10-23-2017, 08:43 PM
Five years in college football can feel like an eternity, especially when they go the way the past five have gone for Arkansas, and the closer the clock ticks toward the end of the Bret Bielema era in Fayetteville the easier it is to forget what a shock it was when the Razorbacks introduced Bielema as their new head coach.
Lately, his stock has crashed with no sign of recovery: Saturdayâs 52-20 debacle against Auburn was Arkansasâ seventh consecutive loss against a Power 5 opponent and clinched another five-loss season in Fayetteville â the fifth in as many years â with five games still to go. In their past three games the Hogs have been outscored by 90 points, which Bielema himself admitted this weekend is âuncharted waters.â
In the meantime, the default position toward the class of new head coaches hired in December 2012 (Bielema, Gus Malzahn, Kevin Sumlin and Butch Jones) has shifted dramatically, the point that all four â even Malzahn, who came within seconds of winning a national title in his first year at Auburn â have come to embody the decline of the once-mighty SEC as a whole. These days, itâs a given that the leagueâs malaise is largely a symptom of its uninspiring coaching hires, a list on which Bielemaâs name will remain at the top for as long as he still has a job. Coaching-wise, all of the momentum in 2017 resides in the Big Ten.
In that context, itâs harder to recall that his arrival at Arkansas was regarded as a significant coup, and one that specifically reinforced the SECâs growing sense of superiority over the rest of the country. The 2012 season was the last in the leagueâs seven-year run of national championships, a streak that seemed to be in no danger of ending anytime soon. At a moment when the Southern superiority complex was at an all-time high, luring the head coach of the three-time defending Big Ten champion to a program like Arkansas was almost an act of hubris: Not only will we beat you when it matters â if your coach matters, we might take him, too.
Because in any other context, by any other prevailing assumption about what motivates a coach to move from one job to another job, Bielema to Arkansas never made sense. If you could convert those assumptions into some kind of equation, it would have rated the logic of that move at zero. Maybe less. It made negative sense. Bielema was a Big Ten lifer: Born in Illinois, played at Iowa, graduated from Iowa, coached at Iowa. Has an Iowa tattoo on his leg. His mentors were Big Ten lifers. Hayden Fry recruited and coached Bielema as a Hawkeye, gave him his first job as a graduate assistant and promoted him to his first full-time job. Bielema coached at Wisconsin before he was promoted to replace his outgoing boss, Barry Alvarez, by his outgoing boss, who remained his boss throughout his tenure.
And of course, he won at Wisconsin. He won big at Wisconsin, which was not a given, historically. Bielemaâs last game with the Badgers, a 70-31 splattering of Nebraska in the 2012 B1G title game, sent them on their way to their third consecutive Rose Bowl as conference champs. At the time, only one other Big Ten coach (Kirk Ferentz at Iowa) had been at his current school longer. Bielemaâs vintage, between-the-tackles philosophy continued to pay off in Madison â and pretty much only in Madison â with an offense that consistently ranked at or near the top of the conference and turned obscure, 2- and 3-star farm boys into hulking NFL draft picks on an annual basis.
That doesnât happen in the blue-chip-driven SEC. And the rest of the Big Ten was at a nadir: With Ohio State and Penn State in NCAA-mandated flux, and Nebraska and Michigan still saddled with mediocre hires, Bielemaâs program stood as the B1Gâs gold standard for stability and traditional Midwestern muscle.
Bielema had no professional connection to Arkansas or the South. Arkansas had never won anything in the SEC. It was arguably further behind its peers than Wisconsin in terms of resources and recruiting base. The Razorbacksâ previous three head coaches had all been exiled under increasingly sordid circumstances. Crazy Wisconsin fans have a beer or two (or six) too many. Crazy Arkansas fans come after your cell phone records.
So what, he was bored by the Rose Bowl? No. At age 42, the only good reason Bret Bielema would leave Wisconsin for Arkansas, the one thing that might entice him to leave the most stable, enviable seat in the conference that raised him, is that he considered a middle-of-the-pack SEC job a step up from the top of the Big Ten. For a coach whose ultimate goal is a national championship, in December 2012 the SEC was clearly the conference that offered that opportunity in the coming Playoff format â even, apparently, at a school that had not (and has not) come close to a national crown in two decades in the fold.
In October 2017 that line of thinking seems thoroughly backward. The intervening years have proved the opposite: While the SEC is at a low ebb on the field and on the sidelines, the Big Ten is thriving with proven, dynamic head coaches in almost all of its most high-profile programs (one of whom, Penn Stateâs James Franklin, it hired from the SEC) and legitimately intriguing up-and-comers like Purdueâs Jeff Brohm and Minnesotaâs P.J. Fleck. The Badgers are doing just fine under Bielemaâs former offensive coordinator, Wisconsin born-and-bred Paul Chryst. With the notable exception of Mike Riley at Nebraska, no other active B1G coach is anywhere in the remote vicinity of the hot seat.
In the SEC the heat comes with the territory, along with the type of fan that can recite the details of your contract buyout by heart, and itâs not just a quirk of timing that every single coach in the conference who isnât Nick Saban has felt the temperature rise at some point in the past 18 months. Out of all of them, Bielemaâs might be the hottest because it was fueled by the highest expectations, ambitions that at one point reflected how high even the second-tier SEC schools were wiling to aim to remain relevant. As he barrels toward the end of the line, they look more like reminders of just how much relevance the league has lost.
https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-fo...c-decline/
Lately, his stock has crashed with no sign of recovery: Saturdayâs 52-20 debacle against Auburn was Arkansasâ seventh consecutive loss against a Power 5 opponent and clinched another five-loss season in Fayetteville â the fifth in as many years â with five games still to go. In their past three games the Hogs have been outscored by 90 points, which Bielema himself admitted this weekend is âuncharted waters.â
In the meantime, the default position toward the class of new head coaches hired in December 2012 (Bielema, Gus Malzahn, Kevin Sumlin and Butch Jones) has shifted dramatically, the point that all four â even Malzahn, who came within seconds of winning a national title in his first year at Auburn â have come to embody the decline of the once-mighty SEC as a whole. These days, itâs a given that the leagueâs malaise is largely a symptom of its uninspiring coaching hires, a list on which Bielemaâs name will remain at the top for as long as he still has a job. Coaching-wise, all of the momentum in 2017 resides in the Big Ten.
In that context, itâs harder to recall that his arrival at Arkansas was regarded as a significant coup, and one that specifically reinforced the SECâs growing sense of superiority over the rest of the country. The 2012 season was the last in the leagueâs seven-year run of national championships, a streak that seemed to be in no danger of ending anytime soon. At a moment when the Southern superiority complex was at an all-time high, luring the head coach of the three-time defending Big Ten champion to a program like Arkansas was almost an act of hubris: Not only will we beat you when it matters â if your coach matters, we might take him, too.
Because in any other context, by any other prevailing assumption about what motivates a coach to move from one job to another job, Bielema to Arkansas never made sense. If you could convert those assumptions into some kind of equation, it would have rated the logic of that move at zero. Maybe less. It made negative sense. Bielema was a Big Ten lifer: Born in Illinois, played at Iowa, graduated from Iowa, coached at Iowa. Has an Iowa tattoo on his leg. His mentors were Big Ten lifers. Hayden Fry recruited and coached Bielema as a Hawkeye, gave him his first job as a graduate assistant and promoted him to his first full-time job. Bielema coached at Wisconsin before he was promoted to replace his outgoing boss, Barry Alvarez, by his outgoing boss, who remained his boss throughout his tenure.
And of course, he won at Wisconsin. He won big at Wisconsin, which was not a given, historically. Bielemaâs last game with the Badgers, a 70-31 splattering of Nebraska in the 2012 B1G title game, sent them on their way to their third consecutive Rose Bowl as conference champs. At the time, only one other Big Ten coach (Kirk Ferentz at Iowa) had been at his current school longer. Bielemaâs vintage, between-the-tackles philosophy continued to pay off in Madison â and pretty much only in Madison â with an offense that consistently ranked at or near the top of the conference and turned obscure, 2- and 3-star farm boys into hulking NFL draft picks on an annual basis.
That doesnât happen in the blue-chip-driven SEC. And the rest of the Big Ten was at a nadir: With Ohio State and Penn State in NCAA-mandated flux, and Nebraska and Michigan still saddled with mediocre hires, Bielemaâs program stood as the B1Gâs gold standard for stability and traditional Midwestern muscle.
Bielema had no professional connection to Arkansas or the South. Arkansas had never won anything in the SEC. It was arguably further behind its peers than Wisconsin in terms of resources and recruiting base. The Razorbacksâ previous three head coaches had all been exiled under increasingly sordid circumstances. Crazy Wisconsin fans have a beer or two (or six) too many. Crazy Arkansas fans come after your cell phone records.
So what, he was bored by the Rose Bowl? No. At age 42, the only good reason Bret Bielema would leave Wisconsin for Arkansas, the one thing that might entice him to leave the most stable, enviable seat in the conference that raised him, is that he considered a middle-of-the-pack SEC job a step up from the top of the Big Ten. For a coach whose ultimate goal is a national championship, in December 2012 the SEC was clearly the conference that offered that opportunity in the coming Playoff format â even, apparently, at a school that had not (and has not) come close to a national crown in two decades in the fold.
In October 2017 that line of thinking seems thoroughly backward. The intervening years have proved the opposite: While the SEC is at a low ebb on the field and on the sidelines, the Big Ten is thriving with proven, dynamic head coaches in almost all of its most high-profile programs (one of whom, Penn Stateâs James Franklin, it hired from the SEC) and legitimately intriguing up-and-comers like Purdueâs Jeff Brohm and Minnesotaâs P.J. Fleck. The Badgers are doing just fine under Bielemaâs former offensive coordinator, Wisconsin born-and-bred Paul Chryst. With the notable exception of Mike Riley at Nebraska, no other active B1G coach is anywhere in the remote vicinity of the hot seat.
In the SEC the heat comes with the territory, along with the type of fan that can recite the details of your contract buyout by heart, and itâs not just a quirk of timing that every single coach in the conference who isnât Nick Saban has felt the temperature rise at some point in the past 18 months. Out of all of them, Bielemaâs might be the hottest because it was fueled by the highest expectations, ambitions that at one point reflected how high even the second-tier SEC schools were wiling to aim to remain relevant. As he barrels toward the end of the line, they look more like reminders of just how much relevance the league has lost.
https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-fo...c-decline/
nicker: