Following an embarrassing defeat to Georgia Southern this past Saturday, Scott Frost has been relieved of his duties as head coach of Nebraska. The architect of arguably the greatest college football fairytale of them all, Frost’s 2017 appointment stirred hopes and dreams of a return to Cornhusker glories of old. But, after a tumultuous tenure, the lows far outweighed the highs and those dreams and expectations proved too hot for Frost to withstand.
Scott Frost succumbs to a results-based reality that trumps any Nebraska football fairytale
“This is a day that I hoped would never come,” began Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts in the first press conference since announcing the parting of ways with son of the state, national championship-winning quarterback, and failed head coach Frost. “I can tell you that I really wanted this thing to work.”
Alberts wasn’t even the athletic director when Frost was hired to great fanfare and expectation in December 2017. Yet, he — like so many fans, alumni, and boosters — wanted so badly to believe that Frost’s return to Nebraska would be the fairytale-like chapter that returned the story of Cornhuskers football to national relevance.
On paper, “this thing” should have worked. Born in Lincoln, a star at Wood River High School who became the hometown hero for the national championship-winning 1997 Nebraska team, Frost began his coaching career with the Cornhuskers as a graduate assistant before embarking on a road that would earn him the reputation as an offensive mastermind with high-powered UCF and ultimately lead him back to Lincoln.
Fairytales are written on paper. Football games aren’t won on paper. As Frost himself alluded to following the defeat to Northwestern, “you have to win in this business, that’s just the way it is.” It was a sentiment echoed by Alberts on the release of his head coach, who pointed to the former head coach’s overall record when he said “16-31, it was not at a level that was acceptable to us.”
Boos and jeers drown out a five-year fanfare for Frost
The boos and jeers, the cries of “Fire Frost” that rang around Memorial Stadium were a far cry from the fanfare that greeted the arrival of Lincoln’s favorite son in 2017. Arguably, the fever around his appointment, the promise that it bought, and the excitement of his opening press conference were tellingly the high points of his entire tenure.
“This is a celebration,” then-athletic director Bill Moos enthused on Frost’s unveiling. “It’s a celebration for the University of Nebraska and for Husker football. Certainly a celebration of bringing one of our own home, favorite son. He is, in my opinion, not only the premier young coach in America, I believe he was everybody’s first choice, and I got the pick of the litter.”
Frost’s own opening statement added to the feeling of a fairytale that engulfed the Nebraska football program. Regaling the crowd with heartfelt homely stories of being in the facility as a kid — his mother was the track and field coach at Nebraska — and repeating and reiterating “special” and “unity” as words that defined not only the Cornhuskers but the entire state of Nebraska, he played up to the role and reveled in it.
“This program needs that again,” Frost alluded to the unity that defined the program at its height. “This state needs that again, and when I walked into that weight room and saw all those players there, it really made me excited about the fact that we can get this entire state behind this football program, get this entire state excited about what’s going on, and we’re going to put a product on the field that this entire state can be proud of.”
An early glimmer of hope for Frost’s Nebraska
There have been highs during Frost’s tenure at Nebraska. It would be easy to dismiss the past four full seasons and what must have felt like three extremely long weeks of a fifth campaign for all involved with the Cornhuskers as a complete and abject failure. However, there were moments, stretches, and even glimpses where it looked like Frost might just have been able to turn things around, where the state was excited about the program.
It was always acknowledged that it would take some time to turn around a program that had gone 4-8 in 2017, a stark contrast to the unprecedented level of success enjoyed before. That acknowledgment, that knowing, earned Frost some leeway, some understanding, and — importantly — some time as Nebraska opened up 0-6 in 2018.
That turnaround appeared to be coming with a 53-28 win over Minnesota that stopped the losing slump. Having lost the first six games, Frost engineered a 4-2 record down the home stretch of the season that included wins over Illinois and Michigan State. Meanwhile, a scoring offense that had finished 84th in the nation — averaging just 25 points a game — in 2017, appeared to be forming in Frost’s UCF mold as a young Adrian Martinez led them to a respectable 30 points per game, ranking 58th in the nation.
The run of form to close out 2018 led to a preseason AP Top 25 ranking, and the Cornhuskers began 2019 as they’d ended the previous campaign — scoring points and going 4-2. Nebraska also put up 50+ points on Maryland late in the year, but it wasn’t enough to prevent another losing season.
Despite all the disappointment, all the losing seasons, there were bright moments for Nebraska during Frost’s tenure. They beat Penn State 30-23 in the disrupted 2020 season and then obliterated Northwestern 56-7 in 2021. Every game they played against a ranked opponent in Frost’s final full season, they played them close. There were one-score losses to Oklahoma, Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
An inability to deliver defines Frost’s Nebraska tenure
Frost’s Nebraska proved they could compete with some of the best programs in the nation. Yet, that inability to finish an opponent, to gain that extra inch, score that additional touchdown, to get that win in a big game came to define the Frost era and was ultimately his downfall. Competing without wins can only last for so long, and Alberts decided on Saturday that Frost had been given quite long enough.
While the defeat to Georgia Southern was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Scott and Nebraska, the wheels of his downfall had been in motion for much longer. When Alberts restructured his head coach’s contract last season, it didn’t speak of security and confidence.
When you lower the buyout on a contract, you’ve clearly got paying that buyout in mind. In the end, such was the desire to seek a new path for the program, to give the players a “new voice” and “new vision” that they’ve paid Frost’s $15 million in full rather than wait three weeks for it to reduce by half.
“We needed to do something,” Alberts opined. “We needed to inject something into this team to give them the confidence and hopefully help them compete.”
While Nebraska has been able to compete under Frost, they haven’t been able to win. It’s a simple, unavoidable fact. These are the low points of this once-promising relationship. Simple and damning statistics. Eye-opening, jaw-dropping, head-shaking statistics. While the 16-31 overall record itself is fairly conclusive, it only scratches the surface of the bigger issues that have dogged the Cornhuskers and led to the departure of their once heralded head coach.
Damning statistics are the results of a series of actions
5-22. That’s Nebraska’s record in one-score games under Frost. He simply hasn’t been able to close out a game and lead his team across the finishing line.
10-26. That’s Nebraska’s record against Big Ten teams under Frost. When he came from UCF, the expectation was that he could humble Big Ten teams with his high-powered offenses that had allowed him to dominate at the Group of Five level while competing and winning on the national stage with the Golden Knights. He famously once retorted that “the Big Ten would have to adjust to him.”
0-15. That’s Nebraska’s record under Frost when facing teams that were ranked in the AP Top 25 at the time of the game. Frost was hired to bring national relevancy back to a program falling ever further from its prime as a regular championship contender. He simply wasn’t able to get it done against the best teams, on the biggest stages.
Football is a results-based business, and Frost fell victim to not being able to deliver results for Nebraska. Statistics are also a result. They’re the result of actions. While the statistics have helped bury the Cornhuskers coach, the actions that led to those are at the heart of the issue.
Actions like the onside kick in Dublin that turned the tide in Northwestern’s favor. Actions like multiple stalled two-minute drives, like multiple special-teams calamities that have continuously dogged his Nebraska head coaching career. Actions like throwing his own coaches under the bus as he did against Northwestern — actions that are about as far removed from the unity he so badly wanted to bring back to the program.
Almost predictably, it was a special-teams disaster — the missed field goal while trying to tie Georgia Southern — that spelled the end of the Frost fairytale in Nebraska. It was the lowest low of a tenure that has contained precious few highs. His overall record — for coaches of an equal tenure — was the second worst in program history.
Alberts, a hero of Nebraska football himself, whose No. 34 jersey is forever immortalized in Lincoln, set fire to what has been the hottest seat in college football for some considerable time.
“Scott has poured his heart and soul into the Nebraska football program both as a quarterback and a head coach, and I appreciate his work and dedication. After the disappointing start to our season, I decided the best path forward for our program was to make a change in our head coaching position.”
Mickey Joseph will take on as interim head coach for the remainder of the season, starting with the upcoming clash with No. 7 Oklahoma. Joseph is a former Nebraska QB himself and becomes the Cornhuskers’ first black head coach.
Perhaps there will be a fairytale in Lincoln after all.