Welcome to Inside Nebraska!

It’s been almost three years since I’ve had to introduce myself to a brand-new community. And I have to say … it’s refreshing.

Welcome to Inside Nebraska!

My name is Zack Carpenter. I’m the publisher of the new, rebranded Rivals site that we want to make (or keep) your spot as the premier home for Nebraska football, recruiting, basketball, baseball, volleyball and more.

Words through a screen staring back at you aren’t going to mean enough. Won’t have the same impact. But I’ll try. It’s really hard to describe emotion when typing it out, but I’m as fired up and passionate as I could be to lead this site and our subscribers down a new and exciting path.

We are going to do some big things here, and we have a plan in place for it to work. That starts with me at the top, but I am putting together a staff that I trust to see the vision and the ambition I have for what we can do here. The full staff will be filled out this month, and it starts with my first hire. He’s someone almost all of you know who I hope you will embrace again with open arms:

Nate Clouse is joining the Inside Nebraska team. He will be returning to the message board community he helped create over the course of nearly a decade, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome him back here. After meeting him, getting to know him more and sharing ideas back and forth about the short- and long-term visions for this site, it made me even more comfortable and confident about what my team will be doing here.

I want to share more about myself and my background and answer any questions you have on our message boards. But just a little about myself now: I covered high school sports in Illinois and Connecticut for three years before making the move to Columbus to cover Ohio State football as a recruiting reporter.

I have covered recruiting and been on the team beat for Ohio State, Clemson and South Carolina over the course of nearly three years, and I did national recruiting work for two media outlets during that time. Most of my work came as a recruiting reporter, and during those three years I built a reputation as one of the strongest, most dynamic writers on some of the biggest college football beats in the country. I did some work that not very many people in this industry have done, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far.

It was time for a fresh start, and this is the community I want to be a big part of. I want the work to speak for itself and I don’t want to go Jerry Maguire with the memo, post-Ole Miss loss Tim Tebow or full-fledged "head coach at a lower-level Power 5 who's trying to sell recruits on being part of a rebuild" mode.

None of you know me. None of you know whether or not I genuinely care about this career, this community or this site. I don’t plan on just talking about how much I care. I’m going to show you.

I might have the label of an “outside guy” coming in here. But I was a recruiting reporter for nearly three years in the Big Ten. The relationships you create in that world are widespread, and I already have built-in connections with some important figures in Nebraska. Those will only continue to get stronger as I hit the ground running here.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to become a part of this community and lead this team. And I hope you’ll join me.

Follow me on Twitter (@Zack_Carp) and join me on the Inside Nebraska message boards. I will be here to answer your questions tonight and throughout the entire week.