Next Nebraska football coach odds: Matt Campbell, Bill O'Brien favorites to be Scott Frost's full-time replacement
Nebraska is in the market for a new football coach. It may not have to look far.
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Ames, Iowa is about 225 miles from Lincoln, Nebraska. Could that be the next move for Iowa State coach Matt Campbell? With the Huskers having fired Coach Scott Frost following a humiliating home loss to Georgia Southern on Saturday, Campbell is the early frontrunner to be his full-time replacement via SportsLine oddsmakers – although nothing surely will happen until after the season. Mickey Joseph is the interim head coach, and he certainly has a chance at the job if the Huskers finish strong.
This will be the seventh time since Tom Osborne's retirement in 1997 that Nebraska is looking for a coach. Campbell has been mentioned for just about every major opening over the past year. If you can recruit players to Iowa State, you absolutely can do the same at Nebraska in a better conference.
Here's what CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd wrote: "Several sources have told CBS Sports that Campbell is interested in Nebraska. It's certainly more highly resourced than Iowa State, especially with the Big 12 moving down in the pecking order with the forthcoming departures of Texas and Oklahoma."
Like Frost, Joseph is a former Nebraska quarterback… but might that actually work against him? The Huskers do like to stay in the family as athletic director Trev Alberts was a former star linebacker there. Joseph has never been a major college head coach previously.
Could Mark Stoops want to leave a basketball school in Kentucky for a football-first place like Nebraska? Even Cats hoops coach John Calipari said this in August (and it ticked off Stoops in a big way): "This is a basketball school. It's always been that. Alabama is a football school. So is Georgia. I mean, they are. No disrespect to our football team. I hope they win 10 games and go to bowls. At the end of the day, that makes my job easier, and it makes the job of all of us easier. But this is a basketball school. And so we need to keep moving in that direction and keep doing what we're doing."
The Lexington Herald Leader's Jon Hale wrote that while Stoops might leave eventually, he doesn't see it for Nebraska. Stoops' UK salary increases by $250,000 per year through 2027-28 when he'll be paid $8 million.
Coordinators at Alabama don't tend to stay there too long – probably tough working for Nick Saban – so could OC Bill O'Brien be lured back to the Big Ten? If money is an issue after paying Frost $16 million to go away (if Nebraska had waited until Oct. 2, the buyout dropped to about $7.5 million; with the new Big Ten media deal money probably isn't an issue), former Florida coach Dan Mullen and ex-Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall are both available without buyout issues.
One candidate the Huskers will see on Saturday in Lincoln: Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby.
Via SportsLine oddsmakers: Who will be the next full-time Nebraska football coach?
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