Arkansas Razorbacks Fans Get a Glimpse into an Alternate Timeline with Today’s NCAA Tournament Games

Today, former Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Dana Altman and former quite-possibly-could-have-been head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks Bill Self will tip off in their own Elite 8 contests. Meanwhile, Stan Heath, John Pelphrey, and Mike Anderson will be watching the games on TV. It’s a glimpse into an alternate reality for Hog fans, and is a reminder of the mistakes that were made that got us to this point as a program.

I try not be a bitter person. Holding onto grudges or bad feelings won’t help you get ahead in life. That’s why I enjoy seeing John Pelphrey on my TV, and why I hope that some mid-level football program finally takes a gamble of Reverend Nutt as a head coach. I try to keep things in perspective, especially when it comes to sports.

But I just can’t help myself when it comes to Oregon basketball. I hope they lose. They literally have me cheering for Oklahoma, you guys. THE SOONERS. The Oregon Ducks have me throwing my support behind the less valuable, more redneck version of the Texas Longhorns.

And it’s all because of Dana Altman.

Dana Altman is the reason I cheer against Creighton, still to this day. There have been times when I’ve been flipping through the channels and see that Creighton is playing someone like Seton Hall, and I’ll stop on the channel for a moment and cheer on the Pirates. This is an example of being unable to keep things in perspective. The fact that I can recognize that means that I haven’t lost my mind. The fact that I can’t control myself means that I still might lose it completely one day.

Everybody remembers Dana Altman in Arkansas. He was the guy that didn’t even bother to try to learn how to call the Hogs for his press conference. He was the guy that, as you can clearly see in this video, had no desire to be here. Yet for some reason, he took the damn job. He put on a red tie, took the podium…..and instantly mentioned his friends back home in Omaha at Creighton.

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Have you seen the Pixar film “Inside Out“? It’s quite good. The film is about how your emotions run an operating board in your brain that controls how you live your life. I would love to have seen what type of tomfoolery was going on in Altman’s head when he took the podium at Bud Walton Arena.

If Dana Altman stays at Arkansas instead of resigning less than 24 hours later to go back to Creighton, where do you think the program would be? After Altman took over at Oregon, he had the Ducks in the Sweet Sixteen after 3 seasons, and they’ve been to the NCAA Tournament every year since 2013.

There’s no reason to suspect that he couldn’t have done that at Arkansas as well. The Razorback basketball program, at the time, was still considered to be strong. They had been to the NCAA Tournament 2 years in a row, and had some players repping the Hogs in the NBA. The shine of a National Championship had not quite worn off, and Arkansas was looking to bring in someone that could build and maintain a program. That’s what Altman had shown he could do at Creighton (and has now shown he can do at Oregon as well.)

But there was something rotten in Fayeteville, and I think Dana knew it when he got to the Hill. First off, Dana Altman was reportedly Arkansas’ SIXTH choice for head coach. Billy Gillespie, Bill Self (ugh), Tim Floyd, John Calipari (wat) and Tom Crean (double wat) all apparently were offered the job and turned Frank Broyles down. That’s a whole lot of “no thank yous” to a program that was a proven winner and was seeing some moderate success with a coach they just fired.

Whatever the politics were in Fayetteville at the time, they were enough to scare Dana Altman and every other coach we offered away. Altman went back to Creighton, and the Bluejays never made the NCAA tournament again with him (good), and Broyles was forced to restart the search committee, who was now 24 hours behind the curve looking for a new coach thanks to Altman’s change of heart.

Arkansas was forced to enlist the help of an outside organization to find John Pelphrey, who had just taken the South Alabama Jaguars to the NCAA tournament. Of course, we had to wait for Kentucky to hire a new coach so that Pelphrey would take the job. We were his second choice. He wanted to be a Wildcat. So Arkansas finally got a new coach, and he performed about as well as you’d expect a 7th option that didn’t immediately take the job when you offered it to him would perform.

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Altman eventually left Creighton for Oregon, where he’s amassed a 70% win rate and has his team in the Elite 8. Stan Heath is an assistant at Boston College. John Pelphrey is a commentator on the SEC network. And the Arkansas Razorbacks have another coach on the hot seat heading into 2017.

The crazy thing is, the Arkansas Razorbacks almost never had the chance to even get jilted by Dana Altman. In 2002, Arkansas was looking for a head coach after firing Nolan Richardson. The #1 target on their list was Illinois head coach Bill Self, who was reportedly interested in the position. Over the years, rumors and stories have emerged that Self was very close to coming to NWA, that is until Roy Williams left Kansas for North Carolina.

The allure of Kansas prestige (and dollars) was enough to snap Self away from Arkansas, despite the programs best efforts. Which isn’t surprising, as Self had previously referred to Kansas as a “dream job”. But still, the Hogs came inches away from getting Self, and actually temporarily had Altman on campus, and either one of them would have been better for the program than the coaches who eventually arrived.

I don’t really have any harsh feelings for Self and Kansas. He never signed, he was just offered, and he took the job he wanted. Fine. But it’s different for Altman. When I see that yuk-yuk hick on the sidelines of that horribly ugly court in Eugene, I get unjustifiably upset. I just can’t get over it.

It would be bad enough if he had failed to ever reach his potential as a head coach. But instead, he’s gone on to be one of the most successful coaches in the nation over the past few years, and has his team poised to make a run for a championship. For me, it’s like seeing pictures of an ex-girlfriend that broke your heart on vacation with her new fiance that is a super successful doctor. She clearly made the right choice here, and there’s no rationality behind the hurt aside from the hurt itself.

So again, I acknowledge that my hatred of Dana Altman is absurd. He clearly made the right choice for himself. Look at the success he’s had! Every move he made was clearly the right one for him. But it wasn’t the right one for me or for Hog fans. So while I’m over the breakup, and I understand why it happened the way it did (literally the coaching equivalent of a break-up text), I am just unable to move on from it while he’s having success.

So, go Oklahoma? I guess? I can’t even pretend to mean that.