Frost preparing for 'bittersweet' sendoff at Peach Bowl

ATLANTA - As Scott Frost took the podium at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta on Sunday morning, it marked his final pre-game press conference as the head football coach at Central Florida.

After a rapid rise up the national coaching ranks with his remarkable turnaround at UCF, Frost will cap off an unusual and at times awkward month on Monday when his Knights take on Auburn in the Peach Bowl.

Though he will turn his full attention to his new role as head coach at Nebraska just two days later, Frost said he was relishing every minute he had left with his soon-to-be former team.

“This has been a really great experience, this bowl game, to spend some more time around them and be around them one more time,” Frost said. “It will be bittersweet tomorrow. This certainly isn't an ideal situation for the players or for me or for my staff, but we all care about each other, and I don't know what the alternative would have been.

“So we're doing the best we can, and the guys have prepared well, and it's been an honor to be around them one more time.”

Since officially accepting the Nebraska job back on Dec. 3, Frost and his entire UCF coaching staff have been juggling dual duties by getting things rolling with the Huskers - particularly on the recruiting front - while also opting to continue to coach the Knights through the bowl game.

Frost admitted it had been a difficult month for himself and his assistants, but when all was said and done he would hold no regrets over having to work a little harder the past few weeks.

“You know, through this process, it's tough,” Frost said. “It was tough during the end of the season. It was tough when I told the team. It was tough trying to balance a couple things. I think the payoff has been being around these guys for one more week. Through all that, you know, we tried to make every decision in a way that we were doing the right thing; not the selfish thing, not the thing that was easiest for us, but what the right thing was.

“It's certainly not ideal to be wearing two hats and to be flying back and forth to two places, and those things are hard. But the right thing to do was to be here and try to help these kids as much as we could, and hopefully us being here helps a little bit.

“But I just don't know what the alternative would have been. I think the payoff for all of that is going to be that, this Bowl week, and being able to spend a little bit of extra time with the UCF family and this football team. They are people that are going to be special to me for the rest of my life, so that's probably the best part of this whole thing.”

Sitting on the other end of the press conference podium table from Frost was Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn, and while the Peach Bowl will be just the fourth-ever meeting between the Knights and the Tigers, it won’t be the first time the two coaches have squared off.

On Jan. 10, 2011, undefeated Oregon - where Frost was the wide receivers coach - took on Malzahn’s 12-0 Auburn team in the BCS National Championship Game in Glendale, Ariz.

The Tigers ended up pulling off a 22-19 victory with a game-winning field goal as time expired, and Frost and Malzahn still carry mutual admiration from that meeting even nearly seven years later.

It also further emphasized to both coaches just how difficult completing an undefeated season - something 12-0 UCF has a chance to accomplish with a win - can be.

“I was with Coach Malzahn last night, and we talked about it, a game we were both coaching in, where Auburn was undefeated and Oregon was undefeated, and only one could come out of that, and they kicked a field goal at the end to beat us,” Frost said.

“They were undefeated that year. There's not very many teams in the country that can run the table. I'm so proud and happy for our players that they were able to do that this year… We're playing a really good football team.

“I know our guys are going to battle. They are fighters and they are looking forward to it. But win or lose in this game, this is a special group of guys and it was a special season."

It wasn’t all that long ago when Malzahn was in a fairly similar situation in his career as Frost is currently.

A high school coach in Arkansas in 2005, Malzahn jumped to his first college coaching job when he was named offensive coordinator at Arkansas in 2006. A year later, he was the assistant head coach at Tulsa, and two years after that he was back in the SEC running the offense at Auburn.

He finally got his first college head coaching position in 2012 at Arkansas State, and the very next season took over his first Power Five with the Tigers.

That progression from being a relative unknown in the coaching ranks to a smaller-program head coach to taking over a traditional power gives Malzahn a fairly good perspective of what Frost is going through as he transitions to Nebraska.

“I didn't get a chance to coach the bowl game (with Arkansas State in 2012), and that's something that was pretty tough being able to have to watch the team that you coached play in a Bowl game in a hotel room,” Malzahn said. “That was really challenging. That's why I was saying how much respect I have for Scott coaching the game and all that.

"You know, it's a whirlwind. We had to hire a staff. We had to start recruiting and develop those relationships with your players. There's a lot of moving parts. But you know, I have a lot of great memories with that.”

For some fans, including many from Nebraska, the Peach Bowl will be their first taste of what Frost’s Central Florida team is all about.

The nation’s top scoring offense has been no secret on the college football landscape this season, but a general lack of media exposure has left the Knights as somewhat of a mystery for the more casual fans.

But even though the spotlight will be at its brightest on UCF on Monday, Frost said he’s not worried about what his team will reveal when they take the Mercedes-Benz Stadium field vs. Auburn.

“I hope it's a football team,” Frost said with a grin.

“I think a lot of people have seen us play this year. We played two really good teams at the end of the year and had two unbelievable games against USF and Memphis. I think a lot of people got to see that.

“I know a lot of folks are going to tune in and see this one. We have a big challenge ahead of us. Like I said, these guys are as good as we've seen at almost every position on the field. So our players know they have a challenge. They are excited for it.

“But I know when people tune in, they are going to see a group of guys that love being around each other and play for each other. And as long as I'm coaching, that's the type of team I want to have.”