Ole Miss last chance for October win by Hogs
Bret Bielema keeps saying the Arkansas Razorbacks are “close” to something this football season.
That they are but not something likely to be discussed on the coach’s weekly radio and TV shows or explored in much detail by the Razorback sports information department.
A loss today at Ole Miss, making Arkansas 0-4 in October, would end the Razorbacks’ first winless month of football (minimum two games) since
2013. Bielema’s first Arkansas team started 3-0 but closed the season with nine straight losses, going winless in October
(0-3) and November (0-4). This sort of thing is, to use an expression currently in vogue in Razorback Nation, uncommon. Since 1958, Frank Broyles’ first season in Fayetteville, the Razorbacks have had 11 winless months, six coming since Arkansas joined the Southeastern Conference in
1992.
Broyles had a winless first September and October before a 21-8 road win over Texas A&M Nov. 1, 1958. A Broylescoached Razorback team did not lose in November (Alumni Month, it’s called) until 1963, his sixth season. Arkansas started a winning streak of 22 games (still the school record) against Texas Tech on one of the few sporting events played Nov. 23, 1963, the day after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. That lasted until Jan. 1, 1966, when LSU, by 14-7 in the Cotton Bowl, denied Arkansas a second straight 11-0 season and the school’s first outright national championship.
It was against LSU in 2014, by a 17-0 count in Fayetteville, that Arkansas ended a 17-game SEC losing streak dating to a
2012 Little Rock defeat to Ole Miss. The 2014 Razorbacks thus started a November push that included a Fayetteville shutout of Ole Miss and extended to late December and a Texas Bowl triumph over the Texas Longhorns. To old-time Razorback fans, sweeping LSU, Ole Miss and Texas was nothing short of mind-boggling.
Jeff Long, whose December
2012 hiring of Bielema (then at Wisconsin) stunned the state, might have fancied himself a latter-day John Barnhill — finding in Bielema, as did Barnhill in Broyles, the man to answer Arkansas’ football needs for years to come. Despite Bielema’s 2-14 SEC record after two seasons, Long extended the coach’s contract through 2020 and attached an expensive buyout clause if other schools wanted his services. Georgia Tech, remember, beckoned at least twice to alumnus Broyles during the latter’s Arkansas years, and Long could see Bielema facing the same pressure from alma mater Iowa if Hawkeye fans soured on veteran coach Kirk Ferentz.
A Liberty Bowl conquest of Kansas State after the 2015 season made Bielema the first Razorback football coach to win his first two bowl games. But a storm cloud has hovered over the program since Bielema’s 2016 squad collapsed in the second half against both Missouri in the regular-season finale and ACC member Virginia Tech in the Belk Bowl.
Before a rare August 2017 opener against Florida A&M, played before a sparse Little Rock crowd, Bielema’s Razorback future was openly discussed in coffee shops and around water coolers and in newspapers and on radio talk shows statewide. Critics attacked Bielema’s overall record at Arkansas (25-26) and especially against the SEC (10-22). Early games against two former SEC rivals, TCU and Texas A&M, were considered mustwins for Bielema, who started the season on a hot seat.
Arkansas lost both games,
28-7 to TCU before a sold-out crowd at Fayetteville and 50-
43 in overtime to A&M, making Bielema 0-5 against Aggie coach Kevin Sumlin. Then came October and consecutive defeats of 48-22 at South Carolina and 41-9 at Alabama followed by last week’s 52-20 Fayetteville rout by Auburn. In the latter game, an announced Reynolds Razorback Stadium crowd of more than 71,000 dwindled to an intimate gathering before Auburn completed a two-year series sweep by a combined 108-23.
Danny Ford could not survive an 0-3 October in 1997 that included a 56-7 disaster at Florida and a 39-13 Little Rock thumping by South Carolina. Fayetteville defeats of 42-29 to Kentucky and 9-7 to Auburn were prominent in the 0-3 October of Houston Nutt’s 2007 Razorbacks. Nutt received a virtual two-year grace period after his team’s enigmatic 2003 season, but sharks were circling even as the 2006 Hogs started 7-0 in the SEC. Many fans said “good riddance” when Nutt stepped down in 2007 three days after beating No. 1 LSU in triple overtime at Baton Rouge (read that sentence again carefully).
Arkansas is getting a reputation as a difficult room to work, something that fans might consider before calling for Bielema’s hide. Would a Mike Norvell at Memphis or a Chad Morris at SMU resist an Arkansas offer rather than rush to Fayetteville, as did Broyles and Bielema?
The best option is for Arkansas to finish strongly under Bielema, triggering something for 2018 and beyond. Then again, as a losing coach said once, “They say you can’t win them all. I say you can’t win one.”