Dave Feit: Today Is a Sad Day

Scott Frost’s firing had to happen

Dillon Galloway photo / Nebraska Communications

Today is not a happy day. It is not a day for "I knew it all along" victory laps.

Nebraska football admitted defeat.

Nebraska fired a native son, an alumnus, and the quarterback of the most recent national championship team.

Do you remember how great it felt when Scott Frost was hired? It was not a question of "if" he would lead Nebraska back to prominence and glory. It was a question of "when". I figured by Year 5 NU would be a perennial Big Ten West favorite. Now, we're the Big Ten's favorite team to play in the West.

Even if you hopped off the bandwagon early - or never got on at all - try to remember that many of your friends and neighbors desperately wanted this work. I disagreed frequently with Frost fanatics who backed every questionable decision with unwavering blind faith. I feel for them because they're in the same place I'm at, likely the same place you are too: sad, disappointed, and wishing it had worked out differently for the players and coaches.

No, today is not a happy day.

Trev Alberts made the right decision.

There is not piece of empirical data to suggest that Scott Frost ever was - or ever would be - successful at Nebraska.

None.

We can parse his record a million different ways: Home/Away, Conference, Division, after a win or loss, one-score games, and on and on. But we always end up in the same place. For every win, there were two losses.

We can dig deeper into the program and see the respectable recruiting classes, the players in the NFL, the relatively clean arrest sheet. These are good things.

But they did not translate into wins, or even consistent play within games.

Nebraska has been - and always should be - about more than winning. The words "Not the victory, but the action; not the goal, but the game; in the deed, the glory" are etched into the side of the stadium.

But losing this often and in this matter was not sustainable. There were too many excuses and not enough accountability.

We all know the truth: the only reason it took this long to fire the head coach is because of who that coach is, and what he represented.

It sucks that we had to get to this point.

It sucks that we had to find our previous rock bottom and keep drilling down to where we are now. That sucks for us as fans. It sucks for the players who deserve better. And it sucks for the program as a whole. I have no idea how far the 2022 season will set the Nebraska program back. That makes me sad.

You'll see people second guessing Trev Alberts's decision to bring back Frost last November. At the time, I asked if Trev Alberts punted on the biggest decision of his tenure. To complete the analogy, you could easily argue that Trev’s punt looked a lot like the fateful kick in last year’s Michigan State game – to the wrong side of the field, and easily returned for a touchdown.

It's easy to look back and say Alberts's decision to retain Frost last November was bad.

But I firmly believe that Trev made the right decision.

We needed to get to this point.

This fan base has been so invested in Scott Frost being successful, that we needed to prove - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that it could not and would not work. I think this is ultimately why Trev Alberts didn't fire Frost after going 3-9 in 2021.

Alberts saw Husker Nation going through the five stages of grief over Scott Frost.

1. Denial. How could Scott freaking Frost - the guy who took UCF to an undefeated season - lose his first six games at Nebraska? Impossible. It's got to be because of the Akron game being canceled or something Mike Riley did.
2. Anger. Looking back, there were many games that made me angry. At Colorado in 2019 was one of the first. But two home losses in 2020 - Illinois by 18 points, and a severely short-handed Minnesota - really made me mad.
3. Bargaining. The greatest 3-9 team in history was so, so close. That "we're so close" narrative - as false as it was - gave fans hope that a turnaround was still possible. With everything else going on - new facilities, NIL, the basketball program also in shambles - Alberts could not afford to alienate Husker fans and boosters by firing Frost too soon.
4. Depression. NU was up by 11 points against Northwestern and attempted an onside kick. We may never know the reasoning (Incompetence? Panic? The knowledge that the defense was that bad?), but it was a depressing "here we go again" start to the season.
5. Acceptance. Georgia Southern, who also was 3-9 a year ago put up 600+ yards of total offense as the boos rained down from the stands. It was time.

Why didn’t NU wait until Oct. 1?

If you asked me at the beginning of the season - or as recently as Thursday - I would have said there was no reason to fire Frost until the buyout dropped from $15 to $7.5 million on Oct. 1. But I was wrong.

There was no reason to wait three more weeks. Sure, the monetary savings would have been nice, but most fans don't care about NU's budget. As Trev Alberts said on Sunday, decisions "are always done with what we think is the best long-term interest of the University of Nebraska and our athletic department."

Here are a handful of reasons (in no particular order) why firing Frost early was the right - if expensive - decision:

• It should be obvious by now that the team's performance was not going to improve under Frost's leadership. The weight of playing for their coach's job was impacting performance. Maybe a change can salvage the season for the players and fans.
• With Fox's "Big Noon Kickoff" coming to town on Saturday, NU can present a positive and optimistic narrative instead of what would have surely been dreary and pessimistic. If they let Trev talk for 3-4 minutes, Nebraska could recoup a lot of value very quickly.
• The relationships among Frost and the players, media, and fans would likely deteriorate as everybody counted down the days until Oct. 1.
• Nobody liked Frost - and/or the players - getting booed during games. The contract said Frost's buyout would drop AFTER the Indiana game on Oct. 1. How ugly would that game have been?
• How could Frost - or any of his assistants - possibly recruit with so much negative speculation over their future?
• For those who still care about the Sellout Streak, firing Frost now is the best chance for it to survive the season.
• Frost - the native son and former player - deserves better. No matter what you think of his time here, or the generosity of his buyout, it would be borderline cruel to have make him endure another three weeks of this only for the purpose of saving money. That's not how Nebraskans treat people - even if they were 16-31 as head coach.
• It gives Trev Alberts more time to plan Nebraska's future, and saves him from having to do it behind Scott Frost's back.

I agree with you: $15,000,000.00 is a big, big number. But what is the cost of not doing anything for the next three weeks?

I'm glad we don't have to find out.

Where do we go from here?

For the last 25 years, this has been my default setting: I trust Nebraska's athletic director (and leadership) to make a good hire.

Obviously, that has ultimately backfired on every head football coaching hire made since 1997, but I'm excited to see what Trev Alberts can do.

Trev has a unique opportunity: For the first time since Tippy Dye hired Bob Devaney, a Nebraska athletic director has the chance to lay out his vision for the future of Nebraska football and hire a coach to fulfill it.

There is no default hire like Frank Solich. No "people's choice" hires like Bo Pelini or Scott Frost. And unlike the Bill Callahan and Mike Riley hires, I expect the old-school power brokers to be much more accepting of "outsider" hires.

Trev Alberts was a legend in the old school, and he understands that the new school cannot be handcuffed by limiting the candidate pool to alumni, former assistants, and others who have some random connection to the Cornhusker State*.

Let me be blunt: I don't care if Nebraska's head coach has "Nebraska ties". I don't care if he has the blessing of Tom Osborne and/or the old guard power brokers. Yes, Bill Callahan and Mike Riley didn't succeed. Guess what: both of them easily outperformed the native son, alumnus QB. This just means Trev has to make a better hire than Steve Pederson and Shawn Eichorst. That’s not a tall order.

Nebraska's struggles and failures in the 21st century cannot be traced back to where the head coach was born or went to college. Nebraska has struggled because the last five head coaches ultimately failed to do the things necessary to make Nebraska a stable, sustainable program.

I believe that Trev Alberts will make a good hire

Almost everybody has their list of candidates, a list they’ve been curating since the Northwestern game (or earlier). I don't have such a list. Honestly, I find the coaching carousel and breathless speculation exhausting.

I don't care if the next coach wants to run triple option, air raid, or anything in between*. I firmly believe that any system can work anywhere with 1) coaches to teach it, 2) talent to run it, and 3) time to perfect it.

*But if Trev wants to get things turned around quickly, it would obviously be wise to hire somebody whose preferred system mimics what NU is running now - or could utilize the talent on hand.

Callahan & Riley's offenses didn't fail because you "can't throw the ball here". They failed, in part, because Joe Dailey and Tommy Armstrong, Jr. are not ideal quarterbacks for a pass-first offense. Even with the transfer portal, flipping an offense 180 degrees takes time.

There are several traits that I'd like to see in Nebraska's head coach (excellent recruiter, disciplined, acts with integrity, media savvy, a proven record of success, etc.). I’d prefer to have an experienced coach over a novice.

In theory, Trev’s job should be somewhat easy: Find the best guy, show him the facilities, the fans, and the B1G resources. Point out how the Big Ten West is currently an express lane to the Playoffs. Make an offer that shows Nebraska is serious about being back on the national scene. Win the press conference and give the new coach whatever he needs.

From what I've seen of Trev Alberts in his first 14 months, I trust him to do just that.

He may not replicate what Tippy Dye did after the 1961 season, but I'm optimistic for Nebraska's future.

I have not typed - or felt - "optimistic for Nebraska's future" in a long time. 

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