Scott Frost threw Nebraska fully under the bus to excuse his own failures

Scott Frost is doing his best to turn over a new leaf as he makes his return to the sidelines this season for a second stint at the helm of UCF. Hiring Frost again certainly raised eyebrows over the winter, considering just how poorly things went for him the last time he was in charge of a Power 4 program. As he attempts to reestablish himself as a rising star in the coaching ranks, and build some new momentum in Orlando, it's more than understandable that he'd want to find any means he could of explaining away those disastrous five years at Nebraska.

But there are explanations, and there are excuses. And what Scott offered to the media on Tuesday falls firmly into the latter category. In fact, even calling it an excuse feels a little bit generous: When asked what he learned from his failures in Lincoln, Scott simply replied, "don't take the wrong job," implying that Nebraska was the reason why he couldn't field a winning team.

Lest you think that's taken out of context, he doubled down, suggesting that he didn't think Nebraska was a place at which a coach could win a national title.

Which is, to put it bluntly, preposterous. And the fact that Frost is so unwilling to look in the mirror that he'd be willing to shiv his alma mater in front of a microphone like that should cast some real doubt on just how much he's grown after all.

Scott Frost has only himself to blame for what went wrong at Nebraska

It's OK to be honest about the ways in which the Nebraska job has changed since Tom Osborne's heyday. It is in fact tougher to win there now — let alone win at the level Huskers fans demand — than it was even 10 or 15 years ago, both because of some questionable coaching hires (Frank Solich still deserved better) and because of structural changes to the sport that have threatened to leave Nebraska behind.

What Frost is trying to do here, however, has nothing to do with honesty. There's a big gap between "Nebraska might need to adjust its expectations moving forward" and "going 16-31", as Frost did during his five years at the helm. This might be a more difficult job than it has been historically, but it's not nearly as hard as Frost made it look. Know how we can be sure? Because his successor, Matt Rhule, won as many games just last season (7) as Frost won in his final three years in Lincoln combined.

No one around that program needs a refresher on just how bad things got toward the end, but just in case: Frost got fired after losing at home to Georgia Southern, after which story after story began to leak about his showing up late for his own practices and a ... less-than-committed approach to the recruiting trail. It's not like talent was the problem, either, considering that he consistently brought in recruiting classes that ranked in the top 25 in the country — not elite, but nothing that suggested a team as bad as what we wound up seeing on the field.

If one were inclined to be generous, we could give Frost the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe he meant that Nebraska was the wrong job for him. That he wasn't cut out for such a pressure-cooker, for the rigors of the Big Ten, and that he quickly found himself in over his head. But really, this is just the continuation of a pattern, as Frost has developed a habit of trying to bury his alma mater while pretending that he's engaging in introspection. Huskers fans aren't buying it, and they shouldn't.