Jack Mitchell: Scott Frost Didn't Change, I Did

In that moment in Miami, Frost embodied so much of what I thought the program needed just then. Now, in retrospect, thinking of the 1997 Nebraska team in the context of that era as any kind of under-covered, underrepresented, or underrated entity seems ridiculous. But I was worried the college football universe, in haste to move on from Nebraska, would embrace the new sexy kid on the block, Michigan, in the face of any empirical data that favored Nebraska, including the fact that they’d just destroyed Peyton Manning’s Tennessee.

I was so proud and moved that Frost decided to be the voice this state needed by advocating for Nebraska in a way his coach wouldn’t when it seemed like Michigan had an army of advocates all over the country. He said what I wanted to say to everyone. On national TV. In a moment, I was worried no one was going to say it. He used his bluntness, his internal focus, his willingness not to follow the approved script, and an "us against the world" mentality in service of his team, his state, and me personally. Or at least that’s what it felt like. And a few hours later, it seemed to pay off as I returned to my house in the middle of that January night after spending several hours on the streets of downtown Lincoln to turn on the TV and hear the announcement on ESPN: 

A share. 

In the years after Frost’s Nebraska playing career, I baked that moment into any perception I had of him, and that included supplanting any drama around his college decisions, early career, or pre-1997 national championship game at Nebraska. Frankly, I thought that was all water under the bridge, the plot turns and authorial misdirection in a novel that has an over-the-top happy ending. 

This perception, the happy ending with Frost bravely making the case for what I told myself he cared about most - the state, the N, the fan base… me - made it uniquely painful to see him in Kansas State and Oregon colors at times when I was somewhere between detesting and being jealous of those teams, and why I always wanted to fast forward to the moment that I assumed would come, when he’d return home. And it always seemed likely to me. 

I knew the roots were there because I had heard so many stories about his parents before he played a snap at Nebraska. My mom would frequently use her knowledge of Scott’s father, Larry Frost, having watched him play against his future college teammate, her older brother (my uncle), in Norris-Hickman vs. Malcolm eight-man battles as a motivational tool for me because of his athletic dominance despite physical challenges. She also talked about Carol and the widespread local interest in following her career through the Olympics and Pan-Am games, especially as part of conversations on the state of women’s athletics.

These frequent motherly references to the Frosts’ inspirational and athletically superior lives solidifying their place in the local monoculture gave them legendary status in my mind. And that wasn’t lost on me in 2007 when a family friend of theirs won a radio contest to have lunch with the new KLIN radio morning show host and, to my surprise and delight, invited Carol and Larry as guests to dine with us at Billy’s Restaurant. 

Scott had just arrived at Northern Iowa right around that time, and I tried to be methodical and polite about it, but I had a mission at that lunch: Find out if and when Scott might come back. To some degree, I succeeded. It seemed clear that it wouldn’t happen as long as Steve Pederson was there (which turned out to be a very temporary issue), but that they were hopeful and optimistic that someday it would happen. 

I always had that conversation in my mind over the next decade as I mentally constructed scenarios that would get him back to Nebraska, perhaps as position coach or coordinator, and once his career soared, as head coach. And then, 20 years after that speech and 10 years after that lunch, it happened. 

In the introductory press conference, I expected to hear the guy I’d created in my head. The one who was finally back where he’d always wanted to be, the place he fought and advocated for. The place he was familiar with, the place he was comfortable with. Home. With his parents, and oh man, I wanted to see and hear their reaction to this moment. I wanted all of the homecoming joy. Lay it on me. 

“I know what I’m getting myself into. I’m going to lose it on every one of you (media members) if you approach my family. It’s already happened.”

Wait. What? 

Being a media member (well, a morning radio host) but also a fan who was ready to consume every ounce of personal interest content about the family reunion back home, after they’d all become football coaches, this caught me way off guard. It made me feel guilty. It wasn’t like I was among those staking out their house, but I certainly considered calling Larry and Carol. Something seemed incredibly weird and off about this comment, and much of the tone of the press conference, at least according to the narrative I’d built. But that bewilderment quickly faded into recruiting and spring practices and the 2018 season. 

This became a pattern over the next several years. A comment or a behavior I, for whatever reason, didn’t expect from him as it went counter to my concept of Scott Frost, then I’d do some mild complaining, then move on with an optimism that these moments were exceptional. Publicly bringing up the failings of the previous staff, referencing the 1997 Central Florida boo-gate, insinuating relatively early in his career that the fan base didn’t believe in him, and accentuating the negatives about this place. I moved on, but also increasingly wondered why these things kept happening. 

At some point, it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t living up to my concept of him as the guy who loved Nebraska and treated everything about the program with reverence. He never said a three-minute YouTube clip was who he was. I created that. 

I don’t bring up these oft-discussed moments from his tenure to pile on him again. I do it to illustrate the fiction that I’d created about him, and held him to.

Sometime in 2021, the romanticism took a hit. As many have noted to me, some more kindly than others, I did still advocate retaining him in 2022, and I left an online paper trail expressing that position, which has since been frequently but rightfully mocked. My justification at that time, though, had shifted from being something just short of needing to fulfill a divine prophecy about the hometown boy to something more pragmatic. I made the case that if and when things did go right, with Frost at the helm, long-term stability was possible in a way it couldn’t be with anyone else. 

I was wrong. 

In the weeks and months after he was fired, I reacted to the numerous rumors about his time here with a bit of discomfort. While I believed at least some of them had legitimacy, I often winced at the tone of the discussion around them among people who’d soured on him. The one thing I knew about myself was that my life changed, and I changed, in most cases, not for the better, after my dad passed away in 2015. I’ve probably overshared on this issue, so you all likely know.  

Larry died in September of 2020. 

I don’t know that I’ll ever be unable to grant some level of unrequested grace to Scott Frost because of that. I acknowledge that I probably don’t extend this same grace in a lot of other life situations where it is merited, perhaps by several orders of magnitude. I truly don’t know if or how this event impacted what happened (or didn’t happen) from 2020-22. If you think this is overly generous, or connecting two unrelated things, I don’t know, you may be right. But I’ll still do it. 

Consequently, over the last few years, in my discomfort over the sometimes overly joyful Frost postmortems, I think I may have extended my lenience on this issue to the point I started to let the concept I created creep back in. 

“I got tugged in a direction to try to help my alma mater and didn't really want to do it. It wasn't a good move.”

Wait, what? Are you kidding me? I’m so done with you. You couldn’t have just stuck to some PR-friendly talking points that talked growth in a hard time and managed not to crap on the place you love? 

Well, the place that I say you love. 

In the end, Scott Frost did just what drew me to him in the first place. He used his bluntness, his internal focus, his willingness not to follow the approved script, and an "us against the world" mentality. But in 2025, it wasn’t in service of getting a trophy, this fanbase, me, or our mutual home or alma mater. It wasn’t in service of a concept of himself that he never promised or even said existed. 

It was in service of his own future. 

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