OT: Former Michigan Associate AD Jeff Long out at Arkansas
November 15th, 2017 at 2:17 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 3:50 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 4:00 PM ^
It's not totally unreasonable. And if there was an alternative reason, he would have thought of a better excuse to use publically.
November 15th, 2017 at 4:25 PM ^
So my question, if that was really the case (which I don't think it was), what did he do between leaving Florida and heading to OSU to prevent said health issues? Unless his line is going to be that OSU is far less stressful or demanding than Florida, which we all know is utter bullshit.
November 15th, 2017 at 6:04 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 11:54 AM ^
Arkansas is stuck in a murderous division, without much in-state talent. Bielema has had his moments there but he never put things together for an entire year and that basically meant it was over. Arkansas fans may have absurd expectations but it's not like Arkansas only loses to Bama and LSU every year; they've lost headscratchers virtually every year.
Arkansas is, at least, the kind of place that can try to get the "next hot coordinator" because a seasoned head coach with any potential just isn't going to go there right now. But they could make a run at Brent Venables or Joe Moorhead and see how they can do in the SEC West.
As for Bielema: Leaving Wisconsin hasn't worked out. But there's no reason to think that he can't replicate his success in Madison somewhere else. Nebraska should obviously go after Scott Frost, but if that doesn't work Bielema would be a great hire for them. I also think he could do well in the Big 12 or Pac 12 where teams aren't equipped to deal with the beefy road-grading OLs Bielema likes to develop.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:07 PM ^
Just as 'murderous' as the Big Ten East. Arkansas is pretty much in the same boat as MSU who is doing just fine. It was hard to predict this would happen with Bielema as he had established success at Wisconsin. Arkansas just needs to reload, find another candidate, and try again.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:41 PM ^
The Big Ten East is getting there, but the bottom of the division does not compare. The bottom of the SEC West may get worse in the future with Ole Miss facing NCAA sanctions, but Maryland, Indiana, and Rutgers do not compare to Arkansas, Ole Miss, & Mississippi State. The SEC West is a minefield all the way through with Miss St having Mullen at the helm. The B1G East is top heavy, but the botton of the division is Charmin soft right now.
And MSU is not even the proper comparison for Arkansas. MSU is the 4th best team in the division by history. Arkansas arguably sits behind Alabama, LSU, Auburn, and Texas A&M. Maryland or Indiana would be a better comparison for Arkansas. And I think Bielema has perfomed OK based on those expectations.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:48 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 1:19 PM ^
And that is the problem with the SEC West, and why you can't compare it to the Big Ten East yet. There are 2-3 teams in the division that you could make the MSU comparison for. Texas A&M? Auburn? Based on the hierarchy of the current division, I think A&M fits the comparison to MSU better. And these schools (including Arkansas) think they should be better than MSU.
I don't think any team in the SEC West was hurt more by the addition of Texas A&M than Arkansas. A&M moved Arkansas to the 5th best job in the division, and I don't think their fanbase has adjusted yet.
November 15th, 2017 at 2:46 PM ^
Texas A&M and MSU are like clones. Not great schools with middling sports teams that have occasional success. A&M is to Texas as MSU is to us. They are absolutely Texas' little brother.
November 15th, 2017 at 2:42 PM ^
Greg Schiano?
November 15th, 2017 at 12:06 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 12:59 PM ^
I agreed with Bob Stoops when he suggested the Big XII.
More ability to compete in the longer term, and it gets them back into more games in Texas, which is their natural recruting area.
Arguably a better cultural fit too. Southern Arkansas is VERY southern in nature. Little Rock is a southern city too. But the big growth in that state is occurring in NW Arkansas (and to a lesser extent in NE Arkansas). In visiting, those areas never felt the same at all as the rest of the state - much more culturally aligned to OK, Texas and Missouri vs. true Dixie-land like LA, West TN, MS or AL.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:58 PM ^
One of the worst things about all the conference-hopping that's occured over the last 30 years is the destruction of regional rivalries that had developed organically and naturally between geographically close programs. Arkansas gave up a historic rivalry with Texas when it bolted to the SEC back in 1992. It's really a crime for college football that Nebraska and Oklahoma don't play each other any more.
Both the old Big 8 and Southwest Conference made sense in terms of what their membership consisted of; IMHO Arkansas would be a better fit in the Big 12 than it does in the SEC. Same for Missouri, which is a midwestern program shoehorned into the southern SEC. Colorado in the PAC 12 is nuts, too. But money rules everything, and there's more money to be made in superconferences.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:04 PM ^
Eh, Colorado to the Pac-12 was natural. They have mostly recruited California forever and their rivalries with the rest of the Big 8 were negligible
November 15th, 2017 at 1:09 PM ^
Colorado was a doormat until McCartney left Bo's staff to go there, and flipped their recruiting around to go get kids from LA. LA kids powered his teams there. They had no rivalries in the Big 8 until Bill basically Civil ConFLiCT'd them into a pseudo-rivalry with Nebraska.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:17 PM ^
the most popular college football teams in Denver and on the Front Range are (1) Nebraska, (2) Colorado, and (3) various Big Ten teams given all the Midwesterners who have moved here.
I get it - there are tons of California folk moving to Colorado, and Colorado has the Rocky Mountains, which is synonymous with the West.
But most of those California folk moving to Colroado don't care about college athletics. Denver, while changing rapidly, still honestly feels more like a "high plains cowtown" than "Silicon Valley East." The Buffaloes natural conference is truly the Big Ten. That's where they should be, IMO.
November 15th, 2017 at 2:50 PM ^
What is Missouri doing in the SEC? Missouri should be in the Big Ten. It's a hand to glove fit. And yet the dim bulbs that run the conference pick Rutgers and Maryland.
November 15th, 2017 at 3:40 PM ^
Kansas City feels like the High Plains and the cattle-town West. Like Fort Worth and pre-boom Denver.
Saint Louis is a river-town that seems to mix attributes of New Orleans (MS River valley), Pittsburgh & Cincinnati (OH River Valley) and Baltimore (fellow city that straddles the N/S border).
Columbia is a good college town that feels like most B1G college towns.
Northern Missouri is just like Iowa.
SW Missouri and the Ozarks feel like Northern Arkansas, Eastern Oklahoma and even a tinge of the East Texas piney woods.
The SE Missouri bootheel feels like the deep-South Missisippi Delta.
The B1G is probably Missouri's best fit but there are parts of the state which are very culturally like the Big XII and SEC.
November 15th, 2017 at 5:17 PM ^
I cannot agree more. I got so excited to see Michigan beat Mizzou in Columbia. Then they joined the SEC instead and we added Rutgers.
I still have a hard time under$$$tanding why that was.
November 15th, 2017 at 5:34 PM ^
are more Pac-12-y than Big XII-y, in my opinion. CU has lots of students from California, too (beyond the athletes, I mean).
(I take the point above but the Front Range feels to me much more west coast-y than Big Ten-y).
November 15th, 2017 at 1:01 PM ^
That the Big 12 thing would come into existence, they might have decided to do that. A Big 12 with Arkansas instead of Baylor makes a heck of a lot more sense as a conference, but that wasn't really on the table, and the Southwest Conference was a sinking ship. Half the league was on probation and the TV rights landscape had made it clear that the SWC was going to be screwed due to not having any presence outside of the state of Texas other than Arkansas.
I'd compare Arkansas-SEC to West Virginia-Big 12. If West Virginia had known the Maryland spot in the ACC would open up, they would have been much happier to take the spot Louisville got. But they didn't know it'd be open, they just knew the Big East was dying and that they needed to find a life raft.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:00 PM ^
Well it probably wasn't THAT big of a mistake at the time. The SEC was nowhere near as deep at that point. You had Alabama and Florida usually playing at a pretty high level in the early-mid 90s, Georgia was decent, Auburn was okay, LSU was awful, Ole Miss and Miss St were awful, and no one even knew South Carolina had a football team, nor cared to know, until Spurrier showed up. I'm sure Arkansas thought it come come in and make a name for itself in the SEC.
Arkansas can still be a pretty darn good job with the right coach. Petrino got them as high as #3 when he had Mallett as his QB. If they make the right hire this time around, they can turn things around pretty quickly. Saban isn't getting any younger, and when he leaves there is going to be a HUGE power vacuum in the SEC. I'd give him maybe another 3-5 years before he decides he's done enough.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:06 PM ^
So there's hope for Rutgers yet, they just got to find an all time great college coach after he flops in the NFL.
But as far as Arkansas goes, the other thing with them is they had that Nebraska thing going where they had zero respect for the league they were joining. And yeah, for most of its history the SWC was a tougher league than the SEC, but the SEC wasn't chopped liver. Arkansas thought "well sure, we had some dogfights with Texas and A&M and Pony Express SMU and Run and shoot Houston, but the SEC is crap compared to that! They got a rude awakening, just like Nebraska fans did when they found out the Big 10 wasn't going to be the cake walk they thought it would be when they were in the Big 12.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:32 PM ^
I'm interested in learning whether this is all football related, or does it also include bball and other sports? I mean, I thought AR was doing okay at AR type finishes, historically. They've been an above average bball team, with occasional runs of greatness - check. They've historically been a middling football program, with occasional runs of goodness - check. Thier other sports just kind of show up - check.
They do fancy themselves football contenders, but I never thought that went beyond the normal fan-type musings and wishes. I mean, they have virtually no history with actually 'contending'. I would have thought Bert to be on thin ice, but not the AD.
Now we all know Bert is treading water, tired, and in grave danger of going under.
November 15th, 2017 at 12:55 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 12:55 PM ^
And you can't run a burly man ball pro style offense and recruit Texas. Nobody's running that in the state there, you don't have linemen and tight ends you need. It forces Arkansas into recruiting in areas where the kids aren't so gung ho on Arkansas and would rather play in the Big 10, and unlike Stanford, Arkansas can't play the elite degree card. TEXAS couldn't make a pro style offense work, and they're daggum Texas.
Arkansas has to run an offense that fits what's going on in Texas HS. Sumlin is probably not a good choice because that's a conference rival and that's always weird, but there's a fellow up in the Paloose who is probably looking to leave who'd do pretty well there I imagine.
November 15th, 2017 at 2:26 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 12:58 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 12:59 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 1:13 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 2:23 PM ^
At most schools that's really all it takes. An AD is not going to get canned for hiring bad coaches in non-revenue sports (barring that coach being involved in some kind of huge scandal) where money really isn't at stake. Save for a few select schools like Duke, Kansas and Kentucky, football is what drives the entire athletic department. That's where a majority of the money is made. If not all of it. That's how the women's field hockey team can pay for flights to a conference tournament, or how the men's swimming team gets a new pool facility. With money made from football.
The AD may not be out there physically coaching the players and teaching them schemes, but if the team is bad, then that's indirectly on the AD for hiring the wrong person to lead it. If he's hired multiple coaches who proved to be poor choices, then he has routinely demonstrated a lack of ability to find the right talent. And then people stop coming to the games, stop buying merchandise, stop donating to the program, etc.
When it's affecting your bottom line, sometimes you have to make a change. It's harsh because at the end of the day, it's just sports. But that's the reality of college football these days. A lot of times an AD's job security goes hand-in-hand with how his football team performs.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:04 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 1:10 PM ^
So Dantonio can go out having owned Michigan? No. No way! That creep needs to get fed some Maize and Blue humble pie first.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:11 PM ^
So Dantonio can go out having owned Michigan? No. No way! That creep needs to get fed some Maize and Blue humble pie first.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:49 PM ^
they need to open the vault and lure malzahn away. he could win there and not share a state with saban.
November 15th, 2017 at 2:00 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 3:38 PM ^
He has risen already dude. Easter was like, months ago.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:58 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 3:40 PM ^
bert barleycorn is dead
November 15th, 2017 at 2:24 PM ^
I don't mean to be a dick, but how many do you think Bielema would feed at Thanksgiving? Like 15 or 16 good sized kids.
November 15th, 2017 at 4:14 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 3:21 PM ^
but Arkansas and their weird, creepy pig chant is probably at the top of the list. I mean some SEC traditions are certainly endearing, but the Arkansas pig thing just has too much of a Deliverance angle to it. I always figured that if a coach is OK with having to do that stuff in public, in front of a crowd, he's got no self-respect.
Of course, a lot of coaches are hillbillies/rednecks. Maybe Rich Rod is up for it.
November 15th, 2017 at 3:39 PM ^
i think rr is a great fit at AK
November 15th, 2017 at 5:23 PM ^
If he fails/gets fired at Arizona he would totally fit there, it'd be redneck reunion hilarity.
TBH he never should have left WV.
November 15th, 2017 at 5:39 PM ^
November 15th, 2017 at 8:52 PM ^