Weighing in on the Arkansas football coaching search

The only inside information I receive these days is from the lady at the diner who lets me know when the meatloaf special will appear again on the menu.

But that won’t stop me from weighing in on the Arkansas coaching search. Besides, anything I write here will be no worse than two hires ago when everyone was wrong on Bret Bielema, a lovely letter writer who was hired from Wisconsin by Jeff Long.

Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek showed he knew what he was doing when he hired Eric Musselman, a basketball coach with a vast amount of experience and connections to the NBA that college players love. Yurachek then took a good first step when he made Barry Lunney Jr., the interim head football coach for the Razorbacks. The Lunney name is closely associated with football in Arkansas and his father, Barry Lunney Sr., was a highly successful high school coach who could’ve gone onto the college ranks had he wanted. But Lunney Sr., was more interested in raising his family here and building powerful football programs at Fort Smith Southside and Bentonville High.

Lunney Jr., has potential as a college head coach but he doesn’t have the experience to be seriously considered for the Arkansas job. Not yet, anyway.

Bob Stoops isn’t coming to Arkansas but former Oklahoma offensive coordinator and Central Florida head coach Josh Heupel might. Matt Campbell at Iowa State and Mike Norvell at Memphis are young and attractive candidates, but they each signed big contracts recently that’ll likely keep them at their current jobs.

In 2012, I wrote two weeks before Bielema got the job the Razorbacks should hire Gus Malzahn, who had just led Arkansas State to a 9-3 season as head coach. I firmly believe Arkansas wouldn’t be in this mess had they hired Malzahn, who’s won 68 percent of his games at the college level. But Malzahn didn’t even get an interview and he was hired at Auburn after the Tigers fell to 3-9.

I will now risk gagging the anti-Gus people in Arkansas by insisting the Razorbacks would be fortunate to have Malzahn should Auburn foolishly part ways with him. But that bus has left the garage and it’s not coming back.

So, who’s next on the list?

If you believe in second chances, there’s a coach out there who is trying to work his way back onto the big stage after being fired from a Power 5 school. He is Lane Kiffin, the current head coach at Florida Atlantic, which sounds more like a supply store for scuba diving and snorkeling than an actual college. Kiffin is 35-24 in his third year at FAU, including recent wins this season over coach Butch Davis and Florida International and the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky. Remember them? Yurachek got a jump-start in his search after firing Morris with two games left to play. So, keep an eye on Kiffin and Florida Atlantic, which is 7-3 heading into Saturday’s game with Texas-San Antonio.

The Owls lead the East Division of Conference USA and they’ll be in a bowl game for the second time in three years under Kiffin.

At Southern Cal, Kiffin was called off the team bus and fired at an airport following a loss at Arizona State, a scene Kiffin calls the low point of his professional career. Even then, Kiffin was still highly regarded as an offensive-minded coach and play-caller and Nick Saban quickly snatched him up to jazz up the Alabama offense. Kiffin left Alabama for the Owls, who finished 11-3 in their first season under Kiffin in 2017.

There’s been questions about Kiffin’s attitude and his maturity level, but people can change for the better as they grow older, right?

I think he’s worth a serious look and only old geezers like myself know he has an Arkansas connection through his father, Monte Kiffin, who was a defensive coordinator for the Razorbacks from 1977-1979. Lane Kiffin wouldn’t be a home run hire, but Arkansas may be relegated to a guy who can get on base and knows how to stretch singles into doubles and triples.