Nebraska (1-2) was a three-point favorite. “Earlier today I met with Coach Frost and informed him that we have made a change in the leadership of our football program, effective immediately. Scott has put his heart and soul into the Nebraska football program both as a quarterback and and as a coach, and I appreciate his work and dedication,” Nebraska vice chancellor for athletics Trev Alberts said in a statement. SchoolRecordWin Pct.Rutgers13-35,271Nebraska16-31,340Illinois19-29,396Maryland19-25,432– ESPN Stats & Information Assistant coach Mickey Joseph will take over for the rest of the season. Nebraska hosts Oklahoma on Saturday. Frost played at Nebraska from 1995-97, returning home to play for Tom Osborne after starting his career at Stanford. In 1997, he helped the Huskers go 13-0 and win the national championship — becoming the first quarterback in school history to rush for more than 1,000 yards and pass for more than 1,000 yards in the same season. It would be the last national championship for Osborne and Nebraska. Frost seemed the perfect fit to restore Nebraska to glory after the Huskers fired Mike Riley in 2017. Frost was in his second year as UCF’s head coach and in the midst of a historic 13-0 season in which the Knights claimed a national championship and became one of the hottest coaching prospects in the country. Even though Nebraska hadn’t sustained success the way it played there, the lure of returning home was impossible to give up. But since the start of his 2018 tenure, Frost has never been able to get the Huskers going. Nebraska — once a perennial bowl team — never had a winning season under Frost. The most painful part of watching the Nebraska game was the sheer number of close games they lost. Nebraska is 5-22 (.185) in one-score games since Frost was hired. No other FBS team has more than 16 one-score losses in that span.
Last season, the Huskers went 3-9. Seven of those losses were one-score games. In an interview with ESPN last October, Frost said, “I just want it to work so bad. I want to do everything I can to help Nebraska be Nebraska, and we’ve had a lot of work to do to do that. We’re still in the process of that, but I’m proud of the improvements we’ve made. It’s going to happen.” Considering how close Nebraska appeared to turning a corner, Alberts made the surprising move last November when he announced he would bring Frost back — but with the understanding that the 2022 season would make or break it. Frost fired four offensive assistants, cut his salary from $5 million to $4 million and agreed to drop his buyout from $15 million to $7.5 million on Oct. 1. But the 2022 season began the way last season ended — with a one-score loss to Northwestern in Ireland — a game that led to a fumble by Frost with Nebraska leading 28-17 in the third quarter. Nebraska did not score again and lost 31-28. Explaining that decision, Frost said, “You can’t really predict that they’re going to score 14 straight and we’re going to struggle after playing well to start the second half offensively. Again, those are excuses. If I had to (do it) I would finish it, he wouldn’t make the call.” Things only got worse Saturday against Georgia Southern, a team Nebraska paid $1.423 million to come to Lincoln and play. Georgia Southern gained 642 yards in the game and the student section chanted, “Fire Frost! Fire Frost!” Afterward, Frost said, “That hurt. We win as a team and we lose as a team, and we won today. We got beat in schedules and I didn’t really have an answer. They were chasing us.” Not quite the answers Nebraska fans were looking for after five seasons of hearing similar statements after each loss. Frost finishes his coaching career at Nebraska with a 16-31 record.
