FROST WANTS HUSKERS TO KEEP PLAYING BUFFS
It won’t be what it was a decade ago, before what used to be the Big 12 North went all kablooey. But if Scott Frost has a vote, he’ll be bringing the Nebraska Cornhuskers back to Boulder as often as the scheduling gods will let him.
“I’d love to see us, if we’re going to play one Power Five nonconference (game), to have it be one of the old Big Eight rivals,” the Huskers football coach told The Denver Post. “It’s great playing teams like Colorado.”
Frost’s boss, athletic director Bill Moos, doubled down on the sentiment. The Buffaloes host Nebraska on Sept. 7 to complete the second part of a fourpart home-and-home series that picks back up again in 2023 (Boulder) and 2024 (Lincoln). The Big Red’s coach and athletic director say they’ve talked extensively about keeping CU on a rotation that would include series, ideally, with former Big Eight rivals such as Oklahoma, whom the Huskers meet in 2021, 2022, 2029 and 2030; as well as with Kansas State, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa State.
“What Scott and I would really like to do, for our home-andhome series — we’d have to go
out a ways or drop some games — is play our rivals from the Big Eight days,” Moos explained. “Then we’ve got a presence in three conferences: the SEC (Missouri), the Pac-12 (Colorado) and the Big 12. So that’s all good, and those rivalries are strong with us.
“I’ve learned about the Colorado (rivalry). I’d like to get it into a rotation with some of the schools I’ve just mentioned. And they may not be interested; we haven’t really talked — not (so much) CU, but to the Kansas schools and all that. I think there are a lot of pluses. Again, it’s easy for the fans to get to Boulder and we’ve got players on our roster from Colorado, and it’s a good recruiting base for us, so I think there’s a lot of upside.”
Last season, the Huskers featured seven players who played high school ball in Colorado; the 2019 Big Red roster could have as many as 11. After the Big 12 was formed and the Huskers and Oklahoma were placed in different divisions, the CU-Nebraska game was held every Black Friday from 1996-2010, a postThanksgiving tradition that the Huskers took with them to the Big Ten.
The Buffs have open nonconference slots in 2023 and 2024, where the Huskers are already on the slate, and again in 2025 and 2028. CU has home-and-home series with old Big 12 sparring partners Texas A&M and Kansas State on the docket in 2020-21 and in 2027-28, respectively.
“Well, obviously, I’m not the one that sets the schedule,” Frost said of the Buffs, who began play in the Pac12 in 2011, the same season Nebraska flipped to the Big Ten. “But rather than traveling all over the country, there’s a lot of fans that still remember those Big Eight games. And we have Colorado on the schedule and Oklahoma on the schedule. But we’d love to have that be our marquee (non-conference) matchup every year, with Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Colorado, (a rivalry) game that both sets of fans could travel to and maybe reminisce a little bit.”
Old memories — and old grudges — die hard. Frost came twice to Folsom Field as Oregon’s offensive coordinator, his Ducks winning in 2013 and 2015 by an average score of 49-20. But when he brings the Huskers west in a few months, it’ll be his first visit with his alma mater since November 1997, when he quarterbacked the Big Red to a 2724 victory en route to the program’s most fifth, and most recent, national championship.
“It’s a tough place to play, but it’s a fun place to play,” Frost said. “And I’m looking forward to coming back.”