Cataloging a dreadful UA decade
LITTLE ROCK — With football season over, the Arkansas Razorbacks can get on with Christmas shopping. The worst team in the Southeastern Conference has one pressing need: a head coach.
A decade of football that Arkansas began with consecutive 10-win seasons, once climbing to No. 3 in the national polls, ends in disaster, disarray and dysfunction. Missouri, winning 24-14 Friday at War Memorial Stadium, permits Arkansas to close the books on back-to-back
10-loss seasons after none since football became an on-campus sport at UA in 1894.
The depths to which Razorback football has sunk are dramatic, yet occurred virtually overnight.
Bret Bielema became the first UA football coach to win his first two bowl games when Arkansas beat Texas (Texas Bowl) in 2014 and Kansas State (Liberty Bowl) in
2015. A surprise choice to get UA’s house in order after Bobby Petrino left in disgrace and interim coach John L. Smith blundered through the 2012 season, which Arkansas cracked the top 10 early, Bielema was fired after going 3-9 in 2017, within weeks that athletic director, Jeff Long, who brought him from Wisconsin, also lost his job.
The program cratered under Chad Morris, the misguided choice of an interim athletic director no longer at UA. Firing Morris after 24 games was untidy but necessary, if for no other reasons than he could not motivate and could not handle quarterbacks. He lost the fan base long before ex-Hog quarterback Ty Storey, one of 30-something players to leave the program in Morris’ tenure, engineered a blowout victory at Fayetteville in November for his new team, Western Kentucky.
Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek, ending the Morris misadven
ture, promoted Barry Lunney Jr., in charge of tight ends, to interim head coach. It was written here then that Razorback Nation might have to look somewhere beyond the scoreboard for encouragement, which proved painfully true on the road against top-ranked LSU (56-20) and on a neutral site against Missouri.
Missouri entered War Memorial Stadium with nothing at stake except pride, the NCAA in midweek denying its appeal to become bowl eligible at 6-6 if it could beat Arkansas. Missouri, frankly, played like a team unworthy of a bowl bid. But with some kids from Fayetteville and another ex-Hog coming up big, the Tigers didn’t have to be supermen to beat Arkansas for the fourth year in a row, giving Mizzou a 5-1 record in the series since joining the SEC.
Barrett Banister had six catches for 60 yards, game highs in both categories. Quarterback Taylor Powell, who like Banister is a redshirt sophomore and played at Fayetteville High, came on in the second half and passed for 105 yards, completing eight of 14 after starter Connor Bazelak went seven for nine. Senior Jonathan Nance, who transferred from Arkansas last year, caught a 10-yard touchdown pass from Powell with 8:47 left that set the final margin.
Junior Jack Lindsey, with his impeccable Razorback bloodlines, became the fifth Arkansas starting quarterback of the year. Lindsey only went 10 of 26 but his first two completions, 19 yards to Trey Knox and 10 yards to Grayson Gunter, went for touchdowns.
Carrying four times for 50 yards, Lindsey was crunched a time or two on one late drive but earned respect from coaches and players alike for courage under fire. “He’s got a future in college, no doubt about it,” Lunney said. (No one can explain why Lindsey, who played at Springdale High and is usually the first to raise his hand at quarterback meetings, took so long to get on the playing field.)
Gunter, a junior tight end who released into the left flat on the scoring play, gave Arkansas (at 13-10 in the third quarter) its first lead since 20-17 late in the fourth at
Kentucky in Week 6. That 24-20 defeat to a marginal SEC team, following a week off after a commendable effort against Texas A&M, left Yurachek suspicious that Morris had lost control of the squad. A&M was the last opponent against which Arkansas collected an interception until freshman Greg Brooks Jr. took one off Powell early in the third quarter, setting up the Hogs’ go-ahead TD Friday.
Missouri regained the lead on an eightplay drive of 84 yards, sophomore Tyler Badie getting the last three yards, and went 64 yards, also in eight plays, for the insurance touchdown. Leading by two scores, the Tigers teed off on Lindsey, who along with Ben Hicks went 11 of 31 for 77 yards and converted four of 13 third downs, which won’t get it done.
Hicks, who started the season opener Aug. 31 against Portland State, mopped it up and almost ended his Razorback career in a manner that would have been symbolic of the season and the decade. His fourthand-10 toss from the Hogs’ 26 was batted high in the air and almost collected on the run for a pick-six Missouri touchdown that would have covered a double-digit betting line up to 14 1/2 points in some shops.
Dutifully answering questions in the locker room, some of his interrogators in the same places as when he quarterbacked UA from 1992-95, Lunney nutshelled it nicely after the announced 33,961 (tickets distributed) filed out from the Hogs’ only Little Rock game of the year.
“We’re not a great football team right now,” he said. “I said when I got the job that it was critical to improve every aspect of our program. You might have heard me in the locker room challenging our players to be grown men and accept responsibility.”
Lunney’s name doesn’t surface much when prospective successors to Morris are mentioned. He steered clear from that subject Friday other than to say, “I know that God has plans for me. I just look forward to seeing what he has in store for me.”
The new man inherits a program that went completely off the tracks in the last years of Bielema and the 24 games of
Morris. Arkansas ends the decade with 19 consecutive SEC defeats since an October 2017 conquest of Ole Miss. That is also the Razorbacks’ last victory over a team from one of college football’s five major conferences. Some of the nonconference defeats — San Jose State and North Texas — were particularly howling.
In any given year, Arkansas does not produce enough NCAA Division I-caliber athletes to meet its needs, increasing the burden upon a school with such a low national image to recruit out of state. With football participation dropping nationwide over safety concerns of parents, there is no guarantee that the University of Arkansas ever can be a consistent national power on fall Saturdays. Arkansas fans should learn to appreciate an 8-4 season if it ever has another one.
Meanwhile, Christmas season is upon us and Arkansas, as it seems to do so often lately in so many sports, is shopping for a coach again. Be advised that, as with some holiday presents, some assembly will be required.