No, The Nebraska Football Program Shouldn’t Have Called Scott Frost
Scott Frost raised the eyebrows of Nebraska football fans when he said he didn’t even get a call when the Huskers were looking for a new head coach after firing Bo Pelini.
The question I have today, is why were eyebrows raised? It seems as though there is a swath of Nebraska fans that believes the Cornhuskers are at a place where we cannot get established head coaches to come here.
To be clear, that idea is something that has been around the program since the hiring of Bo Pelini. It just seems to have been cemented in the last few years. Part of that is obviously the fact that the Huskers have hit hard times, but I’m hard pressed to understand what the real reason for those who believe Nebraska should be the proving ground for coaches rather than the place where proven coaches come.
Take all the shots you want at someone like Bill Callahan but he was at least a coach who understood what goes into being a head coach. Turns out, he was better suited for the NFL, but there’s something to be said for a guy that knows what it means to actually lead a staff.
Bo Pelini showed over and over again that not only didn’t he understand how to put a staff together, but he didn’t understand how to run that staff once it was put together. You need to look no further than the wide receivers coach who had been a golf pro before that, and a linebackers coach before that as proof.
Pelini hired that man as a wide receiver’s coach, while he had someone who had decades of experience as a wide receivers’ coach in Ron Brown, on staff, coaching a position he had never coached before.
Fast forward to 2014, when the Nebraska football fanbase was abuzz with the news of Pelini’s firing. There were all kinds of rumors floating around that Scott Frost was going to be coming to Nebraska.
There were different versions of those rumors. Some thought he was going to be the man. Others thought the Huskers were going to hire an older, high profile coach and bring in Frost as the “head coach in waiting.” Neither rumor ever materialized.
“When the [Nebraska] job was open a couple of years ago, I didn’t even get a phone call.
The hiring of Mike Riley shocked the Huskers world because it really did come out of nowhere. He was never someone talked about in rumors. The jury is certainly still out on whether or not he was the right hire. This year is going to go a long ways towards telling us the answer to that question.
When talking to Frost during a press conference where he was talking about his new Central Florida team, he was asked about possibly coming to Nebraska. His response was, “When the [Nebraska] job was open a couple of years ago, I didn’t even get a phone call. My mind is here. There’s no part of me that is thinking about doing anything to get another job.”
The thing is, with the way everything unfolded, why would Scott Frost get a phone call? There’s a reason his first head coaching job is at one of the worst programs in the country. A winless Central Florida isn’t on the same footing as Nebraska. Even if Nebraska is an uncharacteristic 6-7.
Scott Frost might be native son, but he’s also unproven. By all accounts, he’s a very good offensive coordinator. He’s also the man who took over an already established Oregon Ducks offense. UCF is indeed a program that should serve as a proving ground.
If he has the level of success some people think he will have with the Knights, then he becomes a candidate for a bigger job. If Mike Riley doesn’t pan out, or he just eventually calls it a career, then Nebraska can look at what Frost has done at UCF.
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Shawn Eichhorst not picking up the phone to hire a man who hadn’t even really proven himself as an OC yet wasn’t shocking. It was the right thing to do.