Nebraska’s new football coach inherited players who were downtrodden by losing, and he couldn’t pinpoint why, because he detected plenty of talent.
To change the culture and mindset, he began emphasizing better training, and focused specifically on weight training.
He instilled confidence. He brought belief. He changed attitudes.
Of course, he’d done all of that at his previous coaching stop, too, but at a program that wasn’t going to consistently garner national attention. At Nebraska, which boasted outstanding fan support, despite the recent losing, the new coach and his staff felt strongly about the opportunity to win a national championship.
Yeah, Mike Devaney sees many similarities between his father, legendary coach Bob Devaney, and today’s coach, Scott Frost, and the initial circumstances they faced when becoming Nebraska's head coach.
“What he did down in Florida was an amazing achievement,” Mike Devaney said of Frost’s two-year run at UCF, where he produced records of 6-6 and 13-0 after inheriting a team that had gone winless the prior season. “In the two years it took him to turn that around, I don’t know that I’ve seen a better performance than that.”
What Bob Devaney did from 1962-1972, the beginning of the Big Red Renaissance, is certainly, at the very least, on par.
It’s why the late Devaney joins a group of familiar names for induction into the University of Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame, which honors its 2018 class during a dinner on Sept. 7 at 6:15 p.m. at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
