KEARNEY, Neb. – Nebraska head coach Scott Frost highlighted a 20-city tour around the state of Nebraska on Wednesday with stops in North Platte and Kearney.
Frost spoke to a crowd in Kearney at The Younis Conference Center for around 40 minutes, addressing several different topics.
Most of his time with the audience was in a Q&A format where he interacted with the crowd.
One of the more interesting things Frost talked about was the events of this past year and nearly not having a football season.
“I’m going to say more than I probably should say here,” Frost said. “Covid came and to everyone’s defense, nobody knew what it was all about. Nobody knew how serious it was, nobody knew what to do, nobody had the right answers. All I’ll really say is I think the decision to cancel the season was a mistake. We saw it coming and kind of knew where it was headed. I think the people that made the decision did it a little under a false pretense with some false information.
“They did it prematurely and thought everyone else around the country would follow suit, and they didn’t. When you look at that decision now in light of the fact when the NFL went off, college football went off, high school football went off, junior high football went off, elementary football went off – you don’t hear anything about one kid being hospitalized much less anything worse than that. It was a bad decision. I’m glad we arrived at the right decision. When that decision was made, we wanted to look at every option we could if there was a possibility to play.”
Frost also flashed back to his infamous August press conference where he vocally spoke out against the thought of the Big Ten not playing in 2020.
“I look back at our stance on it, and we took a pretty strong stance on it,” Frost said. “I’m not sure I’d do it again, because it put the crosshairs on us. There were national media people that were sicked on us to put us back in our place a little bit intentionally. There’s another school in our league that said and did the same things and didn’t get the same treatment. It is what it is.
“I’m not sure I’d do it again as boldly as I did, because I think it possibly put us in a bad place where we possibly are going to get worse schedules and those types of things by being vocal. It was 100 percent the right thing to do. You have a lot of people down there from the President to the Chancellor to the AD to people in our office that are going to do the right thing even if it’s not popular, and I am proud of that.”
The 2022 numbers game
One of the big topics this off-season is the recruiting numbers for the class of 2022.
Will super seniors not count again in 2022? As of now, NU is operating very conservatively with their numbers until they get better guidance.
“It’s confusing right now,” Frost said. “Super seniors this year don’t count. We are still not sure if we’ll have super seniors next year since the whole roster got a year back if they are going to count or not. Depending on how many kids decide to come back and play that could change our numbers a lot.
“All the seniors are juniors, the juniors or sophomores, the sophomores are redshirt freshmen and the freshmen are still freshmen, so we’ve got a ton of young kids. It’s a good problem to have. I really believe we have what we need in our program to get this thing done. It’s also a problem where we aren’t going to be able to add a lot of pieces to that for a while. You figure on some attrition. You never know how many that’s going to be. This is the first year in a long time where I really don’t know what that number is.”
Quick hits
***Frost praised University of Nebraska-Kearney head coach Josh Lynn, who was in the crowd on Wednesday. Frost has spent time with Lynn this off-season talking football concepts.
“You’ve guys got a cherry of a coach,” Frost told the crowd.
***Name, image and likeness was a big topic of discussion on Wednesday.
“Name, image, likeness,” Frost said when asked what NIL stands for. “Pretty much it just means money.”
Frost added it should be a good thing for college athletes and really benefit a place like Nebraska. They just don’t fully know all the rules yet.
“I think there’s a lot of people with a lot of questions, including us,” Frost said. “I think we are in a position with the passion of our fan base where we can really capitalize on it if it works. We are prepped to be ready to try to capitalize on it, and that’s going to be a big selling point for us going forward with recruits. It’s going to be kind of a pain to manage, but it’s a great opportunity for our student-athletes in football and other sports as well.”