Hard to be a Husker football fan right now

I’m sure some of the readers of this column just let out a sigh of relief after reading the headline and seeing that I’m not jumping on the political soapbox, at least for a week anyway.
    Interesting though, that in some ways, talking about Husker football doesn’t remove us from politics. I’m guessing with the current state of Nebraska football, there’s plenty of politics going on behind the scenes about the future of Head Coach Scott Frost.
    Frost is in the fourth year of a seven-year contract (ending 2024) with an annual salary of $5 million per year. Cutting him loose would be an expensive affair for the University.
    Should NU fire Frost without cause, the school would owe him $5 million per year for the remainder of the contract prior to and through Dec. 31, 2022, and $2.5 million after Dec. 31, 2022, mitigated by other employment.
        I’m guessing some disgruntled boosters with a close touch to the program would be more than happy to pay the bill.
    Diehard Husker fans expected Frost to do at Nebraska what he did in his previous job at the University of Central Florida—go undefeated in only his second season. Not so fast—the Huskers play in the Big 10 now.
    They also expect him to bring home a national championship like he did when he played quarterback at Nebraska. Times are different now compared to then.
    Some fans want to see Frost go; some want to make sure he stays. Me? I want him to stay.
    But going 0-10 against ranked teams during his tenure, losing a national high 18 one-score games, including all six losses this season, makes it difficult to be a Husker fan right now. Those facts also make it a hard case to argue for keeping him on.
    I think firing Frost would be the wrong thing. Consider this: Tom Osborne, regarded as one of the greatest coaches of all time, lost his first six games against Barry Switzer and the Oklahoma Sooners.
    As a young kid, I witnessed one of those devastating losses for Husker fans in the bitter cold at Memorial Stadium during the Johnny Rogers era.
     The pressure to let Osborne go continued to build for not being able to win the big one. I’m ashamed to admit after that sixth loss, I was among those grumbling.
    Look what we would have missed—three national championships. Osborne played to win—a decision that cost him one national championship for sure with another that went “wide left.”
    During his tenure, Osborne built a football dynasty at Nebraska, winning at least nine games every season. Wouldn’t it be great to be winning nine games now.?
    Firing Scott Frost now could well be as big as the mistake made by the 2003 firing of Frank Solich. That’s when Athletic Director Steve Pederson fired Solich, Osborne’s successor, after a 9-3 season and a six-year record of 58-19. Pederson felt the Cornhuskers were “slipping into mediocrity” despite a 2001 appearance in the national title game, as lackluster as that loss may have been.
    Talk about mediocrity, Pederson put the Husker program into a tailspin we still haven’t pulled ourselves out of, starting with the hire of Bill Callahan. And while many people wanted Bo Pelini gone, primarily due to his disgusting, obnoxious behavior, he still compiled a 66-27 record but never won a Big 12 or Big 10 title.
    Pelini was fired by Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst, who kept us on the road of mediocrity with the mind-boggling hire of Mike Riley. Then came Scott Frost to try to restore a culture buried 15 years prior.
    A renown Nebraska historian, the late Bob Manley, said history always repeats itself—it’s just a matter of time when. With that in mind, keeping Scott Frost at the helm gives the Huskers a better historical path of restoring the prominence of Nebraska football than not.
    Compare that to the history of firing coaches and prolonging the mediocrity we’re trying so hard to shake. Scott Frost, with his roots planted deep in Husker red, is still the best man to do that.