Monday, September 12, 2022

Lollygagging in Lincoln

 Distinguished alumnus Scott Frost lost his job at the University of Nebraska yesterday, and it wasn't because he didn't cut a big enough check. It was because he couldn't win a football game his Cornhuskers were favored to win by three touchdowns.

Less than 24 hours after Georgia Southern came into Lincoln and beat Frost's team 45-42, he was out, finished at Faber (to coin a phrase). The man who quarterbacked Tom Osborne's last national championship team a quarter century ago -- and who was supposed to bring back the glory days as head coach -- instead went 16-31 in four seasons and change. He also lost 22 of 27 one-score games.

So Nebraska pulled the plug. On September 11, which makes the Blob wonder if the issues in Lincoln extend beyond the guy wearing the headset.

This is not a defense of Frost, who not only couldn't win the big ones but couldn't win the little ones, either, and especially the close ones. But if athletic director Trev Alberts and the rest of the Nebraska hierarchy were so unhappy they'd choose to pay Frost $15 million to go away in September, why not do it last December? Why not start over right then and there instead of lollygagging into another season?

Look, I'm sure associate head coach Mickey Joseph, who's now the interim head coach,  knows his football. But turning the program over to an interim three games in is basically flushing the season. Almost an entire fall will be cast adrift, with players spending almost three months wondering A) who the next head coach will be, B) how they'll fit into his program, and C) what "B" means for their future in Lincoln.

The transfer portal may never get a more strenuous workout.

And the fans who paint Memorial Stadium red every Saturday?

Welcome to lame duck season.

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