Every athletic director needs his break-in-case-of-emergency list of prospective coaching candidates. New Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos, in his very first press conference here, mentioned that he always had a list of five names.
"You’ve heard about the list in the top drawer? I expanded that to six this time."
Take your best guesses as to the six names on that list. That will become the most popular watercolor talk and barroom banter from Wahoo to Bayard in the weeks to come.
But the name most Husker fans are hoping is at the top of list is at least on it.
"Scott Frost is a very good football coach," Moos said. "He’s in the heat of trying to win a conference championship. He’s obviously a Nebraskan, and he’s getting a lot of attention from several other schools.
"Scott is someone I am considering, but I’m being very sensitive to the fact that he’s still coaching a team and he’s having a heckuva run."
Frost's Central Florida team locked up the Amercan Athletic Conference East Division title on Friday with a 49-42 win over rival South Florida. At 11-0, the Knights will face Memphis in the conference title game on Dec. 2. UCF beat Memphis 40-13 in September.
The fact that there's still football to play for plenty of teams made Moos hesitant to place a timetable on getting the next coach hired, but Nebraska's search for its next coach isn't starting from scratch today.
"I have had third-party people involved with several agents, representatives, search firms," Moos said Saturday. "That’s no secret. I said in my opening remarks that I was assessing things and checking all my options. That’s the best way to do that, having somebody else do that legwork on some of these people that I feel could be a good fit."
Moos also mentioned that he had some of those third-party people reach out to former Oregon head coach Chip Kelly.
Kelly was hired as UCLA's new head coach on Saturday.
Brandon is the Managing Editor for Hail Varsity and has covered Nebraska athletics for the magazine and web since 2012, Hail Varsity’s first season on the scene. His sports writing has also been featured by Fox Sports, The Guardian and CBS Sports.