Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts explains naming Mickey Joseph interim coach

Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts spoke during his press conference on Sunday about the decision to name Mickey Joseph their interim coach. Joseph will take over this year after the firing of Scott Frost, moving into the position while Mark Whipple and Erik Chinander will continue in their coordinator positions. As Alberts explained, the decision was made to allow Joseph to focus on day-to-day operations and motivating the players.

Mickey Joseph named as Nebraska’s interim coach

“I communicated to Mickey that Mickey’s the head coach. I won’t meddle in Mickey’s decision-making process,” explained Alberts. “I encouraged Mickey to be the head coach and make decisions as the head coach. So, he’ll ultimately have an opportunity probably with all of you to explain. I think there will be some changes. Explain some of the changes with the team. There will be some structural changes and things that I think Mickey believes in, which will be good going forward.

“Mickey’s an energetic guy … he’s pretty black and white. I was in there when he talked to the team and he, I think, sees this as a real opportunity for him as well professionally. All of you will get a chance to talk to Mickey. You know, I think he has an infectious personality. I think that’s important. He’s been some places, so I think that benefits him. I think he has some different feelings about structure and approach and how he’ll handle practice and some different things. So there’ll be some immediate, fairly significant changes into his approach.

“He had a very poignant conversation with the team today that I thought they took very well. I think at the same time, like Scott, Mickey will love them and seek to serve them.”

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While it’s clear that the coaching search for Nebraska is far from over, Alberts apparently will not be pressing his staff to run things the way he wants. With Joseph freed up to fully embrace his role, his traits that made him the best candidate for the job will be able to shine.

“I went through a lot of folks too. You can naturally make certain arguments certain places and Mickey’s not calling the plays — coach Whipple is. So there’s a lot of responsibilities for the head coach that lie outside of football. You can only imagine with FOX coming this weekend, we need to have coach Whipple focused on game planning and play calling all week and obviously defensively we’ve got some fairly significant adjustments to make. So [Chinander’s] gotta be really focused there.

“We need a different voice, right? We need to provide hope for these young men.

“Football is a tough sport. You have to force yourself to do things you don’t want to do physically. Having somebody that can pull that out of you and motivate you to do that, in my observations of coach Joseph — I think he has some of those attributes and I’d like to see him function in that role.”