Scott Frost firing a surprise for 1 big reason
Nebraska head coach Scott Frost is seen before a Big Ten Conference NCAA football game on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018, at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen
Scott Frost entered the 2022 season on the hot seat, and the coach lasted just three games. Had Nebraska kept him around for a few more weeks, they could have saved millions of dollars.
It is not a surprise that Frost lost his job after a 1-2 start that featured losses to Northwestern and Georgia Southern. What is baffling is that Nebraska did not wait until Oct. 1 to make the move. As Bruce Feldman of The Athletic noted, Frost’s buyout was scheduled to drop from $15 million to $7.5 million on that date.
The timing of Scott Frost being fired is stunning from this standpoint: His buyout was to drop from $15 million to $7.5 million Oct. 1 but obviously things were not going well there at all.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) September 11, 2022
That means Nebraska could have saved $7.5 million if they let Frost coach the team for just two more games. The Cornhuskers play Oklahoma next weekend and then have a bye before their Oct. 1 date with Indiana.
Frost never finished with a winning record in his four full seasons at Nebraska. The team won just three games in each of the past two seasons. He threw his staff under the bus following a second-half meltdown against Northwestern in Week 1.
It is possible that Frost knew he was going to be fired and worked out some sort of agreement with Nebraska. But if the school chose to eat $7.5 million just to get rid of him as soon as possible, that shows how desperate administrators were to close the book on the Frost era.
