What had been widely reported is now official: Mike Ekeler is Nebraska’s next special teams coordinator. A release from the university’s athletic department Tuesday validated last week’s reports that Ekeler, a David City native, Blair High School product and former NU assistant coach, would rejoin the Huskers staff to replace Ed Foley, who was reassigned after his special teams units struggled for a second straight season.
Ekeler is deeply familiar with special teams. At Kansas State from 1991 to 1994, Ekeler made his name on the Wildcats’ special-teams units, He began his coaching career as a volunteer assistant at Omaha Skutt High School in 1999 and worked there for three seasons before going to Manhattan High School in Kansas for a season. He then joined Oklahoma’s staff as a graduate assistant in 2003. The following year, he met Bo Pelini, who’d just come to Norman from Lincoln. Ekeler followed Pelini to LSU to serve as a GA before following Pelini to Lincoln in 2008.
After serving as an assistant for the Huskers for Pelini’s first three seasons, Ekeler was offered a job as Indiana’s defensive coordinator in 2011. After coaching there for two seasons, he coached one year at USC then two at Georgia as a special teams coordinator and linebackers coach. He moved on to North Texas in 2016 as a defensive coordinator, then was hired at North Carolina. Ekeler worked at Kansas as special teams coordinator for a season, then ran North Texas’s special teams for a year before being hired as Tennessee’s special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach since 2021.