Fired Nebraska football coach floats $5 million Hail Mary in contract dispute – USFTB

LINCOLN, Neb. (CN) — The case of fired University of Nebraska football coach Scott Frost and the $5 million he says he is due may come down to the fine print of his contract from years ago.

Attorneys for both Frost and the university argued Thursday that the plain language of the coach’s contract and subsequent revisions support their positions. Both sides have filed motions for judgment on the pleadings, and those arguments were aired in Lancaster County District Court in Lincoln on Thursday.

Frost insists the contract means he gets $5 million in liquidated damages, while the university believes it has already paid him all he is due. Further football jobs triggered an “offset provision” in his contract, where Nebraska would not have to hand over the full amount Frost would otherwise be due — $2.5 million per year — only the difference between his new football salary and that amount.

Once he was making more at his new coaching gig at the University of Central Florida, Nebraska says it stopped paying him.

Frost believes the original language of the agreement, where he got a reduced payout if he was fired without cause and hired by another program, was voided by subsequent updates to his contract. The university believes it wasn’t.

“There was an extension of the contract. That extended the (liquidated damages) term. The right of offset continued to apply,” said Andre R. Barry, a Lincoln-based attorney with the Cline Williams firm, representing the university. “It’s very straightforward.”

According to Frost, subsequent renegotiations of the original contract eliminated a section where offset provisions were discussed.

“Section 13 was replaced twice by two entirely self-contained liquidated damages provisions,” said Arthur D. Gregg, a St. Louis-area attorney for the Spencer Fane firm, arguing for Frost. “They just weren’t there anymore.”

The attorneys made their arguments in front of retired Judge Jodi Nelson, subbing in for Judge Kevin McManaman, who was unavailable Thursday. The courtroom was roughly a mile south of Memorial Stadium, where Frost experienced renown as one of the nation’s top quarterbacks in the 1990s and, more recently, defeat as head coach.

Frost was a celebrated Nebraska quarterback who won the national title with the Cornhuskers in 1997 and clobbered Peyton Manning’s Tennessee Volunteers in the 1998 Orange Bowl. After a stint in the NFL, Frost went on to a successful college coaching career before returning to Nebraska, which had suffered since the glory days of the 1990s.

Frost started as head coach on Dec. 3, 2017, with addenda extending the contract to Dec. 31, 2026.

But his era never quite got off the ground. He turned in more losses than wins. Disappointment settled into the corner bars and TV-lit living rooms of the Cornhusker State. Trev Alberts, the university’s athletic director and a former star Cornhusker football player himself, fired Frost midseason in 2022. No one was surprised.

Frost claims in the suit that the university created an improper tax liability for him on over $1 million of income he never received by applying liquidated damages due to him the past two years to his 2022 W2.

The tax matter was only tangentially addressed in court Thursday, with Gregg pointing out that the reason for the liability was because the university reported the $5 million it said he would pay him to the IRS. The university has said in court documents this was due to federal tax law and the university’s status as a tax-exempt entity, which requires early reporting of deferred compensation if there is not a substantial forfeiture risk.

McManaman dismissed the first cause of action in the suit, declaratory judgment, in July, leaving the second one for breach of contract remaining.

Nelson said she would take the arguments under advisement and did not indicate when she would issue a ruling.

Under new coach Matt Ruhle, the Nebraska Cornhuskers have regained some ground, occasionally landing in the top-25 rankings and getting minor bowl berths, but the program lacks the gridiron glory that many here still see as their birthright.