Nebraska football: Scott Frost takes big pay cut as contract restructured

Nebraska football coach Scott Frost is having his contract restructured, per Huskers reporter Parker Gabriel. The coach will go from a salary of $5 million to $4 million and, more importantly, the buyout after 2022, which was previously $15 million, is cut in half to $7.5 million.

The news comes on the heels of Frost announcing that he had fired four Huskers assistants, including offensive coordinator Matt Lubick. With his new contract, Nebraska has an extra $2.775 million to hire replacements. $1 million of that comes from Frost’s pay cut, while the other $1.775 million is from the salaries of the coaches who were let go.

Huskers brass said it did not push Frost to fire his assistants and the coach came to that decision on his own.

“Part of risk is mitigation of risk,” Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts said. “Those are two really important indicators about Scott’s commitment. … In a way, Scott has bet on himself and I like that.

“We’re not going to be blindly loyal, but if we’re going to err, we’re going to err on the side of loyalty the best we can.”

In his fourth season with Nebraska, Frost has yet to post a winning record. Losers of four straight, the Huskers sit at 3-7 with two games remaining in 2021. They will miss out on a bowl game for the fifth consecutive season.

Prior to arriving in Lincoln, Frost led the UCF Knights to a 13-0 season in 2017. It is the only winning season of his coaching career, and he has a 34-34 record overall.

Born in Lincoln, Frost played for the Huskers in college for two seasons after transferring from Stanford. He helped lead the team to a national championship and Orange Bowl win in 1997, his senior season.

Following an NFL career, he joined the Huskers staff as a graduate assistant in 2002. He rose his way up to become the offensive coordinator at Oregon from 2013-15 before taking the head coaching job at UCF.

The Huskers have a bye in Week 11 before ending their season against a pair of ranked opponents. Nebraska will face Wisconsin in the first game since the announcement that the contract of Scott Frost was restructured. at 3:30 p.m. ET on Nov. 20 in Madison, Wisconsin. Following that, it closes the season against No. 22 Iowa.