school coaching first, taking over at Omaha Northwest in 2009 and later coaching at Omaha North, and he's spent more than a decade in Nebraska media since. He joined the Husker Radio Network as the football color analyst in 2022, replacing Matt Davison, and he's worked as an analyst for the Big Ten Network and co-hosts shows on the Hurrdat Sports network.
His son, Caleb Benning, is a safety on the current Nebraska roster.
Benning takes over for Felder, who came to Lincoln early in Rhule's tenure after working alongside him with the Carolina Panthers. Felder built a background in NFL personnel, strength and conditioning, and player development at the Power conference level, and he helped stand up the department during the first two-plus years of the rebuild.
The hire comes off a 2025 season that ended with a 7-6 record, after the Huskers dropped the Las Vegas Bowl to Utah. Rhule signed a contract extension in October and has been open about the letdown of a year that started 6-2 before a quarterback injury changed the back half of it.
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