Best wishes to Bielema at Illinois

If only in the Christmas spirit, shouldn’t Arkansas be wishing Bret Bielema a successful return to college coaching at the University of Illinois?

Perhaps you’d forgotten that he’s the only Razorback football coach to win his first two bowl games. Not Frank Broyles or Lou Holtz or Houston Nutt or Bobby Petrino.

And he’s also the last Razorback football coach to play, and beat Texas. Surely that still means something even as Arkansas wallows in the Southeastern Conference.

It was 31-7 in the 2014 Texas Bowl on a Monday night in Houston, and though Charlie Strong’s first Longhorn team wasn’t anything special, Arkansas doesn’t beat Texas often in football, especially not like this. Texas finished with two yards rushing — an unsightful total for a program that scourged the earth out of the Wishbone offense and later with Heisman Trophy winners Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. Arkansas dangled an olive branch of sorts late, electing not to score another touchdown when on the lip of the Texas goal.

Arkansas has been on the other end of that stick. What could Alabama at full throttle, with ears pinned back, have scored upon Arkansas the other day were Nick Saban not a man of compassion? The 52-3 final score said enough.

Some Arkansas people, a few in high places, interpreted the late-2014 resurgence as a preview of coming attractions, perhaps a stairway to heaven in the SEC. Bielema’s second Arkansas squad beat Ole Miss, LSU and Texas — that after giving up almost 600 yards to Auburn in the season opener. This coach with Big Ten roots (played at Iowa, coached at Wisconsin) just might have what the Razorbacks needed.

That feeling held over through the 2015 season, Bielema’s third at Arkansas, when the Razorbacks smashed Kansas State 45-23 in the Liberty Bowl, a postseason venue that UA had not won. Kansas State, it should be admitted, was not Oklahoma, and this was not the Orange Bowl, but any year that Arkansas scores a bowl victory is noteworthy.

Bielema’s fourth Razorback team went to a bowl game but the aftermath was different. Playing Virginia Tech in Charlotte, N.C., in something called the Belk Bowl, Arkansas failed to score in the second half for the second-straight game. Backto-back losses (the first on the road against Missouri) led to some unrest about Bielema, who replaced an Allen at quarterback (Austin for Brandon) easily enough but could not do the same with departing assistant coaches Sam Pittman and Jim Chaney.

“Are you hard to work for?” I asked Bielema one day before a Razorback Club meeting at Lake Hamilton High School. Bielema, cordial with the press even when his remarks became unintelligible, said each left for more money.

Though he didn’t exactly answer the question, the ability to pay top dollar for assistant coaches helped sway Bielema to the SEC. In his first press conference at Fayetteville, he hinted at differences between himself and Barry Alvarez, athletic director and former head coach at Wisconsin.

Bielema’s final Arkansas season was in almost every way forgetful. Granted, Arkansas beat Florida for only the second time (first since 1982) but was fortunate to get past Coastal Carolina before anyone heard of that Sun Belt Conference school. Only a one-point win at Ole Miss separated Arkansas from an 0-8 SEC record.

In what would be his last game at Arkansas, Bielema was fired shortly after a home loss to Missouri. Arkansas had no athletic director then, Jeff Long having been fired weeks earlier, and someone from within the UA athletic department named Julie Cromer Peoples conducted a news conference postgame in

Fayetteville. Sounding too much like Al Haig after the shooting of President Reagan (“I’m in charge here”) for comfort, Peoples told reporters she would be “on point” with hiring of the new Razorback coach.

That search led to Chad Morris, resulting in a fresh set of horrors for Arkansas football. Morris did not survive his second season in Fayetteville (Peoples was gone before that) and when Hunter Yurachek, the new AD, got around to hiring Pittman, a career assistant, it was mainly because he wanted the job when bigger names passed on Arkansas.

Yurachek picked a winner, at least in the eyes of Razorback fans, even if Pittman’s first team, about to meet TCU in the Texas Bowl, is only 3-7. For the first time in years, Arkansas played like fighting Razorbacks of the past, especially on defense. Although outmanned in most games, the Razorbacks swept the Mississippi teams and Tennessee, a nice parlay.

The signature game, even in defeat, came against Auburn, which had help from an SEC officiating crew in snatching a victory it didn’t deserve. Many in Arkansas got the last laugh when Gus Malzahn was fired, dwindling to a chuckle for his ill-fated offensive overseer, one Chad Morris.

And, now, with Bielema finding a steady job, Arkansas’ financial load may be lessened. He filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the Razorback Foundation to be paid for the difference between what he was making for a consultant to Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots and later as outside linebacker coach and senior assistant for the New York Giants.

It’s a little surprising that Bielema has been out of college coaching this long. His name surfaced last week as a candidate to succeed the fired Lovie Smith at Illinois. His late Arkansas failures notwithstanding, he has names like Hayden Fry (his coach at Iowa) and Alvarez on his resume. (People outside the SEC recognize the challenge of coaching at Arkansas even if Razorback Nation still thinks it a top-shelf job, as Broyles made it.) Now, NFL references are his for the asking.

We should have known that it would turn around quickly, and in a negative way, for Bielema. In Texas, where Broyles went in the 1960s for blue-chip players in building his Razorback dynasty, Bielema turned off some high-school coaches with his theories that the spread offense, becoming all the rage, would not work. Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury, now with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, particularly gloated after a 35-24 win at Fayetteville in 2015. Under Bielema, whose first team dealt with Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M won five times in what is now a W9 streak against Arkansas.

Any Arkansas football team must rely on overachievers and have players “coached up.” Lou Holtz’ magic at UA, which produced a 30-5-1 record in his first three years, dropped off after the last Broyles recruits graduated and prized aides like Monte Kiffin left.

“When he had a shot to build a program at Arkansas, he failed,” a Fayetteville online correspondent writes of Bielema. “It was so bad some Razorback fans were so excited after a 6-6 regular season in 2014 they were fully on board with Bielema getting a new contract with a ridiculous buy-out to fire him.”

It wasn’t all bad for Bielema at Arkansas, mind you. The new husband became a father and he received a standing ovation in a Hot Springs restaurant on his first local visit. But the winters in Fayetteville can be considered tropical compared with those in Champaign, Ill. If you like Bielema and are thankful for the good things he achieved at Arkansas, wish him well at Illinois, the alma mater of Red Grange and Hot Springs’ own Bobby Mitchell.