One of the most discussed topics around the hiring of Scott Frost has been his decision to bring his entire coaching staff, a lot of the support staff and the strength and conditioning team from UCF to Nebraska. We know that Frost is a loyal person, and he elaborated on that on Wednesday.
“I’ve watched a lot of coaches take the next step in the big job and either they take a few coaches along with them but they don’t take everybody or they leave people behind and they get fired," he said. "That’s not the right thing to do in my eyes, the right thing to do is to give every one of my coaches an opportunity to come and if they’re good enough to take an 0-12 program to 12-0 in two years they are good enough to coach anywhere. “
There are, however, big practical advantages to having an entire staff come over. First, continuity within the staff makes sense from a coaching perspective because everyone is on the same page with the scheme. There aren’t any new personalities or ideas to mesh into the existing coaching culture and everyone understandings their role.
In what could be a difficult time to recruit in a transition year, Frost laid out just why staff continuity is important in recruiting.
“Well there are going to be big advantages to keeping people together, one of the secrets to success at Nebraska for a long time was continuity and people understood the system, and the scheme, and where they fit and what the role was," Frost said. "It’s going to be a huge advantage for me to have people surrounding me that already know our offense, defense and how we operate. In recruiting, these guys have been working a long time to develop relationships and we still have a lot of work to do with this recruiting class.
"I think the more recruits get around these guys, and see what kind of men of character they are, the more they hear about our vision for where we want to take the program and where we’re trying to get it back to, I think we’ll continue to have more success and having familiarity with the guys on staff is certainly going to help.”
It’s very clear that Frost sees it as a big advantage keeping his staff together both for recruiting and player development. Sticking with recruiting, the continuity paid immediate dividends with two players who had committed to this staff at UCF that are now Nebraska commits. A pair of wide receiver/tight ends Katerian Legrone and Justin McGriff both flipped from the Knights to the Huskers before early signing day. They also both mentioned tight ends coach Sean Beckton as a key figure in their recruitment.
Frost mentioned Beckton specifically when asked about bringing his entire staff to Nebraska as it related to preserving those relationships they had forged on the recruiting trail.
“It’s fun to have Sean Beckton, he’s one of the best men that I know," Frost said. "A couple of those kids were committed to him at UCF and they called him and told him that they wanted to play for him and they wanted to play for us and a few of them, a couple of them, we thought were good enough players to be really good in the Big Ten. When they called and said they wanted to come with us it was an easy decision. I think the person that Sean Beckton is [will] get a lot of recruits that want to come play for him.”
If there was ever a doubt that relationships are king on the recruiting trail, these specific situations will erase them. Now as Nebraska races to the February finish line, they will have more time to build those relationships and uncover more prospects who want to be part of what Frost is building at Nebraska.
Greg is the Recruiting Analyst for Hail Varsity and has covered Husker athletics since 2013. He has always had a passion for sports while growing up in the Chicago area. As he got older and had to hang up his cleats and sneakers, he realized his passion for sports went beyond just watching and attending games. He has covered many events from the Rose Bowl to championship boxing matches. If he’s not talking sports, he’s hovering over his grill. He is married to an amazing woman, Kim, and they have a dog that barks when Greg yells at the TV during games.
