When considering the biggest question facing Nebraska Cornhuskers football in the 2020s, the focus naturally shifts to Scott Frost. Will the favored son, the people all Husker fans loved for a long time, be the man who can turn around the program?
It is true that Nebraska fans will embrace a revival no matter how it comes, but it would obviously mean so much more if the Huskers can return to prominence under Frost, whose return to Lincoln a few years ago was met with universal enthusiasm — not just because he had just conquered college football at UCF, but because he was a Nebraska man who played for a national championship team under Tom Osborne and therefore represents a strong connection to Nebraska’s glory days. Emotion, nostalgia, sentimentality, and coaching quality (at UCF) were all part of the euphoria felt in the Nebraska community when Mama called, and Frost came home.
Here we are, two seasons into the Frost era, and Nebraska hasn’t yet made a bowl game under Frost. Moreover, Nebraska didn’t make a bowl game this year even though Northwestern and Purdue endured brutal seasons in the Big Ten West. What happens when the Wildcats and Boilermakers improve, as they almost surely will? Plus, Minnesota now seems to be a factor in the Big Ten West, another impediment to Nebraska’s rise. Nebraska’s ceiling is, at least at the moment, very low.
How will Frost raise that ceiling? One answer comes from Parrish Walton, who said on a podcast with me that Nebraska needs to recruit the state of Ohio better and get the kinds of players Ohio State doesn’t want. Kentucky has been getting a number of those players to stay relevant (and a bowl team) in the SEC. Nebraska, Walton says, would do well to adjust its recruiting strategy in that and other ways.
That ultimately leads me to the central question for Nebraska football entering the 2020s: It’s not so much whether Frost himself leads a revival; it’s more about whether a revival will happen under any coach or any set of circumstances. The key is finding a recruiting formula which works.
Ever since the move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten, Nebraska’s recruiting in the state of Texas has fallen off. Nebraska wasn’t competing with Texas A&M or Texas for recruits anymore. Finding the right path in recruiting and getting better “dudes” is the key challenge the Cornhuskers need to respond to if they want happy days to return to Lincoln, under Scott Frost or anyone else.