UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green and Athletic Director Bill Moos met to talk about Scott Frost’s coaching contract. Moos wanted to extend his coach. Now felt like the right time. So the two men met with Frost this week to ask about adding two years to a deal that already keeps him in Lincoln through 2024.
“He was elated to know he had that security, and the faith and trust that he’s had from the beginning,” Moos said Saturday morning before Nebraska kicked off against Wisconsin.
Just prior to his impromptu availability on the west sideline of Tom Osborne Field, Nebraska had officially announced Frost’s two-year contract extension. The terms of the deal remain the same, but now he’ll be the Husker head coach through 2026.
“I don’t know of anybody else we’d rather have here coaching this team,” Moos said. “It’s going to take, as I mentioned, a couple more years before we’re in a [good] spot. I know I caught some guff with media days, but we’ve got to get to six wins and grow from that so we can get in the postseason and get some extra practices. I know it’s cutting it close here, but it’s coming and it’s going to be a process. Scott Frost’s the guy we want leading the program.”
Frost is 8-13 at Nebraska. Elsewhere, Class of 2018 coaches in Year 2s have already been fired for similarly slow starts. Willie Taggart was 9-12 at Florida State. Chad Morris was 4-18 at Arkansas. Neither, though, started their tenure with or at any point during had the level of support Frost has had and will continue to have.
“We’re all a little frustrated because of our record, but we’re in it for the long haul and building a program,” Moos said. “It’s going to take several years. I’ve said that all along. Scott knows it. We’ve got the new building under construction here shortly. We’ve got our air fleet all geared up on our recruiting piece. It just made sense to do it now, I was going to do it anyway. This, I think, is a good piece for moral and some energy within our team and our program.”
Moos was noncommittal when asked if the prospect of negative recruiting influenced the decision. He said “You never know,” and that there will always be “dirty tactics” in recruiting, but Moos hasn’t wavered in his support of his coach, so there was likely only hearsay to go on anyway.
“I still think we’re on schedule,” he said. “We’re probably a couple of years away from where we really can feel comfortable in having consistently winning teams, but my feeling has always been, throughout my career, build the program and make sure it’s solid and then the program will produce the winning teams. We’re working on building the program.
“Scott’s a competitor and he’s a champion, and he hasn’t really known losing. He knew coming in this was a project, that it isn’t the Nebraska he remembers. He knew, and we were on the same page, that it was going to take several years in order to get to where it once was. Then to sustain, it’s going to take some doing, too.”
Frost has all the time he could hope for in order to do just that.
Derek is a newbie on the Hail Varsity staff covering Husker athletics. In college, he was best known as ‘that guy from Twitter.’ He has covered a Sugar Bowl, a tennis national championship and almost everything in between (except an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game… *tears*). In his spare time, he can be found arguing with literally anyone about sports.
