As the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce gets ready to celebrate Lincoln’s 150th birthday as a city, one of Lincoln’s – and the state’s – most notable figures made an appearance at their Annual Lunch Wednesday.

In front of Lincoln business heads and government leaders in Pinnacle Bank Arena, Frost touched on multiple subjects: his new defensive line coach hire, the culture shift in his team, and why he’s happy his first year at Nebraska is under his belt.

Frost told the crowd he’s excited to welcome Tony Tuioti to the team to run their defensive line. The Nebraska Athletic Department announced Tuesday Tuioti will join the staff. Frost said he’s a good man who they think will fit into their football family well, saying he is a family man himself.

“And just a side note – he’s got seven children. Four of those are boys, so someone’s high school here in Lincoln is about to get a lot better in football,” Frost laughed along with the audience.

The head coach said hiring someone who could fit into their team and lead with examples of character was important to him. Frost said a challenge his staff faced when arriving to Nebraska was the redevelopment of culture – an aspect he said was one of the most challenging to overcome in his first year.

“Hopefully as we go further, we don’t have just people who are culture-setters but culture-keepers who can pass that along to others. In order for that to happen, we need a group of leaders who can understand that and be on the same page,” Frost said.

Frost said culture wasn’t their main focus, however.

“There are some things I couldn’t believe I found when we got here. Probably the most glaring one was our strength and conditioning. We found a team that wasn’t in great shape, wasn’t very strong, didn’t have a lot of power, and didn’t have a lot of speed. It wasn’t being developed,” Frost told the Chamber.

He said spring ball, though, is right around the corner, and they couldn’t be more ready and excited to face year number two in Memorial Stadium.

He left the Annual Lunch with a phrase he kept repeating throughout his keynote speech, “We’re getting there. I’m happy to say we’re getting there.”