Scott Frost to leave UCF for head coaching job at Nebraska

ByABC News
December 2, 2017, 3:48 PM

— -- Scott Frost is coming home.

Frost, a former quarterback who led the Nebraska Cornhuskers?to a share of the 1997 national championship, has accepted the job to be the school's next head football coach, sources confirmed to ESPN on Saturday.

The 42-year-old Frost has led? UCF?to a 12-0 season after the No. 14 Knights beat No. 12? Memphis? 62-55 in double overtime to win the American Athletic Conference championship game Saturday.

When asked about the reports right after the win, an emotional Frost told ESPN's Todd McShay, "I want to go celebrate with my team."

With the win, UCF?clinched a berth in a New Year's Six bowl game.

"I'm proud of this coaching staff and the group of people we assembled to coach these guys," Frost said during the AAC championship game trophy ceremony. "I think we've given a lot to this program and these kids. But this city, this university and these kids have given even more to us."

Frost, who will be introduced as the program's 33rd head coach Sunday in Lincoln, will replace Mike Riley, who went 4-8 for the Cornhuskers this season -- his third at Nebraska.

Frost's agreement with Nebraska was first reported Saturday by Brett McMurphy on Twitter.

A formal announcement is expected soon out of Lincoln.

Frost formerly coached at Oregon under Chip Kelly and Mark Helfrich, coordinating the Ducks' high-powered offense from 2013 to 2015. He landed at UCF in December 2015 and posted a 6-7 mark one year after the Knights finished 0-12.

He will be the fifth Nebraska coach since the 1997 retirement of Tom Osborne, who closed his 25-year career by coaching Frost to an undefeated season.

From Wood River, Nebraska, Frost began his collegiate career at Stanford in 1993, declining an offer from Osborne to play for his home state school. He transferred to Nebraska in 1995 and delivered an impassioned speech to pollsters after Osborne's final game for the coach to earn a share of the national title.

The 80-year-old Osborne remains a mentor to Frost and a large-looming figure in Nebraska. Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos, in fact, sought the advice of Osborne after the AD arrived from Washington State in October, hired with the charge to restore success to the storied football program.

Osborne, in a recent interview, described Frost as "the whole package."

Moos said after the season that he identified six candidates as potential replacements for Riley. Clearly, though, Frost sat atop the list. And the admiration was mutual, apparently, as Frost declined an opportunity to visit with Florida last week about the Gators' opening before the hire of Dan Mullen.

Nebraska most recently won a conference title in 1999 and owns a conference record of 34-24 since it joined the Big Ten in 2011. Riley posted a 19-19 mark in his three seasons.

Frost, in a blog post from 2005, one year before he entered the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant at Kansas State, wrote that he loved Nebraska football and the state of Nebraska.

"I long for the days when the characteristics of the team we put on the field on Saturdays exemplified the characteristics of the hard working people of our state," Frost wrote at the time. "We used to have the Taj Mahal of college football programs. Now it feels like someone took 40 tons of dynamite to our proud and noble masterpiece and built a three bedroom ranch in its place."