There is an old adage that sports coaches are hired to one day get fired.
Nothing ever lasts forever. Even in college football where seemingly coaches can build a program for decades, coach shelf lives are seemingly small. There is always another challenge to grow toward and something more to reach for.
UCF got one of the biggest and intriguing gets of the college football coaching carousel. Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost was certainly one of the coaches from around the country many programs were chasing after. His decision to bring the Oregon style offense to Orlando was a big one and a big step forward for him as a young coach.
Just the idea of bringing the Ducks brand of football has re-invigorated a program that had just gone through an embarrassing 0-12 season. The 23,000 fans at the spring game can attest to that.
Frost has not yet coached a regular season game or taken the field officially as head coach and the buzz around him is immense. If he makes good on the recruiting gains he has already made and continues to build the program up, inevitably he will leave.
For now, with UCF in the American Conference, it is seemingly a weighing station. Even after the Knights hired Frost, the rumors began that at some point he would move on to greener pastures.
CFB guru @MikeHuguenin: “The better @UCF_Football is this year the faster @coach_frost is going to leave.” Listen ->https://t.co/1R8o1j2An9
— 96.9 The Game (@969thegame) January 18, 2016
Believe Scott Frost will eventually get to Nebraska, but it will cost school at least 2 seasons & millions more.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 1, 2015
This is not a guarantee of course. Frost could find his home in Orlando and decide to stay forever or the Knights could turn into a stellar program, get to the Big 12 and completely change their fortunes. The future is extremely unpredictable.
No one wants to get into the possibility that this whole thing does not work and the Knights are looking for a new coach in three years because they failed to perform. That is still possible to do.
The odds are though that if the Knights are successful, Frost will one day move on.
That does not have to be a bad thing. In fact that is a good sign that he did a good job and established something worth emulating elsewhere. Perhaps it would mean the Knights have found a new identity for their program that they can continue to build on too.
That was much the point Jeff Sharon of Black and Gold Banneret made.
In college football, there are peaks and there are valleys. Summiting those peaks makes the valleys all the more worth it, because the peaks can be so incredibly high. Danny White knows this, and that’s why he’s rolled the dice with a young, exciting head coach: Because his success is UCF’s success, and the kind of success that Scott Frost might have makes the program all the more attractive to the next guy.
Frost may very well leave after one spectacular season in the next two or three. And if he does, instead of lamenting the end of longevity, we should celebrate his successes and and embrace his successors.
He compared UCF to Houston. The Cougars have built a fairly consistent program despite moving pretty quickly through three coaches. They have maintained a set identity and sought to hire coaches that coached a similar style. They sought an up-and-comer and accepted the possibility that he would leave. That same identity remained.
For all the good George O’Leary did, he was making his last stop in Orlando. It was clear. He established something great in Orlando with a pro-style offense and took UCF to new heights.
The floor dropped out under him and his career was over. The Knights took this opportunity to hit the reset button a bit. To push the program further. They had seen just how high it could go in the last few years. But change was clearly coming and clearly necessary.
As Sharon notes, worrying about whether Frost is long for Orlando is not worth it. He has a job to do first and that is to win games. The rest will take care of itself.
The Knights may one day become a destination job. What is important now is to build the program and tradition. It all begins with a single step.
Frost can help himself and help UCF by making the program great for however long he is going to be here. And it is clear fans cannot wait to see what he is able to do.
