Nebraska Football and The Curse of the Scott Frost Firings

It’s no secret that the Nebraska football team has been really, really bad over the course of the Scott Frost regime. There are all kinds of stats that prove out that things just did not work out for the former national championship quarterback as the head man in Lincoln. But one of the stats that is truly bizarre is how the Cornhuskers have been so bad of late, it appears they are rubbing off on their opponents. When taking a deeper look at one of the truly odd trends in sports this year, what sticks out, even more, is when it started. And why I have dubbed the trend “The Curse of the Scott Frost Firings.”

While the Nebraska football team has been busy losing this season, it’s what’s happened after that loss that has caught people’s attention.

The statistic started floating around the internet on Saturday night that teams that beat the Huskers this year are now 0-3 in their following game. The exclamation point to that trend was when Oklahoma lost to Kansas State 41-34 one week after looking like a juggernaut against the Cornhuskers with a 49-14 win in Lincoln.

Odder still was the fact that K-State’s quarterback, Adrian Martinez, is a former Husker. Odder than that is that Martinez’s new coach went to great lengths to make it clear to his QB that Martinez’s performance this season coming into Saturday was sub-par. The former Cornhusker signal caller had arguably the best overall game of his career.

Outside of Oklahoma looking human after looking unbeatable the week before, there’s Northwestern who has lost to Duke, FCS school Southern Illinois and last night, Miami of Ohio since beating Nebraska in both teams’ season opener.

The Curse of the Scott Frost Firings extended to upstart Georgia Southern and their new head coach Clay Helton as well. The Eagles suffered their first loss of the year the week after their upset of the Nebraska football team. They lost to UAB (hardly a college football powerhouse) 35-21.

All of these stats mean that in 2022, not only do teams that beat Nebraska lose the following week, but so far, the teams are a combined 0-5 after that win. If that sounds more like a coincidence than a curse, there’s more.

Back on November 10 of, 2021, following a gutwrenching 26-17 loss to Ohio State and just ahead of a bye week, Scott Frost announced that he was firing most of his offensive staff. it was an interesting move at the time because it seemed to indicate that Frost knew things weren’t working, and that he was going to do whatever it took to fix things.

But things weren’t fixed. The Huskers lost their final two games of the season. And the curse was born. The week after the firings, Nebraska lost to Wisconsin 35-28. The week after that, Wisconsin lost to Minnesota 23-13. While the Badgers suffered a setback to the Golden Gophers, the Nebraska football team lost to Iowa 28-21.

One week after the Hawkeyes’ win, they got blasted in the Big Ten title game by Michigan, 42-3.

What does all of this mean? In the real rational world, it doesn’t mean much of anything other than some weird quirk of bad outings butting heads with these teams’ schedules. But in the world of Nebraska football, it means some extreme strangeness.

Dating back to when Scott Frost announced the firing of his assistant coaches, the Huskers are just 1-5. However, teams that have beaten the Cornhuskers are a combined 0-5 the week after their victories. In other words, the Nebraska football team seems to be rubbing its stink off on anyone it runs across these days.