Salvaging season gets more difficut
When a parent or a head football coach receives a phone call in the wee hours of the morning, the news invariably isn’t good.
A sick loved one has taken a turn for the worse, or died, or someone has been involved in an accident and details are sketchy.
These days, a text message or tweet might substitute for a phone call. Just the same, when someone hears surprising news after midnight it’s usually not in reference to hitting the state lottery.
Ten games into his increasingly pivotal fifth season as Arkansas’ head football coach, Bret Bielema was jolted early Sunday with disturbing news about a Razorback player. Quarterback Cole Kelley was arrested in Fayetteville for suspicion of driving while intoxicated, hours after playing in Arkansas’ 33-10 road loss to LSU.
Along with a mug shot, the Washington County police report for Kelley includes age (20), race (white) and color of hair (brown) and eyes (green). Kelley is listed at 6 feet, 6 inches and 271 pounds, differing slightly from 6-7 and 268 on the Razorback roster. Nothing’s mentioned about his won-lost record as a starter, completion percentage and interceptions or 40-yard time. Just the facts.
To his credit, Bielema asked the right questions: “My first reflection is ‘Is he safe? Is there anybody involved and is everybody safe in the entire incident?”’
In his time at Alabama, Paul William Bryant heard similar reports about two Crimson Tide quarterbacks. Joe Namath and Ken Stabler were suspended for violating team rules, Bryant famously holding Namath out of a Sugar Bowl game. Stabler came under Bryant’s thumb a few years later and got a telegram from Namath: “Dear, Kenny. He means it.”
Bielema on Monday suspended Kelley from the team, declaring him out of Arkansas’ home game Saturday against Mississippi State. Senior Austin Allen, in whose place Kelley started four games while rehabbing a shoulder injury, regains the No. 1 position backed by sophomore Ty Storey.
Whatever reasons Kelley might give for getting plastered after the game are immaterial. That he did so and got behind the wheel of a vehicle is inexcusable. That Kelley should learn from his error in judgment is hoped inevitable.
Namath and Stabler, while not exactly choir boys off the field, each won a Super Bowl championship. Kelley, who can expect a challenge in the spring for the No. 1 job, can “define what his reaction is to this moment,” said Bielema.
Whether Bielema, for a sixth season, is coaching Arkansas in 2018 or not, evaluating talent will be essential for moving forward at what has become a midpack (or worse) SEC football program.
A day of reckoning is, or should be, coming for veteran Razorbacks on scholarship, said former UA recruiting coordinator Fitz Hill, a guesthost on a Little Rock talk show Monday. About each of the team’s 23 juniors, in particular, position by position, “Someone has to ask, ‘Can we win with this guy? Is there any hope of him getting better or is there someone from a junior college who can help us?’
“You’re better off taking a scholarship from a junior than from a sophomore or redshirt freshman,” Hill said.
For the time being, Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long may be faced with firing his perceived home-run hire of December 2012. Bielema arrived from Wisconsin to direct a football program that, one year removed from Bobby Petrino, crashed under the overmatched John L. Smith.
Wisconsin has remained a solid program, currently undefeated and ranked No. 5 (Associated Press) with Michigan coming to town this week. A Sports Illustrated story last week about Wisconsin football did not mention Bielema, who coached the Badgers to the Rose Bowl in his last three seasons at the school.
Bielema, meanwhile, has a worse SEC record (11-27) in five seasons than newly fired Tennessee coach Butch Jones. With a 4-6 mark, 1-5 in the SEC, Arkansas can extend its season with a Fayetteville sweep of Mississippi State and Missouri, even finish with a winning record after a bowl game. But whether 7-6 would be enough to save Bielema’s job is anyone’s guess.
The Hogs’ HC understands the seriousness of things.
“I know that wins have got to come,” he said Monday. “I get it. I understand it. I know we want to have a lot more wins. I want to have a lot more wins. Our players want to have a lot more wins. Our adminstration, the fans, everybody. And we’ll get there.”
If not, and sooner than he realizes, Bielema may be answering the proverbial white courtesy phone.