An even worse idea

Next on the agenda: running plays

LIFE ain’t fair. That’s the first lesson Arkansas kids should have learned from the sporting news in the last 10 days. If life was fair, perhaps Chad Morris would have had another year to develop his recruits at the UofA, instead of joining a long line of Former Razorback Coaches—a group that includes recent millionaires, thanks to contract buyouts. But if life isn’t fair, it can be lucrative. You just have to choose the right occupation. And fail at it.

Hunter Yurachek, the new-ish athletic director at the University of Arkansas, has no shortage of advisers in his search for a new head football coach. All he has to do is turn on the radio. My, my, but there are a lot of experts on the sports talk shows. Which brings up the question: If they’re so smart, how come they aren’t rich? Or at least protected by an expensive buyout?

There are experts at this stuff, and then there are those who talk publicly. We imagine the experts are on the phones with bigwigs in Fayetteville this morning, or else trying to find cell numbers for a select few agents. And the talkers are calling into radio shows. And suggesting the university pony up to get Bobby Petrino again. On the whole, we’d rather hear 30 minutes of Gino Vannelli’s Greatest Hits than another argument about rehiring Bobby Petrino.

You can’t get away from the noise, or at least we couldn’t the other day while driving around the state. A couple of sports-talk jockeys talked up the idea of hiring some sort of Razorback committee for the football team.

Since we were driving, we couldn’t take notes. But we’re pretty sure this committee wouldn’t be in charge of hiring a new coach, but instead, it would

be in charge of being in charge of a new coach. The idea goes like this: Get a group of former Hogs—players and coaches—and ask them to get together during the football season to “advise” the new guy.

It’s not the worst of ideas.

The worst of ideas includes subprime mortgages, Betamax and pop-up ads. But this idea gets close. Coaching by committee! That’s nearly as bad as writing by committee. A famous editor from Arkansas once said that the only two worthwhile things ever written by committees were the King James Bible and the United States Constitution, and both were inspired by God. In other words, they were miracles. Don’t expect them frequently.

For the most part, committees are where good ideas go to die. Which might be why the United Nations leans on them regularly.

When we think of committees, we don’t think of Knute Rockne or Bear Bryant. When we think of committees we think of suits who are more interested in doughnuts, coffee creamer and avoiding real work than of accomplishing anything important. At least in a committee, the herd can stall anything from personnel, and blame is spread among the group. But no leadership can come from one. Any more than light can escape a black hole.

Can you imagine an SEC-level head football coach answering to a committee? What would (or should) be the first response when the committee invariably and inescapably wants to hold a Tiger Team Lock Up Session with the coach, to dialogue and ideate about thought leadership in the program’s core competency and matrix structure? We can image what Woody Hayes would say, and it’s not printable in a family newspaper. At least not on Sunday.

A committee to guide a football program. As if Razorback fans weren’t damaged enough. Now they’d be abused by the actions and non-actions of a committee.

That aforementioned famous editor from Arkansas had a two-word answer any time some young, or at least fresh, editorial writer came up with a lame idea and tried to pass it off as brilliance. At the end of the page, he’d simply jot down: Let’s not.

And that’d be the end of it until the next brainstorm, or at least braindrizzle. No discussion was needed. The idea was bad enough without having to rehash the damned thing. And the editor apparently felt no need to further embarrass. Besides, his word was final. Mercifully so.

A committee to guide a football coach: That’s some idea.

Let’s not.

The next football coach at the UofA is going to have his hands full with Bama and LSU. That’s opposition enough, thank you.