New UCF head coach is….

[CBJason]

Scott Frost!

https://www.espn.com/college-football/s ... ball-coach

I would never have thought that his first job back would be the head coach at a P4 school.

[remline]

I'm excited to see Frost get another chance. It seems like he had a really good thing going at UCF, such that I felt he was sacrificing a lot to attempt to resuscitate a moribund NU. Of course, life in the Big XII may prove a bit tougher than it was in UCF's former American conference.

The end of the Gus Malzahn era at UCF was a curiosity. You don't usually see a head coach resign to take a coordinator job. I'm guessing the school administration was not entirely thrilled with a 4–8 record and was therefore putting some pressure on him. Alternatively, as Tony White also discovered, being a coordinator at FSU is just too sweet a gig to pass up.

[remline]

UCF Football Head Coach Scott Frost - Introductory Press Conference. Frost's remarks begin at 11:27.

[Louie]

If Scott Frost succeeds there again, that would be quite telling to how difficult/bad the situation is for the future of Nebraska football as a whole.

[djc311]

If Scott Frost succeeds there again, that would be quite telling to how difficult/bad the situation is for the future of Nebraska football as a whole.

I agree to an extent - but didn't he end up having several "personal" issues taking place outside of football while at Nebraska? After he was let go from Nebraska I always felt he proved himself at UCF and came to Nebraska with the mindset of he was now the "god" of Nebraska football, made it to a huge conference and could almost do nothing wrong as long as he had some winning seasons. However, I think if the rumors were true (about the extensive drinking, marital issues, etc) then unfortunately I think that impacted his capabilities while coaching at Nebraska.

Because we don't have any true professional sports teams (in the big 4 sports), it seems like all of our ex QBs act like they can do whatever they want and they should have the ground kissed that they walk on. Frost, Frazier nor Crouch did anything outside of college as players, but if you see them around town it's like they deserve an award. I think that kinda went to Frost's head a bit when he came back to Nebraska> I respect them all as great players, but they're still just people.

[Big E]

Man, if I came from the Frazier/Frost/Crouch era and saw the kind of money being thrown around via NIL these days...

NGL, I'd probably burn the whole |expletive| place down myself.

https://columbustelegram.com/sandwich-r ... 768bb.html

[djc311]

Man, if I came from the Frazier/Frost/Crouch era and saw the kind of money being thrown around via NIL these days...

NGL, I'd probably burn the whole |expletive| place down myself.

https://columbustelegram.com/sandwich-r ... 768bb.html

No kidding! Can't believe the $$$ these guys (and female athletes) are bringing in now. I probably would have tried to play some sort of sport to see if I could capitalize on that - do college bowlers make NIL $?

[remline]

The most interesting point from the press conference was that Frost felt a lot of pressure to leave UCF to coach at "the next place" (i.e., Nebraska). He was careful during the entire presser to never mention Nebraska by name!

[djc311]

The most interesting point from the press conference was that Frost felt a lot of pressure to leave UCF to coach at "the next place" (i.e., Nebraska). He was careful during the entire presser to never mention Nebraska by name!

Not surprised - I'm sure that did NOT go how he was hoping... either from a coaching/record standpoint or from a personal perspective. I can't imagine him ever having any association with a Nebraska college program again.

[Linkin5]

Man, if I came from the Frazier/Frost/Crouch era and saw the kind of money being thrown around via NIL these days...

NGL, I'd probably burn the whole |expletive| place down myself.

https://columbustelegram.com/sandwich-r ... 768bb.html

They don’t need to burn it down, the NCAA house is on fire and their execs are scrambling around making sure the air conditioner is turned off before they can get out.

[Cermak]

If Scott Frost succeeds there again, that would be quite telling to how difficult/bad the situation is for the future of Nebraska football as a whole.

No kidding, I for one will be watching his progress closely. Maybe it’s more of a Nebraska problem than a coaching problem. He was awesome at UCF but couldn’t do anything right at Nebraska.

[Louie]

If Scott Frost succeeds there again, that would be quite telling to how difficult/bad the situation is for the future of Nebraska football as a whole.

No kidding, I for one will be watching his progress closely. Maybe it’s more of a Nebraska problem than a coaching problem. He was awesome at UCF but couldn’t do anything right at Nebraska.

Nebraska has plenty of drawbacks to recruiting. I won't be surprised.

[remline]

Alex Grinch Tabbed UCF Football’s Defensive Coordinator.

Grinch acted as defensive coordinator for Lincoln Riley at both Oklahoma and USC. I recall thinking that the defenses were highly suspect at both places.

[omaha79]

If Scott Frost succeeds there again, that would be quite telling to how difficult/bad the situation is for the future of Nebraska football as a whole.

No kidding, I for one will be watching his progress closely. Maybe it’s more of a Nebraska problem than a coaching problem. He was awesome at UCF but couldn’t do anything right at Nebraska.

Nebraska has plenty of drawbacks to recruiting. I won't be surprised.

Succeeding at Nebraska isn't impossible, but your margin for error at recruiting barren northern outpost in the Big Ten like Nebraska is going to be much smaller than being the coach of a Sun Belt Big XII school where you can get by on some skill and excitement in a generally weaker conference. It's not a guarantee as UCF has been bad of late, but you can certainly turn it around there more easily.

Being the head coach at Nebraska takes lots of discipline. You can't miss in recruiting. You are going to have to put in long hours. You're going to have a great staff. You need to understand Big Ten football. It won't be flash. It has to be substance. You have to commit to the run. You have to win dirty games by dominating the trenches. You have to be supremely disciplined in game management and not let the moments on Saturdays get too big. Frost and Rhule both have or are struggling with that compared to coaches like Ferentz and others in the Big Ten and it shows. A 17-14 win where you simply out physical and outlast your opponent while making fewer mistakes is the name of the game in the B1G.

I think most have agreed that as soon as Frost realized the level of work it would take and the fact the kind of football Nebraska would need to play is outside the wheelhouse of his coaching philosophy, he just kind of silently quit. We've all seen it from co-workers in our day to day jobs, but it's alarming when it's the highest paid employee in the entire state doing it. When that mental decision was made, he supposedly fell into bad habits and just started hanging out with old buddies, ex players, and some boosters. Hitting the bars, golf courses, and golden tee machines pretty hard. Maybe some co-eds too, but that is conjecture compared to the bars and golf courses, which is basically documented. He pretty much just went on permanent vacation about a year and a half in and used the program as a paycheck from there out until they fired him.

I don't think he'll ever be the kind of coach willing to put in the work to consistently win national or conference titles, or even really compete in the Big Ten or SEC. But, he may be the kind of coach to put up decent enough records in a depleted Big XII. Do that, and just maybe you luck into the playoff once in a while and you never know.

[Stan]

I really liked this writeup from CFB reddit in regards to why Frost succeeded at UCF -



[–]UCF Knightsyesacabbagez 722 points 1 year ago*

There is a lot more which led to the 0-12 year.

O'Leary had basically wanted to retire at the end of 2013 with the Fiesta Bowl win, but he also really wanted to coach the opener of 2014 in Ireland, so he stayed. He expressed his desire to retire at the end of 2014, but there was no one to really take over. In the end the school gave him more money to stick around and figure out a succession plan. His plan was to promote then OL Coach Brent Key to HC. Then UCF AD Todd Stansbury was not a fan of Key going from OLine to HC, so he wanted O'Leary to do one more year and have Key serve as OC. Stansbury then bolted to return to Oregon State.

Once Stansbury left it made things even more awkward. There was essentially a deal for O'Leary to retire and Key to take over after 2015, but any new AD would not be a big fan of inheriting a retiring coach who he then couldn't replace. A new deal was struck where O'Leary serves as interim AD/HC for 2015 and then retires to take over AD full time. O'Leary wanted to back off anyway, and it meant he could guarantee Key was in control. O'Leary was basically HC in name only at this point.

This blew up immediately. There are a couple of things that went wrong, but most notably, almost everyone from the 2013 Fiesta Bowl team was now gone. This was a team in absolutely full rebuild. The OC retired and the HC was essentially out of the picture. Brent Key, who had never served as more than an OLine coach was now effectively OC and Head Coach. 2015 UCF was a team that started a lot of freshmen/sophomores. A lot of those same players would be the core of the 2017 team. In 2015 though, they were not good. The Coaching staff, mostly the offense was an absolute disaster. The defense was respectable early in the season, most notably holding Christian McCaffery to 58 yards on 20 carries, but the offense was some of the worst |expletive| I have ever seen. Eventually the defense gave up too and the result was an absolutely horrendous team finishing 0-12.

At this point it was obvious everyone had to go. O'Leary was not going to fire the staff so he was sent packing first, although officially I think he retired. Key was sent packing and got a buyout for not being promoted. Almost everyone else was fired and new everything was needed. Danny White was hired and he focused entirely on trying to find an offensive coach. I've never been able to find out what exactly happened, but UCF was ostensibly about to hire Dino Babers. I don't know the deal pending the conclusion of Bowling Green's season, but it leaked and Babers pulled out. Almost immediately Danny White pivoted to Scott Frost.

I am sure plenty of people can debate what is or isnt a fluke about what happened for Frost at UCF, but there were basically two things. The first is drag UCF's offense out of the stone age. While it did take a big leap in 2012/2013, it regressed massively after Bortles left and there was no QB to even look competent. Frost did implement a system similar to Oregon. The second thing, and probably related to the issue at Nebraska, Frost actually used the fact that UCF simply had access to a lot better talent than almost everyone else in the conference. Frost immediately went around trying to find guys from Florida who were fast. The objective became similar to Oregon, outspeed everyone else. Get the ball to fast people and every single play is a home run threat. It took a year to actually get some guys in place, but Frost filled most of the remaining holes on the team pretty quickly. By 2017 Frost had managed to plug the gaps in skill positions with incredibly fast athletes who were incredible threats with the ball, while the rest of the team was a group of 3-4 year starters who had an absurd amount of playing experience. We went into that season either beating the rest of the conference on experience, or raw speed.

I do think this advantage UCF had, is one Nebraska didn't have. UCF didn't need some elaborate scheme advantage to beat most of the AAC. We simply had dramatically better players. The games we didn't, were exciting games vs USF and Memphis, even then we clubbed the upset out of Memphis earlier in the year as well. Frost inherited a straight disaster at Nebraska. Bringing in fast guys wasn't going to be enough to push them over the rest of the conference. He also took the entire staff at UCF. While there were some guys on that staff I think were good, this last one is one I feel Nebraska fans probably agree. Most of them were incredibly inexperienced in their position. I am pretty sure the only guy Frost retained from O'Leary was Sean Beckton, who O'Leary had retained when he got there and had been with the school basically since 1990 as a player. I have a feeling Beckton was probably the best performing coach at Nebraska, which isn't a coincidence since he was far and away the most experienced. Sean Beckton's son now works for the UCF Athletic Department.

This is more about O'Leary, but the simply thing for Frost and UCF was he provided the exact push UCF actually needed to step away from the rest of the conference and use our advantages. USF would respond by shitting their pants again and basically make us the AAC team in Florida. Florida generates a lot of talent, and having better access to that talent than anyone else in our conference is why we are where we are now.