Just wait a minute…
Does Arkansas have a coaching vacancy in football? Dennis Dodd of CBS Sportsline seems to think so. He wrote a blog post this weekend indicating he thinks it's a foregone conclusion Houston Nutt will be gone after this season. Apparently, North Carolina's Butch Davis is already deciding if he wants to take over the Razorbacks.
Here is what Dodd wrote:
Butch Davis is having second thoughts about the Arkansas job. He's trying to decide if it's worth it to leave North Carolina after a year to take over Arkansas.
There is a larger issue here. Arkansas is stuck in the middle of the pack in the SEC because it left the Southwest Conference 15 years ago. It didn't have any choice back then as the SWC was breaking up. But it is suffering the consequences now.
No matter whom the AD is, Arkansas is stuck in the middle of a powerful conference. It's not quite good enough to win it and not quite bad enough to tank it.
Whoever the new coach is, he will have to deal with the fact that the SEC West is a mother. In any given year, the Hogs are going to have to beat out LSU and Auburn to get to the SEC title game.
Did Dodd forget that Arkansas won the SEC West last year? It's possible, because he seems to be a little bit mixed up about the series of events that led to the disintegration of the Southwest Conference. Here's a clue: Arkansas was the first team to leave the now-defunct league in 1991.
A few years ago I talked to Jim Brock, the former executive director of the Cotton Bowl. When Arkansas was considering leaving the SWC for the SEC, Brock flew up to Fayetteville to meet with Razorbacks athletic director Frank Broyles with the goal of convincing the Hogfather to reconsider the move. The Cotton Bowl, of course, was tied to the SWC and Brock could see the disaster that awaited the conference (and his bowl) if the Razorbacks abandoned the league.
So to say Arkansas didn't have a choice when it elected to join the SEC is wrong. Instead, Broyles had the foresight to wave goodbye to the SWC before it officially imploded five years later.
Very true, that was an excellent decision to leave the SWC, which at the time was only a football conference with a few shines from Arkansas an Texas in basketball. I remember many times going to Reunion Arena for the SWC basketball tournament... aka "Barnhill South", and I've been to the Cotton Bowl many a times during the SWC and post SWC.
The SEC of course was always a football conference, but has become just as powerful of a basketball conference with Florida leading the way these past few years.
I commend Frank for seeing the future (SEC), I just wish he could have seen past Houston Nutt, and brought in a new era of Razorback football before he departed.
Arkansas went 28-38-2 their first five years in the league (SEC) with one winning season for a winning percentage of 42% overall. Since then, under Nutt, Arkansas is 71-44 for a winning percentage of 62% with three SEC West crowns and 7 bowl appearances. If you look at the 10 years before Nutt came to Arkansas we were 60-46-3 for a winning percentage of 55%.
I am not saying that Nutt is a great coach but I do believe he brought some respect to the program and SEC opponents no longer look at us as an automatic win on their schedule.
There are probably 10 or 15 coaches in the country who could do more with this program than Nutt has and I'm pretty sure most of them wouldn't give Arkansas a second thought. Davis is one of those coaches. If he is serious about considering the job then he should be considered. If not then we had better find a way to get behind the coach we have and help him win.
Who the heck is Dennis Dodd? Someone who obviously didn't do his homework. The same reasoning as to why Arkansas moved to the SEC is the same reasoning that needs to be applied to the evaluation of the current program and leadership. Arkansas led the way out of the SWC and needs to be a leader again in possitve direction for Razorback football.
[...] you should check out The Slophouse’s take on a cbssportsline.com blogger’s Butch Davis-to-Arkansas musings. Filed under: Houston Nutt, Football — Stephen at 4:09 pm on Monday, October 22, [...]
Butch is another Nutt clone, SOS.Get Jimmy J. and quit the BS,or better yet get Switzer.
arkansas could get a number of very talented coaches if the money is right. the facilities are second to none and the fan base is incredible.
i think nutt is a decent coach, good recruiter and motivator. what disturbs me, is the constantly predictable, unimaginative play calling on offense which invariably means 3 and out against the better teams; keeping the defense gassed and on the field forever. as an example, david lee was quoted on sunday as saying: "WHEN OUR OFF TACKLE STUFF IS WORKING, WE GIVE A TEAM FITS. WHEN IT'S NOT WORKING, THEN IT'S A LONG DAY FOR US." so now lee has decided to share his offensive minded genius with the rest of us. it's not as if we didn't realize it, already, but how boneheaded is that? i just don't see off tackle right and left, 40 plus times a game, ever getting it done against the likes of auburn, lsu, florida, wisconsin, etc., etc.
the key, as nutt [himself] has now been saying for an eternity, is BALANCE. it doesn't take a mental giant to figure that one out - nor a skilled defensive coordinator, i would guess.
until houston nutt is gone there will be no balance in arkansas' offense. we keep getting promised a better passing offense each year. heck, i haven't seen it. the closest arkansas got to ending their passing woes was when mitch mustain was qb, and houston pulled him for dick. sure mitch wasn't the best, but he was a freshmen making freshmen mistakes. mitch deserved at least another couple years before being replaced. if arkansas had just kept the team together from last year, we wouldn't have this problem.
the thing that really makes me upset is that everyone blames david lee. houston took away the playcalling from malzahn last year. what makes everyone thing that this year houston isn't doing the same this year?
i think if someone ought to be head coach it should be david lee. he could fix the passing game, just look at what he did with tony romo in dallas last year. if you ask me the new head coach could be right under our nose.
We won't find a better coach than Houston Nutt. The "genius" Malzahn managed to call 4 interceptions in a blowout loss to Central Florida.