Bring on the Frost
The first step in making Nebraska Football great again became official over the past weekend when the Nebraska athletic director officially introduced Scott Frost as the 30th head football coach in Nebraska history.
What a lot of people in Nebraska wanted, a Nebraska guy, they got in Frost. I am sure not everyone was happy with the pick, but I would say it is potentially much better than what Nebraska has had over the past 20 years.
An old coach once told me, anytime someone says a person ‘has potential,’ what he is really telling you, is that they haven’t done anything yet.
I don’t think Scott Frost fits completely into that definition. Although he hasn’t had many years of head coaching experience, he has a ton of football experience. He was an outstanding player at Nebraska, playing on a national championship team as a quarterback, playing in the NFL as a defensive player, being an assistant at Nebraska and Kansas State, an offensive coordinator at Oregon and then two years as a head coach at the University of Central Florida.
A pretty good resume for a young coach. Now he has an opportunity to do a make-over on his old college team and hopefully match his accomplishments at UCF. The Nebraska AD, while introducing Frost, referred to him as the “pick of the litter” and I hope that was correct.
The hiring of Frost was probably the worst kept secret in the history of Nebraska football. AD Moos said the job was never offered to anyone other than Frost. Coach Frost said it was a very difficult decision to make. I would imagine that wasn’t an understatement.
Even though Nebraska might have been his dream job, he had just done something that had never been accomplished in Division I football. He took a program that only two seasons ago was 0-12 and is now 12-0 going into their bowl game.
I am sure he has made relationships with his players at UCF that will be hard to walk away from when moving to Nebraska. That is always something that makes changing jobs in coaching difficult. It only slacks up a little, I think, when you retire and start hearing from some of your former players. That is one of the good parts of coaching.
I think the press conference Sunday did a lot of good things. The more I listen to the new athletic director the more I am impressed with the way he does the job. He said all the right things from the git-go by first thanking his bosses, his staff and others who were instrumental in getting Frost to Nebraska. He answered questions and didn’t seem to dodge much.
Frost was pretty much the same way. I enjoyed his answer when one of the reporters asked how he was going to adapt his offense and defense to the Big Ten, “I hope they are changing for us.” Good answer Coach, confident in what you are doing and not afraid to show it.
Frost doesn’t have an easy job at Nebraska. It will take some time and if you watched his teams play on TV the last couple of weeks, he isn’t the old Nebraska style of football; he is more West Coast full tilt ahead and go fast.
He will be compensated well for whatever style he has. Thirty-five million over seven years is not too bad for a coach starting his third year as the head of a program. The seven years is significant in that there is some time to get things going again. Patience from the fans, which is sometimes hard to get, would be appreciated. I am sure Coach Frost might still hear some of the boos he heard as quarterback back in the early days of his career at Nebraska. Let the improvement part start soon.
Nebraska Basketball
The Nebraska men’s basketball team was off to a 6-2 start, which tied Coach Miles best first eight games of a season since coming to the program. This past week they started a really tough stretch of early season scheduling. They were on the road at Michigan State on Sunday and picked up their third loss by an 86-57 count.
It doesn’t get any easier moving forward as they are on the road to Minnesota next, then back to Omaha and Creighton and then a home game breather with Kansas. That is a tough four-game stretch. I hope they will be able to recover and have a good season. I think they have as much talent this year as they have had in a while, but they have a difficult season beginning with these next games in December.