“We’ve been elbows deep in this situation for a long time,” Frost said in late June.

He and his chief of staff, Gerrod Lambrecht, had prepared Nebraska not only to muddle through the pratfalls of COVID-19, but thrive in it. NU believed it had set itself up for a productive football season, however it looked and whomever the Huskers were set to play.

Nearly three months later, Nebraska football — the pride of the state — sits idle, sidelined by 11 presidents and chancellors in the Big Ten who chose to postpone the season until a date still unknown. Memorial Stadium sits silent. Husker coach Scott Frost, one of the few folks in the place on what would otherwise be raucous weekends, tries to figure out NU’s next move.

“I get laser-focused on the next task,” Frost said. “I think we are searching for ways to bring it back, looking for the next fight, the next argument, the next reason we can give anyone that won’t let us come back and play. I get lost in that enough that it kind of hides me from the emotion of not being able to play.”

It’s a fight Husker fans have to watch from their homes, on message boards, news sites and Twitter feeds. Unlike a third down in the fourth quarter, when they’re screaming at the top of their lungs and the opposing quarterback can’t hear, they can’t affect this outcome. They’re not on Zoom calls with academic leaders.