Arkansas Football Looks to Keep Trending Upward in Bret Bielema’s 4th Year
By Cory Thone
As schools across the nation continue to be riddled with controversy and criminality, Arkansas football has quietly risen from the ashes of their own scandal to become an example in how to deal with conflict and dissension.
It feels like ages ago that Arkansas football was in the spread attack. It feels like even longer that the Hogs were figuratively, not literally, a sinking ship with no captain. It’s an awful feeling for a program, and for the fans and players that are caught in on the boat with literally, not figuratively, no lifeboats.
Extended metaphors aside, 2012 sucked for Arkansas football. An entire season was lost because the team had no permanent coach. John L. Smith was there to do his best, but expectations were not high, and boy did he live up to them. It didn’t help that the rest of the staff gave a less than stellar effort in game preparation and management.
I don’t even want to get into the recruiting woes that come with an interim staff. The Hogs were lucky that Jeff Long was there to not only make quick, tough decisions, but that the decisions that he made have proven to be successful.
Arkansas’ situation in 2012 is not very comparable to Baylor’s right now, although many people have tried to make the comparison. While Motorcyclegate was embarrassing and illegal, it basically boiled down to a man in a position of power using his influence to hook up with a younger woman. Not exactly front page news.
Sidebar: Now is a good time, I think, to remind everyone that Petrino wasn’t fired for cheating on his wife. He hired his mistress in the department and broke just about every state and school HR policy and then lied about it to the AD. He left the university liable for lawsuits and, on top of all that, wasn’t a nice guy. He was gone the moment he hired that woman.
What’s happening at Baylor right now is far worse than what happened at Arkansas, there’s no doubt about it. But the Bears can look to Jeff Long and his handling of the Petrino firing to his bringing on of Bret Bielema as a sort of road map for changing the culture at a school.
Pete Thamel wrote a great breakdown article of the rebuilding job that Bielema had to undertake when he got to Arkansas. I referenced that article in my post-Texas Tech loss defending of Bielema as well. What Bret has already accomplished at Arkansas is pretty darn impressive.
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When Bielema got to Fayetteville, for example, the team was struggling to maintain a cumulative 2.0 GPA. Now, the Hogs are cutting talented players loose strictly for not making the grades. No arrests, not trouble off the field. They just didn’t make the grades. The culture at Arkansas has completely changed in 3 years, and it’s changed for the better.
The results off the field have been tangible, as well as the on the field performance by the team. Bielema’s Hogs have gone 3-9, 7-6, and 8-5 over his time as a Razorback. While those numbers may not be enough for the “win at all costs” crowd, they show true progression. In fact, if the 2015-2016 Arkansas football team hadn’t been decimated by injuries early in the season, they could have easily won one or two more games.
But this article isn’t meant to focus of the “what ifs”. There’s no need to look to hypotheticals to be proud to be a Razorback right now. The Hogs had one of the quickest falls from the top that I can remember. From 10-3 and 11-2, to 4-8 and 3-9.
It’s tempting to try and circumvent the long, tough road when rebuilding a program. Tennessee, Baylor, and Ole Miss are all currently facing the repercussions of not only putting wins first, but putting the culture on the backburner completely.
That’s not what Arkansas did. And that’s not how you sustain yourself as a winner and a leader. Jeff Long and Bret Bielema have built a program that focuses on creating not just winning football players, but winning young men. And that is a legacy to be proud of.