FRISCO, Texas — Scott Frost’s celebrated return as coach at UCF comes with the backdrop of a failed tenure at Nebraska, the alma mater he said he didn’t want to talk about at Big 12 football media days Tuesday. Even though he did.
Frost said, “I really want to keep it about UCF,” just a few hours after telling a reporter from The Athletic that he never wanted to take the Nebraska job in the first place coming off a 13-0 season in 2017 that sparked debate about whether the Knights should have had a chance to play for the national championship in the four-team playoff.
“I said I wouldn’t leave unless it was someplace you could win a national championship,” Frost told The Athletic. “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. I’m lucky to get back to a place where I was a lot happier.”
When the same reporter asked Frost in a one-on-one interview what he learned from his time in Nebraska, the former Cornhuskers quarterback said, “Don’t take the wrong job.”
Frost’s tone was quite a bit different in two settings with reporters at the 12,000-seat indoor stadium that is also a practice field for the Dallas Cowboys.
“When you go through something that doesn’t work, just ready for another chance, and I’m ready for another chance,” Frost said. “This is about the Big 12. This is about UCF. Everybody has success in life and has failures in life, for all sorts of different reasons. I’m excited to get back in a place where my family and I get treated well.”
Frost inherited an 0-12 team at UCF and turned it into an undefeated American Athletic Conference champion in only two years. Nebraska fans were ecstatic when he made the move 20 years after leading the Cornhuskers to a perfect 1997 season and a split national title with Michigan in the final season before a championship game was established.
Three games into his fifth season in Lincoln, Frost was fired with a 16-31 record. Almost three full college seasons later, it’s back to Orlando — after one year working under Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay.
“I really enjoyed two years off,” Frost said. “I got to spend a whole year with Ashley and the [three] kids, and I’ll never get that time back. I played more catch with my son and touch football in the yard with him and going to little league and seeing my daughter do gymnastics. And then some time out in L.A. really, really helped reset me, too.”
Images endure of Frost celebrating a 34-27 Peach Bowl victory over Auburn that clinched UCF’s perfect 2017 season almost a month after he had been named the coach at Nebraska.
Fast-forward almost eight years, and Frost was delaying a scheduled roundtable with reporters to take a few pictures with the players he brought with him to media days.
“Yeah, being around the guys,” Frost said of that moment. “I’m sorry, I’d rather be around the guys than you guys.”
And there are times when Frost brings up the old days with his new guys.
“We talk to them about all those things,” Frost said. “What happened in 2017 is at times relevant, but this is a new team. So we only point those things out, not to live in the past, but just to help them with any lessons that we want to learn.”
Frost wasn’t sharing the lessons he learned in Nebraska with everyone.