Big Ten media days kicked off on Thursday, Nebraska football coach Scott Frost had a lot of interesting things to say. In particular, he delivered a quote that I absolutely love.
As many of you now, us fans get all caught up in the preseason hype and stories from journalists and bloggers like myself. It has become a yearly tradition. We get our hopes up because of what all the journalists and magazines write, picking Nebraska football to finish higher than even we know they will. For the 2021 season, Frost is trying to avoid the hype.
For one, I love it. It represents a change from what we have heard from the football program over the last couple of media days. It sounds like Frost doesn’t want to do the hype train anymore. I don’t blame him. It sounds like all he wants to do is go out there and play football. That’s the way it should be. This is a crucial year for the Nebraska football program, and the best thing for them to do is just focus on football and playing.
Am I saying that they can’t have an opinion? No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that it’s helpful to squash the preseason hype around the football program. It makes life easier for everybody that way. Focus on building the program, and winning. Then, the results will follow.
Frost is not going to be the most boisterous coach at these media days. He made that very clear during his time at the podium Thursday.
“I’m not in to sloganeering. If the players need me to motivate them all the time or come up with a unique slogan to get them to play harder I probably don’t have the right players. I played for a coach at Nebraska in coach Osborne that didn’t need all the sayings and slogans, he just taught us the right way to do things and we went to work. That’s what we do in our program.”
The fact that he indicates that he probably doesn’t have the right players if they need slogans to motivate them is awesome. That’s something I think we have seen from the program in the past couple of years unfortunately. It’s not about slogans, it’s about results. Frost certainly wants to make that very clear.
To me, this also represents the fact that Frost recognizes Nebraska football bought into the preseason hype the past couple of seasons. That will no longer be the case anymore.
A lunchpail attitude is what is going to help the program succeed and it starts from the top. On Thursday, Scott Frost made that very clear.
