You know football is getting close when you see coaches and players wearing suits and talking to reporters. That’s what happened in Chicago when Nebraska and head coach Scott Frost opened up B1G Media Days. Here are three quick takeaways about what Nebraska’s new head man said to the assembled media.
The Buzz is Real
According to Sam McKewon of the Omaha World-Herald, Frost was supposed to share a stage with Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley. Plans had to change when someone pointed out that the assembled crowd might be too big to accommodate both Nebraska’s new head man and the league’s best returning quarterback.
And it’s not just the assembled media for B1G Media Days that have their eyes on Nebraska. Check out what ESPN’s David Pollack had to say about Nebraska on Twitter.
There Was Some Shade Thrown At Previous Coaches
It wasn’t explicit. It wasn’t out loud. But it was pretty clear that Frost wasn’t happy with the status of how he found Nebraska’s football program.
According to a transcript of Frost’s remarks from the Lincoln Journal-Star:
It’s not one thing. We’ve got to get Xs and Os installed. We’ve got to change the way guys think. We’ve got to make sure they care about each other and making decisions based on what’s best for the team first; that we’re getting to work in the weight room and changing that; that we’re in better shape; that we get faster kids; that we recruit better. All those things have to go together. You can’t change any one of those things overnight. All of them are a process.
That’s a more general, if softer, criticism of the previous regime. But here, according to McKewon, is what he had to say about the infamous story about Nebraska not doing any squats under previous head coach Mike Riley.
Well, Frost said, they did some front squats. But they weren’t Husker Power squats. It wasn’t linemen squatting more than 700 pounds, plates gently bending bars like heat does a tree. It wasn’t the lifting Frost prefers — and knows he’s getting — under the guidance of strength and conditioning coach Zach Duval, whom Frost continued to present as a linchpin to Nebraska’s success.
He’s Setting A High Bar
Frost identified Wisconsin as his first target in engineering Nebraska’s resurgence. And he did it in a way that acknowledged the current reality of the relationship between the two teams
But Frost has his eyes set on where he wants to see the program under his leadership, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
“Nebraska belongs in the upper echelon of college football.”