Two former Nebraska football coaches named 'the worst coaching hires of the past decade'

Two former Nebraska football coaches were named to a list no coach would want to be on. Mike Riley and Scott Frost were named two of the worst college football coaching hires of the past decade.

USA TODAY Sports’ Will Backus compiled a list of the 15 worst hires over the past ten years. Considering how their respective tenures ended, it should be no surprise that these two former Husker head coaches would make the list.

Scott Frost was listed at No. 13. Frost had a tumultuous tenure at Nebraska, coaching the Cornhuskers from 2018 to 2022. He ended his time with a 16-31 record, including a 10-26 record in the Big Ten.

Frost arrived in Lincoln after a 13-0 season at Central Florida. He was coming home to rebuild a program that had fallen on hard times and never came close to achieving any of his goals.

The former quarterback is once again the head coach of the UCF Knights. He has since stated that he was never interested in leaving Orlando the first time around and only returned to Nebraska to please others, telling ESPN, “I think I kind of knew that (the Nebraska job) wasn’t best for me. It was what some other people wanted me to do to some degree.” Backus was blunt in his assessment of Frost’s tenure in Lincoln.

“He never made a bowl game won a total of seven games in his final three years. If Nebraska already had one foot in the grave before Frost got there, he ensured the once-proud Huskers were six feet under by the time he left.”

Mike Riley was listed at No. 7. Riley coached at Nebraska from 2015 to 2017 and compiled a record of 19-19 with two bowl game appearances. He would be fired following a 4-8 season in 2017.

Riley was an odd fit from the moment then-athletic director Shawn Eichorst hired him. The former Oregon State head coach had no connection to the program, the school, or the region. While he made a bowl game in each of his first two seasons, the 2017 season was nothing short of a disaster.

The Huskers lost their final four games, giving up almost 50 points per game. Those dreadful results on the field and the dismissal of the AD who hired him made it clear that Riley’s time in Lincoln had ended.

“His 2015 debut was the program’s first losing season (6-7) since 2007. He rebounded in 2016 with a 9-4 showing but regressed once more in 2017 as the Huskers finished 4-8. That led to Nebraska moving on from Riley, whose 19-19 career mark with Nebraska was the worst for any Huskers coach since 1961… until Frost came along.”

Since leaving Nebraska, Riley coached in the now-defunct AAF and XFL. His last job was in 2023 as the head coach of the New Jersey Generals in the now-defunct USFL.

In my personal opinion, Scott Frost should be ranked higher than Mike Riley. Riley was an odd choice from the start, and everyone but Shawn Eichorst knew that the experiment would end poorly.

Frost was coming off an undefeated season at Central Florida and was the former National Championship quarterback who was coming home to return his alma mater to the mountaintop. He not only failed to make Nebraska a champion but also failed to make Nebraska football relevant.

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This article originally appeared on Cornhuskers Wire: Nebraska football coaches Scott Frost and Mike Riley named bad hires

Two former Nebraska football coaches named ‘the worst coaching hires of the past decade’

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