Scott Frost never wanted to coach at Nebraska.
He had to coach at Nebraska.
And maybe, in a strange way, that’s why he failed beyond comprehension.
Frost’s departure from UCF after the euphoric, historic undefeated season in 2017 to return to his home state and coach at his alma mater is a cautionary tale — a story of turning a dream season into a football nightmare defined by burdens, demands and unrelenting expectations.
“There was a lot of pressure [to take the Nebraska job],” said Frost last weekend when he returned to UCF as head coach. “It was hard for me to leave UCF. It was emotional. You know, when you’re climbing the ladder of success in life, sometimes they forget to tell you to stop when you’re happy.”
Leaving UCF in 2017 to take the job at his alma mater was not his desire; it was his obligation. He grew up in Nebraska and quarterbacked the Cornhuskers to a national title in 1997. His legendary former coach Tom Osborne, his former teammates and his family all urged him to come home to save a sinking program.
It was like back in the day when Bear Bryant was asked why he left a national championship-contending team at Texas A&M to take over a beleaguered program at his alma mater, the University of Alabama.
“Mama called,” Bryant replied. “And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin’.”
But from the day Frost came runnin’ at Lincoln, there were indications he was unhappy. Tom Shatel, the longtime columnist of the Omaha World-Herald who covered Frost as a Nebraska player and coach, recalls Frost’s introductory news conference at Nebraska.
“He didn’t smile a lot,” Shatel says now. “Everybody else was smiling; everybody else was high-fiving. And he was just very businesslike. And then at the end of the press conference, he was almost threatening to the Nebraska media, saying we’d better not ever talk to his family or he would cut us off.”
Juxtapose that perception of a paranoid Frost with the one we saw at his introductory news conference when he returned to UCF last Sunday and smiled and joked and talked proudly about his wife and family and being able to raise his kids in the City Beautiful.
In hindsight, Frost seemingly never felt comfortable in the fishbowl that is Nebraska football. Even though he was back in his home state, it was almost as if he were a stranger in his own house. He was carrying the weight of an entire state on his shoulders; trying to return the dormant Nebraska program to a past that no longer existed. His roots were in Nebraska, but his heart was still back in Orlando.
“Scott talked about Orlando like it was the greatest place on earth,” Shatel says. “He always had a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face when he talked about Orlando. I never saw that when he talked about Nebraska. … We never saw that joy [he had at UCF]. … I just got the idea that he was never quite all in [as the coach of Nebraska]. … He was anointed. … If he had turned down Nebraska, the people here would have been disappointed, hurt and angry. He had to take the job.”
Frost’s inaugural game at Nebraska to open the 2018 season was an omen. Severe lightning, torrential rain and 70-mph winds sent the frenzied sellout crowd of 90,000 at Memorial Stadium scampering for cover. It would be the first weather-induced cancellation of a game in Nebraska history.
The storm eventually subsided, but the dark clouds hovered over Frost’s tenure at Nebraska. In his five years, he never had a winning season and finished with a dismal 16-31 record — the worst for a Nebraska coach in 60 years.
For whatever reason, Frost could never quite get over the hump. His final 3 losses at Nebraska all came by single digits. All nine losses in his last full season were by single digits — the most by a college program since 1936. The Cornhuskers were 4-21 in games decided by seven points or fewer under Frost.
In hindsight, there have been many theories as to why he failed. Was it that his Oregon/UCF style of spread offense never really worked in the cold weather of Nebraska? Was it that he failed to recruit Joe Burrow — who grew up a Nebraska fan — when Burrow was leaving Ohio State, wanted to transfer to Nebraska and ultimately ended up at LSU (Frost had what appeared to be an up-and-coming true freshman quarterback in Adrian Martinez at the time)?
More likely, I believe, it’s because Nebraska will never be Nebraska again. When it appeared Mike Riley was on the verge of being fired at Nebraska while Frost’s pyrotechnic UCF offense was leading the nation in scoring, I wrote in the Sentinel: “Other than Nebraska being his alma mater, why would Frost even want to coach the Cornhuskers? Nebraska is simply not the program it once was when Tom Osborne and Osborne’s legendary predecessor — Bob Devaney — were stalking the sidelines and steamrolling the competition with their I-formation and triple-option offenses. Frost’s best career move would be to stay at UCF.”
There’s a reason Nebraska has not won a conference championship in a quarter-century. Under Osborne and Devaney, the ’Husker offensive line battered, brutalized and bludgeoned opponents into submission. But college football has changed to a game of speed and skill rather than a game of brute force. And unlike other cold-weather powers like Ohio State and Penn State, Nebraska isn’t in the middle of a fertile recruiting area. Because the Cornhuskers have been irrelevant for so long, bigtime recruits simply look at Nebraska as an icy outpost in an isolated location; a frozen, forgotten corner of the college football landscape.
But now Frost magically is back in the warmth and glow of a place he realizes now he never should have left.
“My wife and I can put down roots here and raise our three children in a place that we love to live,” Frost says. “I’m grateful to be here.”
In other words, home is not where your birth certificate says it is; it’s where your heart tells you it is.
He was born in the Cornhusker State.
He was born again in the Florida sunshine.
Nebraska will always be where Scott Frost is from.
UCF is where he belongs.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen
