The Other Scott Frost Effect: It’s Okay to Be Mad About an 0–5 Start and Still Think Nebraska Will Be Fine Chris Hatch Follow Oct 9, 2018 · 4 min read

Imagine, if you will, that you are from a small town somewhere in rural Nebraska. A tight-knit, fiercely proud community where “everyone knows everyone” is as certain as the one finger steering wheel wave you’re going to get when you inevitably make eye contact with someone driving down the main drag of town.

Now, imagine that you left that town and went on to achieve unprecedented success. You are a hotshot brain surgeon that appears on CNN as a guest panelist, or you’re a startup company mogul that’s making millions off a hot new app.

Imagine if that little town, with all the proud parents and awestruck locals held a special day for you. They wanted to present you with The Key to their little city with the Mayor and your old high school band playing a song as you walked onto a dais on main street and accepted it to their wild applause.

Now, picture walking up that stage. The music is playing. The crowd cheering. Local newspaper taking photos as you walk towards that Giant-ass gold key on the first annual “_____Your Name Here_____ Day!”

Now imagine that, as you’re walking, your pants fall off. All the way.

Not just down a little bit, like you’re in need of tightening up that belt loop. I mean off-off.

Down to your ankles.

And that you’re wearing the most embarrassing underwear possible. Whether that’s a fiery red, silk man-thong, or a pair of Justin Bieber granny panties from his tweenage years (*Author’s note: do those exist?) that have moth-holes in them. You hear the tuba player, and the 17-year-old trombone player make one of those embarassing I’m -all-out-of-oxygen-due-to-shock “schmmmmborrrrnnnggh” noise with their instruments and everyone stares at you in utter shock.

It doesn’t make those other achievements vanish. It doesn’t mean that you won’t pull those pants up, grab that key and then proceed to give a tear-jerking inspirational speech before writing a check that donates enough money to the local school’s gymnasium that they rename the entire damn floor in your honor.

But the here and now kind of sucks, regardless.

That’s Scott Frost and the 0–5 Nebraska Cornhuskers.

(image courtesy of: Hail Varsity Magazine)

That’s our hometown kid, coming home to make good after conquering the world outside the cannon-shaped confines of our 1.8 million person small town of a state.

And those are his pants, our pants, really, that are twisted down around the ankles while everyone stares in saucer-eyed stupor at how poorly things have suddenly gone.

So, if you’re frustrated and think that we’ve underperformed? You’re right. If you feel like Scott Frost has struggled as a head coach at his first power five school? That’s valid criticism, too. And, for what it’s worth, I agree.

(Image via Google & also my nightmares)

But thinking those things — and seeing that underneath that yoked exterior and the intensely water-to-wine hype that comes with landing the hottest coach in the country, moments after he just took home more awards than Meryl Streep Frost is just a young, relatively inexperienced head coach who has faced only mere flecks of adversity on his way to superstardom — and thinking that we’re going to be fine eventually can and should coexist.

The Sea of Red doesn’t have to be black and white. Not on this. It is okay to sit on the fence, while the fence is still under construction.

You can have valid critiques of his game-planning. You can think that it’s about time for him to stop with the metaphors that basically translate to: “Mike Riley really f-ed this place up” (*Author’s note: even if you know that this is inherently true). You can have your confidence in him stirred, if not shaken.

AND

You can realize that it’s still impossibly early to know how things will turn out. That the offense looks revitalized and that there did appear to be some surgical removals of players and attitudes that mere treatment did not seem to help. That this is one square in what will, at the very least, be a multi-year, multi-step mosaic.

So this start to a season? This moment? This Micro-not-macro? This pants-dropping during the key-grabbing? It’s not the end. This season, and the entire future of the program has an ellipses hovering at the end of the sentence still…

He’s still got time to grab those pants off the ground