Frost Popular Draw At Fan Day

A group of three men represented the end of a long and hearty line of fans waiting to meet Scott Frost.

As his two friends secured Frost’s autograph and asked to have their picture taken with the Nebraska football coach, the other fan turned around and saw nobody behind him.

“We are the last ones?” the man said proudly, as if he’d won some sort of award.

He then turned to Frost.

“Wanna go grab a beer?”

Alas, Frost and his team still had meetings after Nebraska’s annual Fan Day ended at promptly 8:30 Saturday night at Memorial Stadium.

Frost, stationed in the weight room, behind the sliding doors entrance, had greeted nearly 500 fans over two hours. He took a brief moment midway through for a short interview that fans inside the stadium saw on the video board.

“We’ve got the best fans in the country,” Frost said. “This whole state is behind us. We can all feel it. We’re working to try to get this program to where it belongs, and I can’t tell you how hard the guys are working.”

An estimated 8,000 fans, some of whom had been waiting in line since early Saturday morning, turned out on a beautiful, calm August evening.

Frost sat at a round table with roughly four dozen Sharpies – red, black and gray – and signed everything from posters and helmets to black footballs and a glass labeled with the 1997 Nebraska Sugar Bowl … a bowl in which the Huskers never played. One fan brought a 1997 Nebraska playbook for Frost to peruse when he was done with his autograph session.

Frost interacted with fans of all ages in what almost felt like a family reunion, what with so many people thanking Frost for coming back to Nebraska.

“Thanks for coming back.”

“We appreciate you.”

 “Thanks for coming home.”

“We’re so glad you’re back.”

“Best of luck this season, Coach.”

To younger fans, Frost asked their hometowns and whether they played sports, and if so, how good their teams might be this season.

“Wilber? That’s where Dana Altman is from. Do you know who that is?” Frost said to one preteen boy.

Frost, naturally, was a popular draw. When the event began at 6:30 p.m., the line for the new head coach snaked outside the south end of Memorial Stadium and a few blocks down T Street.

To get to Frost, fans had to enter the through the southeast corner of the stadium, walk the length of the field along the sideline, then underneath the northeast part of the stadium, before entering a long hallway that, at long last, led to the weight room.

A 8 p.m., the end of the line was finally inside the stadium, near the south 20-yard line.

Thousands of others waited in lines for players’ autographs on the Memorial Stadium field. Most players sat behind tables, but some wandered around the field, signing for fans who weren’t in any lines, but just mingling.

“Here’s something different for you,” one fan said to quarterback Adrian Martinez as he handed the freshman quarterback a prosthetic leg to autograph.

A boy, around 12, asked some players, including Mick Stoltenberg, to sign his bare back.

One of the more creative ideas came from a woman who brought a calendar and had players sign on their birthday.

And there was a middle-aged man who waited in line and didn’t ask for autographs, but merely wanted to say something to each player he was able to see:

“Thanks for being Huskers!”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.