Rapid* Reaction: Scott Frost Fired

As head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Scott Frost won a few football games.

He lost a lot more.

Today—September 11, 2022—even with a $15 million buyout halving to $7.5 million on October 1, 2022, Nebraska AD Trev Alberts made the decision to fire him. That is certainly a choice that someone can make if they have $15 million in pissed-off donor money burning a hole in their pocket (or screaming at them to hire Luke Fickell or Urban Meyer or something, which we’ll talk about in an article tomorrow), and now Nebraska has made it. They’ll play the rest of 2022 with AHC Mickey Joseph:

Joseph will be acting as interim head coach, and—

—well, let’s not pretend we’re surprised.

Mickey Joseph is also, Amie Just reported in that tweet above, Nebraska’s first Black head coach ever, an equally depressing and unsurprising fact.

In the meantime, we asked the OTE writers for their thoughts on the situation, and I’m sure you all can share yours, too:

Creighton M: Nebraska needed to hire George O’Leary for a few years first, I guess.

Thumpasaurus: The scott frost era ended in Champaign last August. Complete malpractice to have Frost coach this year.

Green Akers: I’ve gone back and forth on this and I think I’ve settled on it being the right move.

What if Frost had gone out and beaten Oklahoma on Saturday? Before you laugh, remember how close Nebraska was to doing that last year. You can’t fire him at that point, but you’ve already justifiably decided it’s the ultimate outcome. The buyout doesn’t matter.

And y’all got to stop with “he inherited a mess.” No, he did not.

Riley massively underperformed, but the entirety of his tenure we all said ‘boy this isn’t going to work, but he’s sure leaving a lot of talent for whoever replaces him. His recruiting classes were 29th, 26th and 23rd. In the West, that’s the most talented team by a fucking mile

Thump: All things considered, he could be the worst Big Ten head coach in the modern era.

Green Akers: They’re arguably less talented now than they were when he arrived. And NOBODY in this division has stepped forward and pushed everyone else down.

If the interim does well enough to earn the locker room’s loyalty, who cares? The next guy can portal in 30 new players if the existing roster mutinies. Be the first program in the DMs of your preferred guy’s agent and cut the checks.

BoilerUp89: Scott Frost has not earned the right to continue being Nebraska’s head football coach.

Still, if you are paying him the full buyout now—and they are—then why did you bother to go thru the past 10 months with him as coach? The whole thing last November was to get a reduced buyout and now you go and spent $7.5 million extra?

I’m sure Alberts got a booster or boosters to pay for the whole thing, but this still feels like Alberts is criminally mismanaging booster donations. $7.5 M can buy two really great coordinators, great assistants, and still have money left over to pay NIL deals. Unless Urban Meyer is taking over midseason, nothing is gained by firing Frost now instead of October 2. If you fire Frost in early October you still have the ability to be the first program on the market. Nothing changes. If you were worried about Frost going on a two game winning streak — you could always investigate the vomiting comments he made and use that as “justification”.

beezer07: In an era of unlimited money at a school with unlimited plus infinity money, the right time for the decision was the second it needed to be made. The money is irrelevant.

The timing though? Way, way too late. For multiple seasons Nebraska has failed at the very mental game/focus/discipline stuff late in games that’s as close to 100% influenced by the HC as anything gets. To make matters worse, the HC was both failing to prepare his players to succeed and then blaming them for a litany of dumb shit as if he couldn’t fathom that he’d done anything wrong.

Is that 100% historically accurate? Probably not, but then neither was Scott Frost.

Stewmonkey13: Scott Frost is one of the worst coaches in the Big Ten in the last 50 years. This was known after last season. He had no shot at retaining his job to start the year. The ONLY reason to bring him back was to save the money on the buyout based on the restructured deal. That’s it.

And so what does UNL do? Just completely set fire to $7.5 million for nothing. This gets them nothing. Grape job!bne

WhiteSpeedReceiver: Name the last good Nebraska lineman. Is there anyone between now and Suh?

Jesse Collins: Stille was good. But your point stands.

WSR: Nothing gets fixed until the lines get addressed. And it’s a 2-3 year project to do that correctly.

misdreavus79: Scott Frost got every opportunity to revive the Nebraska program. They even gave him the Jim Harbaugh treatment as a last ditch effort.

He blamed everyone but himself loss after loss, barring your generic “I’m the head coach” drivel. The fact of the matter is, under his watch, Nebraska failed to improve where it mattered most, and now he gets a cool 15 million for his efforts.

Whose fault is that?