If there was a slam-dunk, sure-bet hire made over the course of the past several years, it was Scott Frost at Nebraska. In fact, when Frost accepted the job at his alma mater in 2017, his arrival could have legitimately been hailed as one of the best programatic fits in recent history.
He was a native son of Nebraska. He was a national championship-winning star quarterback for the Cornhuskers. He was an accomplished coach who pulled off the biggest two-year turnaround in the history of the sport at UCF. But maybe most importantly, Frost not only knew the Nebraska culture … he was part of the culture.
There was credibility. There was refreshing impudence. Most of all, though, Frost had a plan. In the end, it’s possible not even Frost himself knows entirely what went wrong.
The closest comparison to this situation is Jim Harbaugh, who had a similar background at Michigan as Frost at Nebraska. The difference? Harbaugh, as a beloved former great, won. Perhaps it was not “enough” until last season, which culminated in a College Football Playoff appearance, but he reached five straight bowl games and finished 8-5 or better every season until the COVID-19 pandemic. The difference was the results.
When the 47-year-old Frost was fired Sunday on the heels of a 45-42 loss to Georgia Southern of the Sun Belt, one obvious questioned loomed over the college football world: If Frost didn’t work at Nebraska, who will?
Whomever replaces Frost will walk in the door knowing the obvious: Nebraska has lost its way, and the road map out isn’t immediately available. Getting on a hamster wheel of coaches would to slow down any program. Frost, the fifth Nebraska coach since Tom Osborne retired in 1997, was just the latest example of a giant whiff that no one saw coming.
Nebraska is now a rebuild the scope of which its next coach may not realize. In leaving the Big 12 in 2012, Nebraska lost a big part of its history and tradition — to the point that the average 17-year-old recruit might have trouble distinguishing Tom Osborne from Ozzy Osbourne.
All of it combined to highlight Nebraska’s isolation as an outpost in a league that bragged about its big-city links to New York and Chicago. Thanks to more realignment, it is now the closest Big Ten program to incoming members USC and UCLA (1,500 miles). So, there’s that.
ESPN executive Burke Magnus made news a couple of weeks ago when…
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