Why Dr. Susan Elza left her dream job to join Matt Rhule at Nebraska, “It was a no-brainer.”
Dr. Susan Elza “poured her heart and soul” into earning her dream job – the high school athletic director for the state of Texas.
But there was one place and one man who could get her to move out of her home state, leave her beloved AD role and embark on a completely new adventure. When Matt Rhule asked Elza to be his Chief of Staff at Nebraska, the answer was a “no-brainer.”
“There probably wouldn’t be too many people that I’d go and work for and leave those Texas boundaries,” she said in a press conference on May 9. “And there probably wasn’t another university I would have had in my line of sight.”
She spent seven years as the director of athletics for the University Interscholastic League (UIL), the governing body of Texas high school extracurricular activities. During that time, she built relationships with high school coaches and college coaches in Texas, including Rhule.
While Rhule was at Baylor from 2017-19, Joey McGuire, a good friend of Elza’s, was an assistant coach and an associate head coach for the Bears. McGuire moved on to be Texas Tech’s head coach.
His son, Garret McGuire, played at Baylor under Rhule and has been with him ever since. He was on Rhule’s staff at the Carolina Panthers for two seasons and is now NU’s wide receivers coach.
Elza learned how Rhule coached, led and organized a program from Joey McGuire. She was extremely impressed as someone who deeply values quality leadership. After Rhule offered Elza the job in late 2022, he told her to call McGuire to hear “the good, the bad, the ugly” about him. “There was no bad,” Elza said.
“Everything that he was telling me was like, this guy is an incredible leader,” she said. “I’ve always been enamored with leadership. My whole career, not only my own personal leadership but of those who work with me and around me. I just heard Sean (Padden) telling y’all how (Rhule) got in front of the youth group and spoke and he was on fire. It was the same way for me. You don’t always get to choose your bosses, but when you can, you take advantage of it and it was a no-brainer for me.”
Elza ran an organization of roughly 50 direct employees who oversaw hundreds of coaches and high school programs. She was the athletic director of the largest and most sports-focused state in the U.S. Although she had the resume to excel at Nebraska, she had to prove why she deserved her new position.
“No matter who you are or what you do, when you change a job, you have to re-earn it,” Elza said. “That’s been my mentality the whole way is just to get in here and put my head down and help make this program better.”
Upholding and enforcing the highest standard
Elza has always been meticulous, she said. That’s how you rise to lead the largest inter-school organization of its kind in the world. But, somehow, Rhule is 10 times more meticulous as her. It takes every detail in every aspect of a program to be elite to win a national championship.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anybody as self-aware as he is and aware of his environment,” Elza said. “He pushes you for perfection. I felt like I was already at that level. I am more so ingrained in the goals of this program. And to give you a little bit more broad context, you know, it doesn’t matter what level you are in this program, you’re accountable winning.”
Her role at Nebraska is to find, motivate and organize 73 people. They are some of the “most intelligent and hardworking visionaries” she has ever met. Elza’s role is vast, wide and different every day. Rhule dedicates his time to making the team better and she helps with the rest.
The Texas native helps with top administrative tasks/meetings, prepares for road trips, assists with recruiting and much more. She was in charge of moving Husker Football into their new facilities as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
“What I try to do is be invested in each person, make sure they have every resource they need to be successful and to make sure we don’t get in what I call silos – where they’re doing this and this group doesn’t know how this is functioning over in this department,” she said. “I’m really big on your horizontal leadership will affect your vertical growth.”
Elza ensures that all 73 staff members have everything they need to pour into players and make Nebraska an elite program. She and Rhule want each person – big or small – to be the best in the country in their role.
The former state of Texas AD said people often ask if she’s aiming for a college athletic director role. She said she owes Rhule loyalty and commitment. If she did earn a college AD position, it would happen organically. Right now, she has one overarching and consuming goal – to win it all.
“I want to pour my efforts into, however I can contribute, is us winning a national championship,” Elza said. “I’m not afraid to talk about it. That’s what we’re here to do. If I have all these other things I’m trying to do to prepare myself to become (a college AD), I’m not the best at this job that I’m doing. It’s definitely not a goal, but this wasn’t a goal either, so who knows how that will shake out. But I can’t see myself not working for Matt Rhule. That’s how I look at it.”
Never miss breaking news or another HuskerOnline article again. Click HERE to sign up for HuskerOnline’s Daily and Breaking News Newsletters.
The post Why Dr. Susan Elza left her dream job to join Matt Rhule at Nebraska, “It was a no-brainer.” appeared first on On3.
