Crowe: UA mediocre

Jack Crowe, the former Arkansas head coach and offensive coordinator, said the Razorbacks have been mired in mediocrity, but will break out of that mode under Chad Morris.

“Right now, Arkansas is a hell of a lot better than what I’ve been looking at,” Crowe said Wednesday at the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club. “I know it is. A hell of a lot better.”

Arkansas is 33-42 the past six seasons, 4-8 under interim coach John L. Smith in 2012 and 29-34 in five seasons under Bret Bielema.

“I didn’t know on the inside, but I knew how they were recruiting and the people from the outside, how they perceived playing Arkansas,” said Crowe, who lives in Birmingham, Ala., and was a longtime Auburn and Clemson assistant. “The perception was they were mediocre and that perception was reality.”

The Razorbacks opened 2012 against Crowe’s Jacksonville (Ala.) State team from the Ohio Valley Conference and won 49-24.

“When people walked up to me and talked about football, Arkansas always came up and everybody thought they were mediocre,” Crowe said. “They felt like they were no threat to them. That ain’t good.”

Without mentioning Jeff Long, the former Arkansas athletic director who is now at Kansas, Crowe referenced Long’s decision to hire Bielema from Wisconsin.

“This is my one statement about what hiring [at Arkansas] has looked like from my perspective,” Crowe said. “The minute you got so much money in college football programs — gobs of money — you started having athletic directors that sort of acted like accountants. And when they went to hire a head football coach, they were trying to win the press conference.

“Bret Bielema won the press conference, and I’m not going to take shots at Bret. I think he’s a great football coach. But it was not a good fit.”

Crowe indicated Bielema struggled to recruit at the necessary level to compete in the SEC.

“What anybody ought to know is that the athletic director needs to hire somebody that can win the living room,” Crowe said. “Every momma knows when somebody walks in there that fits their culture.”