KEVIN WARREN: I'm excited to welcome our first coach to the podium. Scott Frost was an incredible quarterback and student-athlete at the University of Nebraska, had a major impact as a player, and is doing a great job as a coach.
He's a key supporter of Tom Osborne's mentoring program, which is changing the lives of young people in the state of Nebraska. I'm excited to be able to see Coach Frost play against Northwestern in Dublin here probably in just about 30 days. It's been an honor and a pleasure to work with him, and I'm looking forward to Nebraska having a great season this year.
So welcome to the podium head football coach Scott Frost.
Q. Looking at you guys' success or lack thereof over the past couple years, you're not up to the standard where you'd want to be. I think you'd say that yourself. How do you guys get back on track competitively and ultimately get to the Big Ten Championship?
SCOTT FROST: Competitively, I think, is the wrong way to put it. We were competitive in every game last year. We had our chances to win. We made a ton of progress as a program from a talent perspective and from a culture perspective. We haven't gotten it there yet.
There's a little piece we have to put together to make sure we get over the hump, but we're excited to have the chance to do that.
Q. Talk a little bit about taking the Big Ten to Ireland. Then of course, the first question is going to be Casey Thompson. How is he coming along? Talk a little bit again, a segue into that, the competitiveness that Nebraska most likely will have this year in the west.
SCOTT FROST: We're excited to go play in Ireland. There's some challenges that go along with that. We've been planning for it for a long time. We're going to try to handle it as well as we can. Our players understand that it's not a bowl trip. We didn't earn it. We're going over there to play a football game, and that's got to be the focus.
Casey is one of many transfers we brought in. Really excited about the talent we added to the football team, but talent doesn't win games. We've got to become a football team, and part of that is integrating the new players with the old and making sure we're one team playing together.
Excited for that first game. Excited to compete in the Big Ten West. We were in every game last year with chances to win. Looking forward to having a team that's hungry to make sure we win some of those.
Q. What are your thoughts on the Big Ten expansion, adding UCLA, USC in 2024, how that changes things for Nebraska and your student-athletes.
SCOTT FROST: There's a lot of changes right now, and we have to be light on our feet to make sure we're trying to take advantage of every change that happens and position ourselves in a good place.
I just want to compliment the league and the leadership of the league. I think everybody can see the landscape changing, and this move pretty much ensures that we're out in front of it and relevant in college football no matter where it all ends up.
I've coached against those two teams before. I think they'll be great additions to the league. Looking forward to this year and beyond and see where the whole thing lands when the dust settles.
Q. How important has NIL been with what you've been able to do at Nebraska and the transfer portal?
SCOTT FROST: I think it changes our model a little bit. Nebraska is going to be one of the best places in the country for NIL. There's so much fan support. There's so much interest. There's so much passion around it. A lot of businesses and people in Nebraska have really given our current players a ton of opportunities already.
I expect that to even grow as we go forward, and the attraction of NIL has certainly helped us add some pieces to our team and I think will going forward.
Q. Last year when you came here with Trev Alberts, it was kind of the "getting to know you" phase. How much has that relationship grown in the last year, and what stands out to you about Trev's personality and how he goes about his business?
SCOTT FROST: I think the great thing is we have two former Huskers and several more in the building that understand Nebraska and its unique challenges and advantages. We're both working as hard as we can to try to make Nebraska football and Nebraska athletics the best that we possibly can.
It's been a good collaboration, and we're both doing everything we can to position ourselves in the best place we can in this conference and beyond.
Q. What are your thoughts on the College Football Playoff potential expansion? Are you in favor of that? Do you support it, or do you think it should stay the same?
SCOTT FROST: I've learned from being a head coach that we can have our opinions and they don't really matter unless you need something to write about. I'm sure it will land in a good place when it's all done and when the people that make the decisions help make it happen.
I would personally love to see it expand a little bit. Really the biggest reason is that, if there's a team that might not be the highest ranked team in a conference championship and they win the conference championship, I think they probably earn a right to have a seat at the table. Having more teams have an opportunity, I think can only help the game, but they have to figure out a way to do it in a smart manner that doesn't get in the way of academics or anything else that college football is built on.
Q. Question I have, 3-9 is the record, but all nine of the losses by single digits. You turn three of those, it's a bowl season. You turn six of those, you win the division. And you're right there in every game. Not to wallow in the losing or anything like that, but what can be done to make that one more play, that one more thing that puts you guys over the top to start turning those close losses into wins? You're right there with Michigan, you're right there with Ohio State, both those games. What's going to put it over the top?
SCOTT FROST: We had a good enough team last year to do better than we did. That falls on me. It falls on the whole coaching staff. It falls on the whole team.
Compliment Ohio State, they came into Lincoln with a really good football team, and we were right in the game and we didn't win it, and that seemed to happen quite a bit.
It would be easy if it's one thing. It's a little harder because it's a little something different in every game. More than anything, I think we just need to have a little more of a killer instinct to finish games, and we get in those close games, we need to finish them.
Look forward to competing this year. I'm sure we'll be in some more, and we've got to find a way to come out on top.
Q. Special teams has obviously not been a strength for you the past few years. What's the key to turning that around?
SCOTT FROST: It's been an emphasis for us, and we're looking forward to working on that some more. The kids know how important it is. Our specialists, I think are going to improve and do better this year. I think we've got more depth and athletic ability to have guys that can cover. The guys know how important it is, and we're looking forward to working.
Q. Can you continue to talk about stepping away from more of your offensive duties and turning that over to Coach Whipple and how that allows you to do some other things here going into the fall?
SCOTT FROST: Stepping away is the wrong way to put it. I'm going to still have my hand in it. It's going to be a fun collaboration with somebody else who knows a lot of football. When I'm not around the offense, I'm going to be able to trust him to take care of it so I can do other things. I'm looking forward to having a little more of that role but still being involved a lot.
Q. What have you learned about your team this summer that kind of stands out to you, one of those things that's going to make this team special this year?
SCOTT FROST: I think we've got really good leadership, kind of highlighted by the three kids that came to Indy with me. As good of leaders as we've had on the football team. I think there's a toughness about them that, not our whole team but maybe pieces of it lacked last year. I think there's a chip on a lot of shoulders.
It's an interesting combination of guys that have been through some of the tough losses that we've been through and some newcomers, both on the staff and in the locker room, that haven't been through that.
One of the biggest challenges is making sure we take the collection of guys and turn it into one team.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports