Nebraska Football: Scott Frost vs Bo Pelini argument misses the point

The Nebraska football team lost to the Northwestern Wildcats on Saturday, 31-28. Just wanted to get that out of the way in case anyone was in a coma over the weekend.

After the loss, which moved Scott Frost’s career record for the Huskers to 15-30, the internet started having some fun piling on. One of the most popular ways people found to do that piling on was by mentioning that Bo Pelini, who was famously fired after several 9-win seasons, had a much better record than Frost.

In fact, many, many people pointed out that Scott Frost could win his next 50 games in a row and would still have a worse record than Bo Pelini. However, that particular argument misses the point.

First off, there’s the fact that if Scott Frost won his next 50 games, he’d have a couple of conference titles and a couple of national titles on his resume. I can assure you that Nebraska football fans would not care one whit that Bo Pelini had a few less losses at that point. Especially since one big reason that Pelini was fired is that while he piled up regular season wins against mediocre opponents, he had a very hard time winning the big one. He never won a conference title, for instance.

This morning our friends at the FanSided College Football division wrote an article saying that Frost will “never be as good” as Bo Pelini. The writer, John Buhler brought up the very statistic previously mentioned about how many games in a row Frost would have to win to have a better record than Pelini. He too missed the point, writing, “never has a 67-27 mark over seven years looked as great when compared to 15-30 over five-ish.”

The issue here is that it’s simply not fair the two regimes for several different reasons. And yes, to be clear, Nebraska football fans would absolutely take 67-27 over the last seven years.

Because the standards have been adjusted to the point where some fans are pointing to the Huskers making all their extra points as a sign of progress.

Nebraska football and the unfair comparison

One of the biggest reasons the Frost vs Pelini comparison misses the point is that it’s not as though Frost immediately followed Pelini. It sure feels as though people are trying to compare the two because Frost is some kind of usurper who unseated Pelini from his throne. There has in fact been two other head coaches in between the two men (both have better records than Frost but that’s neither here nor there.)

There’s also the fact that while Husker fans would love to have a coach go 67-27 over the next seven years, because that’s certainly better than 15-30 over the last five-ish, the idea that Nebraska football was wrong in ridding itself of Pelini is just a massive, massive falsehood.

The situation was different when Pelini was fired. While the man who made that decision proved to be wrongheaded in his approach immediately after, he wasn’t wrong to fire Pelini. What Pelini has done ever since being fired by Nebraska should be more than enough evidence of that.

After being unceremoniously escorted off Cornhusker land, Pelini found himself taking over the head coaching position at Youngstown State. While he had some success early on his run there, the end results were actually quite similar to his stay at Nebraska. Over five years with the Penguins, he posted a 33-28 record and made the postseason exactly once.

After being fired from Youngstown, he was hired by LSU for his second stint as the defensive coordinator for the Bayou Bengals. His second go-around at LSU was quite a bit worse than his first and in his first three games back on the job, his defense allowed a school record 96 points. He was fired less than one calendar year after being hired.

Where’s Bo Pelini now you ask? It’s not entirely clear what he’s doing to keep himself busy. What is clear is that he’s spending the second straight football season not coaching anywhere in college football.

This is the guy that the internet thinks Nebraska football would want back?

Yes, it’s absolutely true that the Huskers could and should do better than what Scott Frost has managed to do so far. If it doesn’t get better rather quickly he should absolutely be fired.

But make no mistake, pretending as though Bo Pelini is the gold standard of Husker coaches that all others should be compared to from here on out is very, very wrongheaded, and that comparison needs to go away ASAP.