Scott Frost is set to return to the college football head coaching ranks for a second stint at UCF. The program announced Saturday that it hired its former leader on a five-year contract, taking him through the 2029 season. The former Knights coach oversaw the best season in program history but has a complicated past with his struggles at his alma mater, Nebraska, snapping his momentum and what was, at the time, a quick rise up the ladder.
The dichotomy between Frost’s highs and lows make the outlook for his second UCF tenure somewhat cloudy, but his proven ability to lead the program is grounds for excitement for a squad that seeks to establish itself as a Big 12 contender.
The landscape around the Knights is significantly different from the one in which Frost thrived, so he still has something to prove as he returns to the Power Four level and jumps into the modern recruiting world.
Here is the national reaction to Frost’s return to UCF:
Welcome Back: Scott Frost led UCF for two seasons, including the undefeated year in 2017, when he beat Auburn, which was coached by Gus Malzahn, the man he’s replacing at UCF.
The UCF job became the second Power Four vacancy on the coaching carousel when Gus Malzahn departed from his post atop the program to become the offensive coordinator at Florida State. The 2024 season was the worst of Malzahn’s tenure and marked the second-straight year in which the Knights took a step backward in the win column. They went just 4-8 this fall to miss bowl eligibility for the first time since the dreadful, winless 2015 season — the campaign prior to Frost’s arrival.
Scott Frost vanished off the face of the earth for two years only to emerge by getting his old job back.
Frost presently serves as a senior football analyst for the Los Angeles Rams. He took the job ahead of this season after spending two years away from the sidelines following his firing at Nebraska.
«Scott’s a guy that I’ve always really respected from afar,» Rams coach Sean McVay said after the hire. «He came out and spent a couple weeks with us this offseason and there’s a lot of mutual connections. … This coaching thing is a really small fraternity of people, so we’ve crossed paths over different years. Then just watching him from afar and then getting a chance to see him spend time with our group and a lot of different people on our staff.»
Scott Frost is a familiar hire for. I have no idea if it will work out.— Tom Fornelli
UCF gave Frost his first head coaching job in 2016 when it hired him away from his offensive coordinator role at Oregon. He inherited a mess of a situation on the heels of the Knights’ winless season but instantly led his debut team to bowl eligibility with a .500 regular season. One year later, UCF went 13-0 and claimed a national championship after the College Football Playoff selection committee left it out of the four-team field with a No. 12 ranking.
As of now, there will be three active national championship-winning college football head coaches in 2025:
Scott Frost (UCF)*
Kirby Smart (Georgia)
Dabo Swinney (Clemson)— Cody Nagel
The Knights cruised through the 2017 campaign with a perfect 11-0 mark, won the AAC Championship Game in double-overtime and secured a New Year’s Six bowl appearance. Frost pushed his squad past Auburn in the Peach Bowl to conclude a 13-0 year, and the program infamously claimed a national championship amid controversy over its exclusion from the playoff. That season arguably paved the way for Cincinnati to break a barrier for Group of Five teams and earn a spot in the field.
A couple thoughts on Scott Frost’s return to college football:
– His time at Nebraska failed in part for reasons that don’t exist UCF: The pressures and influences of coaching at home for his alma mater.
– Will be fascinating to see if he can just revert to the coach who left…— Mitch Sherman
The instant success as a head coach earned Frost a shot at his alma mater, which was on a downturn after missing a bowl game in the final year of the Mike Riley era. Frost starred for the Huskers after he transferred in from Stanford. He started the 1996 and 1997 seasons as the leader of the Nebraska offense, shined in his dual-threat quarterback role and led his final squad to a victory over Peyton Manning and Tennessee in the Orange Bowl to secure a share of the national championship.
Time to see if Nebraska is, indeed, simply cursed!
The high expectations that followed Frost to the Midwest never translated to production. Nebraska battled through four-straight losing seasons before it eventually fired its former quarterback early in the 2022 campaign. Frost posted win totals of four, five and three (twice) before a slow start to his make-or-break final season brought an end to a massively disappointing tenure. He oversaw the majority of Nebraska’s seven-year bowl drought, which finally came to an end this fall with Matt Rhule at the helm.
If Scott Frost is the person he was at Nebraska, Scott Frost will not have success in his return to UCF.— Connor O’Gara
Nebraska stumbled in what was typically a wide-open Big Ten West during Frost’s stint. The program never finished higher than fifth in the division and went just 10-25 in conference play, and it struggled mightily in close games. The Huskers’ fortunes in one-score battles was, in large part, what held Frost back from an elusive breakthrough season and resulted in countless disappointing losses to seemingly inferior opponents. Frost became the first Nebraska coach to finish his career with a losing record since 1961.
Doesn’t look like Lincoln Riley will be heading to Central Florida.
Frost’s return to UCF comes just days after the university reportedly showed interest in hiring Lincoln Riley away from USC. Riley would have been a splashy hire for the Knights but has a mixed bag of a résumé of his own given the Trojans’ struggles over the last two years.
«I’m at the place I want to be,» Riley said on Signing Day, via USCFootball.com. «So that’s a non-starter. It’s a non-issue. I’m home.»