Category Archives: College Football

College Football, Huskers, scott frost

Nick Allen Presents: Excuses Scott Frost Can Use

The past few years have been rough for Husker fans. And the few before that. And, for good measure, the few before that. Watching fourth quarter leads dwindle away or a team in scarlet and cream looking like they’d rather be anywhere else has become the norm.

While I will eternally root for the dudes, the excuses after yet another ugly or unnecessary loss have become more interesting than the games themselves in the past couple of years.

In that spirit, here are some prefabricated excuses to help Scott Frost through the year should the ball not bounce the right way.

Hopefully none of these are needed. But if they are…

@ Illinois 8/28

Man, we almost had them there. I like where the team is at though. They had some wrinkles we didn’t really anticipate. No way to know what a new coach at a new school was going to throw at us. Took us some time to get used to playing in a game again after a long offseason. Hotel didn’t do us any favors with no waffle machine.

Fordham 9/4

Frankly I thought this game was a joke and we wouldn’t actually end up playing it. By the time we all stopped laughing there wasn’t really any time to put any game plans together. We’ll get them next year. They agreed to come to Lincoln instead of Oklahoma. We have their number now.

Buffalo 9/11

They really play with some grit. We were out of sorts after some bad BBQ last night. That on top of the fans and media making everyone nervous really did us in. Looking at Buffalo Bills game tape instead of this really, really tough team we played here today is on me.

@Oklahoma 9/18

Look, there was a reason I tried to get out of this game. Frankly we shouldn’t even have been here today. Plane being delayed didn’t help anything. Yes I personally delayed it but still, another sign this never should have happened in the first place. They’re a tough team and it’s even harder to concentrate knowing they’ll be in a different conference soon. Luckily, we will never play them again.

@Michigan State 9/25

Two road games in a row really isn’t fair. It would have been much easier if they just showed up in Lincoln at the same time as Michigan in a few weeks and they could have played each other at our place. We could have gotten some extra practice in. Chalk this up to scheduling.

Northwestern 10/2


Nobody cares about football in their town so it’s easier for them to focus without all of the distractions. They don’t have a zealous fanbase or prodding media to worry about. We can probably just tell everybody we won because nobody will pay any attention anyway. They also have new facilities. Hard for us to compete with them while ours are still under construction.

Michigan 10/9

To be honest, the winged helmets threw us off. Some of the guys thought they would make their team actually start flying. Hard to recover from that. I’d also like to point out that Michigan has been good at basketball in the past as well. So much easier for a football program to relax when the basketball team can carry some of the weight for the athletic department.

@ Minnesota 10/16

Not going to make any excuses other than it’s a lot easier for kids to focus on coaches who have initials for a first name. They’re not caught up in how and why he was named ‘Scott’ or whatever his first name might be. Easier for his players to spell it too. Other than that and getting out-coached again, we really had a shot at this one. 

Purdue 10/30

Trains are heavy and fast. If you really pay attention, they’re everywhere. Think that got our guys off rhythm throughout the week as everywhere they went there seemed to be a train. Intersections, horns at night, you name it. That really effected our preparation this week. Didn’t help at all being on a train in Minnesota last week. That’s on me.

Ohio State 11/6

It’s really not fair we even have to play them sporadically. We’ve been in contact with the league and are hoping for a favorable outcome.

@ Wisconsin 11/20

This was a tough one. Really hard for us as Nebraska to go up against a team who does what we used to do well for so long. They develop players, are fundamentally sound, don’t beat themselves and play with a nasty edge on offense and defense. Think we were thrown by looking in a mirror and seeing a distant, aging reflection of what we used to be.

Iowa 11/26

We couldn’t tell if it was our fans or their sideline clapping throughout the game. We’re also still pretty tired from Thanksgiving. They should really consider moving this to another day or scrapping this series entirely. Next year I’ll have more of my players here and won’t have to keep cleaning up the culture the last guy shit out. 

Nick Allen is a stand-up comic who lives in Omaha. Catch him every weekday morning on the Todd N Tyler Show or see him live in Lincoln this Saturday night at the Storm Cellar. Follow Nick on Twitter at @NicksAllens. 

 

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College Football, Huskers

Breaking Down Mark Kiszla’s “Hug a Husker” Column

It wouldn’t be game week against Colorado if some highfalutin sportswriter from the Denver Post took a pot shot at Husker Nation.

With Woody Paige being put out to pasture by the Post in 2016, this year’s honor falls to Mark Kiszla, a sportswriter who looks like he keeps more than one bootleg Phish CD in his trusty Subaru, which he takes up into the mountains every summer for an annual pilgrimage to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters at Red Rocks.

In his column, which you can read here, Kiszla kicks things off with a joke – a smart move, and one right out of Tom Osborne’s playbook during his weekly press conferences back in the day.

Hey, Buffs. It won’t be easy. But as the Bugeaters return to Folsom Field for the first time since 2009, kindly refrain from the Nebraska jokes. 

Here in Colorado, we’re better than this: “How do you know the toothbrush was invented in Nebraska? Anywhere else, it would’ve been called a teethbrush.”

I think Kiszla is trying to say that Colorado fans are better than making jokes at Nebraska’s expense. The kind of jokes that are such an embedded part of the public domain that you can google toothbrush teethbrush joke and get 11 million results.

I know the robber barons running the Denver Post these days don’t provide the most lavish budgets but surely Kiszla isn’t under such sweatshop like conditions that he doesn’t have time to pop an edible and think of an original joke.

But there’s no time to wait around for that gummy to hit, we gotta move right into the crux of his column:

…I humbly suggest a new theme to honor this rivalry:

Give a Husker a hug.

Yep. That’s it. Right there. Give a Husker a hug.

When you think about it, Kiszla’s idea isn’t so far fetched. There are going to be thousands of hugs handed out at Folsom Field this Saturday.

And they’re all going to be happening between fellow Husker fans.

If you’ve paid any attention to the lead up to this game, it sure sounds like there won’t be anyone inside the stadium affiliated with Colorado aside from the team itself and the Coors Light vendors. (BTW, did you know the nickname “Silver Bullet” was coined by a University of Nebraska student?)

Then we get to the best paragraph of Kiszla’s piece:

And that’s fine by Colorado athletic director Rick George, who crowed the renewal of hostilities between the Buffs and Huskers will be the biggest revenue producing game in school history. 

Holy buffalo chip! You mean a hosting a game against Nebraska is going to be an economic benefit to the University of Colorado? Shut the front door. Maybe the university would have more money if it didn’t have to go all Crazy Gideon and slash ticket prices by 40% in a sad attempt to lure students through the gates.

And after a little more word salad to make his word count, Kiszla pulls off his game plan to start strong and finish stronger with his most outlandish whopper yet…

Give the Huskers a hug. 

Goodness knows, after the embarrassment of losing to CU two years in a row, they’re going to need it.

OK. Maybe he did take an edible and it kicked in by the end. That’s the only way you can explain an ending like that.

GBR.

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College Football, Huskers

It’s Getting to be About That Time

This past Monday was a little different than the three dozen or so Mondays that preceded it.

I was wide awake 20 minutes before my first alarm and in the mood to run through a brick wall.

And that can only mean one thing.

Game week is finally here.

And what a magical week it has been.

Long dormant group texts have returned from the dead, buddies who are alumni of other colleges have reached out from far and wide to get a read on how things are looking for the Huskers in 2019, and most importantly, plans have been made to meet friends I haven’t seen since last November at a bar at 8:30am on a Saturday morning.

There’s nothing like the anticipation and excitement leading to a season opener. It’s as if you’re stuck in Groundhog Day but instead you’re eight-years-old and living the night before Christmas for an entire week.

My personal It’s a Wonderful Life moment happened in the back of an Uber on Tuesday afternoon. The driver asked if I was a football fan. I said college. Then he asked what school and I said Nebraska. And then he said oh, damn the Huskers are gonna be good and launched into rant about USC that lasted for five miles. The only time he pumped the verbal brakes was when I interrupted to ask if he had time to drive me to Iowa so I could have some in-person words with the Hawkeye fan who talking smack to me on Twitter at that exact moment. Then we both had a laugh and wished each other good luck.

It feels so good to be back.

Enjoy the latest Big Red Fury pump up video and we’ll be back soon with some real content. GBR.

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A Thanksgiving Appreciation for the Best 4-7 Team in the Country

Happy Thanksgiving Husker Fam, 

As I plop down on the couch to write this on Thanksgiving Eve, the Michigan State game is playing on the TV for the second night in a row for no better reason than it’s my favorite Husker game in years. 

A couple seasons down the road, this game won’t even be a blip in college football history but in the annals of Husker lore, it will be forever remembered as the one where the Big Red ship was finally righted. 

It takes a special group of fans to pack a stadium on a bitterly cold November morning to see their 3-7 team play a meaningless game but Husker Nation showed up like they’ve done for the past 56 years. On this particular Saturday, our never ending loyalty was rewarded by watching a team with nothing to play for put it all on the line and find a way to win. 

And what a team win it was.

When the final whistle blew, never have I felt so proud of a 4-7 team in my life.

PHOTO CREDIT: Omaha World-Herald

The Big Ten’s most explosive offense suddenly couldn’t score?

No prob. The Blackshirts had their back.

Need a true freshman kicker to set not one but two personal records for career long field goals in the span of five minutes off the clock?

It’s cool. The kid transformed into a sure footed sniper.

No matter how the season ends tomorrow, this team is always going to hold a special place in my heart because these guys proved they truly wanted to be Huskers and put in the work on and off the field to prove it. Even in the unlikely event of a loss, we’re going to have a coach who won’t spend the postgame press conference challenging the media to a fight or daring his boss to fire him. And he certainly won’t make worn out excuses for why his team came up short on the scoreboard.

Today, let’s all take a moment to give thanks for the better days that are ahead for Husker Nation.

GBR 

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College Football, Life Advice

The Big Red Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption opened in theatres September 23, 1994. 

The following afternoon, the Huskers rolled Pacific 70-21 in front of the hometown crowd. 

While we all know how that year turned out for the Big Red, Shawshank was mostly overlooked at the box office and during award season as Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction took home most of the hardware. 

It wasn’t until a few years later that it began to receive the acclaim it missed the first time around. Thanks to nearly daily showings on basic cable that are still running strong today, The Shawshank Redemption has cemented its status as very arguably one of the greatest films ever made and currently occupies the number one spot on IMDB’s list of the top 250 movies. 

“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

But we’re not here to do a dissertation on the legacy of Shawshank.

We’re here to talk about a theory.

It’s called the Shit Tunnel Theory. 

I can’t tell you exactly when I came up with the it but I can tell you I was on the couch watching Shawshank for probably the 100th time and was faded enough to have an epiphany that changed my outlook on life.

Allow me to set it up. 

According to Shawshank lore, Andy started tunneling his way to freedom with his tiny rock hammer two years into his 19 year stretch. That’s 17 years of chipping through the concrete wall of his prison cell piece-by-piece. An estimate from someone a lot smarter than me put Andy’s progress at 1/64th of an inch per day, or about the thickness of your fingernail. 

So after 17 long years Andy final breaks through and has to face one final crucible-The Shit Tunnel. In a film that’s full of cruel moments, this was the cherry on top of a turd sundae. 

But Andy give up?

Not a chance. 

He grabbed a rock, broke through that pipe, and dove right in. He charged through that “river of shit,” to quote Red, like he was a plumber named Mario on a mission to save a princess. It was 500 yards to freedom and after all he’d been through he was not going to stopped by a Shit Tunnel.

Now if we can go back to me on the couch for a moment, it was during this breakout scene that I realized no matter what goal you’re working towards, there’s always, without fail, going to be an unexpected obstacle that pops up when you have the finish line in sight. Even if it’s not a literal Shit Tunnel, the concept is the same. If you have something you want to achieve, you gotta pay the price by conquering the Shit Tunnel.

Husker fam, if Memorial Stadium is our Shawshank, we have just entered the Shit Tunnel. 

So what if the Huskers leave Wisconsin with an L and an 0-5 record for the first time since who knows when? It’s already been a miserable decade and half, what’s another year at this point?

All this losing now won’t mean shit if hang onto the hope and belief that better days are ahead. Sometimes you just gotta hold your breath and barrel down that Shit Tunnel towards where the light should be. 

Go Big Red. 


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College Football, Huskers, scott frost

Sunday Morning Hot Takes: Troy

Does losing to Troy suck?

Yes.

Am I mad about losing to Troy?

Eh, not really. 

It feels weird to type that because any and every Husker loss is supposed to be an end of the world gut punch but this year feels different, even if it starts out with a big pair of scarlet L’s that should have been W’s. 

It’s 11:45pm and I’ve spent the last hour charting Husker wins and losses because that’s what you do when you’re old. You make spreadsheets on a Saturday night and you’re happy about it because it means you didn’t have to go anywhere. 

Going from today all the way back to the year 2000, the Huskers have lost 85 games under five different coaches. At this point what’s the big deal about chalking up another loss? Granted, 85 losses is such an unbelievably high number that I was convinced Excel’s auto sum feature was lying to me. I added up nearly 20 years of losses by hand twice only to discover that Excel was right on the money when it spat out the brutal truth.

To put this another way, this year’s freshman class at Dear Old Nebraska U has been alive to experience 85 losses. When I stepped on campus as a freshman, the Huskers had amassed all of 40 in my lifetime. When I stepped off campus five years later, that loss total had grown to 46 but they also picked up three National Championships during that stretch and changed head coaches for the first time in 25 years. 

What does all this mean?

It means that the latest crop of Huskers fans have never known a team to be good in the sense that us old-timers have.

During the game at our watch site, I had the slightly depressing epiphany that I’m officially old enough to be old. It hit me when the youngest Husker fan at our table replied with a Keanu level “Whoa” when he learned I attended college back in 90s. I felt like my grandpa spinning yarns about life before television as I explained to the kid there was indeed a time when the Huskers didn’t lose. “We didn’t have cell phones or email addresses but goddamnit the Huskers were good.”  

By the time I was finished, the kid was in such awe that his breakfast pizza with gluten-free crust was left dangling from his mouth. 

No matter how this season shakes out, I think the best thing us olds can do is keep an optimistic front for the youngins that the Huskers will eventually find a way to get better. They have to. We finally landed the one coach who knows our wild and weird culture better than anyone and if we turn on him before he has a chance to get rolling we might as well disband the football program. 

It’s ride or die time, homies. 

Random (and Potentially Unpopular) Opinion:

This week’s Tunnel Walk was set to Let Me Clear My Throat. If we want to exorcise this team of all its past demons, then we need to delete the definitive song from the Mike Riley era off the stadium playlist. Sorry, Dj Kool.

Troy Summed Up in one Tweet: 

Larry the Cable Guy: Voice of Reason 

ScoFroFroYo Watch:

Imma paint a little picture for this week’s ScoFroFroYo Watch.

Hours have passed since the final whistle against Troy. The roar of 90,000 Husker fans inside Memorial Stadium has long faded away. The only sound to break the ghostly silence is a big red bus idling outside the stadium. (For the purposes of this story, the bus is large enough to fit the entire team and Coach Frost is pulling double duty as the driver.) 

An unmarked stadium door opens and a dejected Husker team begins to file out and head towards the bus with their heads hanging low and eyes focused on the ground. Coach Frost is the last one to board and slides into the driver’s seat. He takes a quick glance at his team but he doesn’t make eye contact. He only looks at them out of his obligation to not leave anyone behind.

He slips the bus into gear and it jumps forward to begin the journey home.

After a few minutes, the dejected player’s faces begin to brighten as they see the glow of a TCBY sign off in the distance. The anticipation builds as the bus moves closer and reaches its crescendo when Coach Frost flips the turn signal to indicate a stop for yogurt is imminent. 

He begins to turn the wheel and the bus responds accordingly. Then, with the deftness that only an option QB who led his team to a National Championship could have, he jukes the bus out of the impending turn into the TCBY parking lot and continues on its original course. 

As the players look out the window and watch the TCBY fade off into the distance, Coach Frost clinically looks at his team via the rear view mirror and says, “TCBY is for winners.” 


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College Football, Huskers, Mike Riley, scott frost

Sunday Night Hot Takes: Colorado

Welcome to the first installment of Sunday Night Hot Takes for the 2018 season.

Like we do most every Sunday, what will follow is an assortment of random thoughts both deep and not so deep, I guess you could call those shallow thoughts.

Anyway…

How the game began… 

With 100+ Los Angeles Husker fans packed into our new watch site and huddled around each other’s phones because ABC insisted on showing whatever stupid game that came before it all the way to the bitter end.

The game finally came on just in time to catch the Huskers looking pretty good until they fumbled the ball away near Colorado’s red zone.

No worries. It’s the first game. This stuff happens. And then it happened again on their next drive and just like that Colorado was out to a 14-0 lead.

But then something magical happened.

The Huskers responded by rattling off an eight play, 75 yard touchdown drive. And that was only the beginning.

Over the course of the next two hours or so, a lot of laughs were had, many high fives were slapped, and more than a few rounds of drinks were ordered as all of us watched in awe as the Huskers imposed their will on the Buffaloes.

It was shaping up to be a magnificent Saturday.

How the game ended… 

It’s hard to be encouraged by what would normally be a soul crushing last minute loss to a former bitter rival but when you factor in:

It was the first game of the season under a new-to-the-players coaching staff.

True freshman Adrian Martinez stepped onto the field for his first real game in two years. While he looked like a true freshman at moments, he also looked like a world beating 5th year senior. He’s going to be a lot of fun.

The Killa Bees had SEVEN SACKS. Not to beat a dead horse that was buried months ago but last year’s defense had 14 sacks all season.

Colorado received more gifts from the Huskers and the refs than a Kardashian on Christmas and they still had to dig deep into Ralphie’s ass to pull out a win.

The mistakes that were made should all be easily correctable. I have a feeling there won’t be too many more dropped touchdown passes.

Larry the Cable Guy: Voice of Reason 

What I’d like to see next week: 

Adrian Martinez back on the field.

Andrew Bunch, aka Bunch Money, have a chance for some playing time that’s not due to injury.

The running back situation begins to sort itself out. It felt a little like they were holding an in-game audition on Saturday.

The Killa Bees force their first turnovers of the year. A couple of pass breakups should have been caught.

New Feature: Did the Huskers Earn a Postgame Trip to TCBY? 

For the last three years, our signature gag to sum up the state of the Huskers was Mike Riley’s Balloon Watch.

We had a few glorious ones, like the day after Michigan State had their run at a perfect season derailed by a miraculous comeback.

But in the end, all that mattered is how Riley left the program he and his staff inherited.

Now that we have FHCMR’s last appearance out of the way, it’s time to unveil our new feature.

Say hello to the ScoFro FroYo Watch.

The ScoFro FroYo Watch can be explained like this: If you happened to be a frozen yogurt enthusiast who lived in Grand Island during the early 90s, you had a better than average chance of having a weekend Scott Frost sighting at the TCBY located next to the Grand Island Mall. The guy loved himself some TCBY and so did I. As someone who grew up in GI during the early 90s, a trip to TCBY was an event right up there with Taco Tuesday at Taco John’s.

I still get goosebumps just thinking about the heart stopping  suspense when my mom would call to ask what the daily flavors were.* You could live a thousand lifetimes in that moment of silence. If they told her White Chocolate Mousse was on the lineup, my brother and I would be in the car before she hung up the phone.

[*You see, kids, back in the early 90s, there wasn’t an “internet” to look things up on and yogurt places didn’t off a magical rainbow of made up flavors. You got to choose between vanilla or something else and you were happy.]

So the question is: Did the Huskers earn a trip to TCBY?

You’re damn right they did.

This team is a full 180 from last year’s squad and outplayed the shit out of Colorado. If the Akron game wasn’t canceled, there’s no way they would have lost. By the time this four game series wraps up in 2024, the final tally will be Colorado 1, Nebraska 3.

While the Huskers did earn a hard fought trip to TCBY, it’s not a celebratory trip. As the team enjoys their frozen treat, I imagine there would be a candid and productive discussion about how to use this loss as a lesson to learn from so that it never happens again.

And while they earned the yogurt, they did not earn sprinkles. We’ll save those for when they return from the Big House with a win in a couple weeks.


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College Football, Huskers, scott frost

Know Your Opponent: Colorado

A few years from now when we look back on this game, we’re not going to remember the start of the Scott Frost era being rained out.

We’re going to remember the Scott Frost era beginning with a vintage Big 8 style ass whoopin’ of the Colorado Buffaloes.

Here’s everything you need to know about Colorado in handy listicle form…

Remember them? Apparently Colorado still has a football team. They play in the PAC 12 these days which makes sense considering Boulder is 1,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Coach: Ditch digging must not pay like it use to because they found someone to take this job.

Offense: They scored more points than Colorado State last week and their fans have been bragging about it so they can’t be that good.

Quarterback: No idea but I did spend the last 45 minutes watching Ndamukong Suh truck Cody Hawkins over and over and over again and it’s still hilarious.

Defense: Colorado State hung 13 points on them so they should pretty be a sieve against the Huskers. (And looking up that score is the most research I’m doing for this preview.)

Famous Alumni: That kick return bro who was a better skier than a football player and Kordell Stewart, the greatest Colorado QB to go 0-3 in his career against the Huskers and lose his job as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ starting QB to Tommy Maddox.

Tommy Maddox is one of three people on Earth to have won an XFL Championship and the Super Bowl. His football skills are so sought after, he now coaches high school baseball.

Celebrity Score Prediction: Comedian Nick Allen says…

Nebraska 62, Colorado 36. Revenge. This one is for Frank.

Catch Nick Saturday night at the Comedy Loft in Lincoln’s Haymarket.


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College Football, Huskers, scott frost

An Open Letter to the Football Gods

Dear Football Gods, 

I gotta hand it to you. I didn’t see this one coming.

After having a front row seat to witness all the crap you’ve been putting the Huskers through since November 23, 2001, it should have been as obvious as a pass to a wide open tight end that you’d have a trick up your collective sleeve. But never did I think you’d flip all the way back to the earliest pages of the Playbook of the Gods and channel Zeus almighty and dial up some good old fashioned lightning during the biggest moment in Husker football in a generation. 

There will never be a more Nebraskan photo than this one from the Omaha World-Herald. Game halted due to lightning? Let’s all gather ’round the metal flag poles.

It is with no small amount of admiration when I humbly say that saving your latest spiteful act until the absolute last second was a baller move befitting of deities of your stature. It was the glistening cherry placed atop a towering turd sundae of disappointment that’s been growing taller and taller year by agonizing year.

Saturday night was supposed to be a transcendent event in Husker history. One that brought together friends and family from near and far for a monumental changing of the guard. After so many brutal years with a string of coaches who turned out to be nincompoops in their own special way, we finally landed the true chosen one who is destined to right the ship. 

Instead Football Gods, you Charlie Brown’d Husker Nation when you so cruelly yanked the football away and left us all sitting on our collective asses in the rain and at watch parties around the country wondering what the hell happened.

The gathering we hosted at our place here in Los Angeles was setting up to be a legendary evening. Some of LA’s finest GI natives were in attendance, the beer brats were grilled to perfection, and all that was missing was a can of Cornhusker whoop ass that never had a chance to be opened.

Oh, but you made sure we saw that can when you dangled it in front of our faces during that glorious Tunnel Walk.

The LA Chapter of the Wasmer Wildcats Alumni Group trying to make the most out of a bummer of a night.

Seriously, Santa Claus could go to an orphanage on Christmas Eve with a sleigh full of presents and force the orphans watch a three hour show and tell of all the gifts he was bringing to kids with real homes and it wouldn’t have been as big a dick move as canceling a Husker game. 

I’m onto your game, Football Gods. I know this was just one last crucible for Husker Nation to bear before closing the books on the nearly two decade long penance you’ve forced us to suffer through to atone for whatever it was that we did to incur your wrath. 

And trust me, the irony is not lost that you’ve seen fit to finally lift this dark cloud in time for next opponent to be the one that started this wretched curse in the first place. 

Thank you in advance for allowing the first game in the Scott Frost era to be one where he sends the Colorado Buffalos running off a cliff. 

Your pal, 

Todd

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Why I Became a Fan of Scott Frost the Coach

This is a story about my buddy Seamus.

He’s the kid standing next to me in the photo below. It was snapped while we were tailgating before the game against UCLA at the Rose Bowl back in 2012.

I took him and his dad and a couple other buddies to the game so they could experience Husker football in person. It was the least I could do after years of droning on about the Big Red during our Sunday morning bike rides. For one friend, I promised him that if he went to the game, I’d never mention the Huskers again. That deal is still (mostly) intact to this day.

But let’s get back to Seamus.

Seamus was born and raised in West Hollywood. The most experience he’s ever had with Nebraska was finding it on map in school but it was no accident that he was wearing a number 7 jersey for his first Husker game.

I custom ordered it for him so that he could surprise his friend Scott Frost the next time he saw him.

Yep. My buddy Seamus is friends with Scott.

When that photo was taken, they’d already been tight for years. Seamus’ uncle was a longtime defensive coach for the Oregon Ducks.  A couple times every season, Seamus and his dad would make the trip up to Eugene to catch a game.

In 2009, as you may remember, the Ducks hired an up and coming coach named Scott Frost and put him in charge of the wide receivers. That season, Seamus happened to be a receiver on his Pop Warner team.

When Scott found out about this after a practice Seamus attended, he pushed back whatever was next on his schedule and stayed on the field to give him some one-on-one coaching.  For the next half hour, he ran Seamus through the same the drills that he watched the Ducks perform during their practice. Footwork, blocking, catching, it was a real practice and Scott treated him just like one his players.

When I read the email from Seamus’ dad that recapped meeting Scott, I about fell out of my chair.

Seamus made friends with the new receivers coach when we were up in Eugene. I guess he’s a Nebraska guy. Have you ever heard of Scott Frost? 

If I recall correctly, I believe my reply included every 1997 Husker highlight I could find on YouTube.

A short while later, Seamus’ dad came down with a full blown case of Scott Frost Fever.

You never told me about him. He took down Peyton Manning! Dude played in the NFL for years. Bill Walsh and Tom Osborne were his coaches! 

The best part about  Seamus’ coaching session with Scott was that it was far from a one time deal. Every time Seamus was up in Eugene or the Ducks would be down in LA prepping for the Rose Bowl, Scott would stay after practice and run him through drills. It got to the point where Seamus basically had a private coach.

Here in LA, kids have private coaches for every activity they do and the fact that Seamus had Scott working him out is the kind of thing that starts a coaching arms race among parents.

Coaching Seamus was not something Scott had to. It was something he wanted to do simply because he loves coaching. Every time I’d get an update on their latest practice session, it made me like Scott even more.

Seamus and Scott before the 2012 Rose Bowl.

If he can have that much enthusiasm for coaching a random kid who showed up to watch practice, I can’t help but imagine how he’s molding the Huskers into a completely different team than the one we’ve seen the past few years. Husker Nation is going to be in for a treat on Saturday.

Seamus has never given me a straight answer if he ever wore his Husker jersey to an Oregon practice and he certainly didn’t text me a photo of Scott marveling at how good he looked in scarlet and cream. Whenever I’d ask him about it, he’d quickly change the subject to Star Wars and our conversation would be off in a new direction.

I have a hunch that moment can still happen though.

Seamus hung up his shoulder pads after his freshman year to focus on music. He’s grown up to become an incredible drummer and will be graduating high school in June. His band is already playing gigs in and out of town and  record labels are starting to get curious about them.

In a few years, if you see a hot new band playing Pinnacle Bank Arena and the drummer happens to be wearing a number 7 Husker jersey, that’s probably my buddy Seamus behind the kit.

Grab a picture for me, will you?


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