A Fable of Expectations

This is what it looks like to have no soul. Harsh.

Alas, my dream of Arkansas and Clemson swapping coaches, or a version thereof, evaporated when Tommy Bowden decided to remain in the South Carolina upcountry. Now Arkansas has hired Bobby Petrino, and I'd prefer to sum up the Arkansas/Atlanta Falcons/Bobby Petrino imbroglio as swiftly and cleanly as possible. I'm afraid that's not going to happen. For all the swiftness of the event, there was nothing clean about it. Petrino's yellow opportunist reek is overpowering everything else. I'm hardly going to touch Houston Nutt's foibles, Arthur Blank's naive mollycoddling, or the ineptitude among the higher-ups in Fayetteville (the word on the street is that new Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long never asked permission to talk to any of his candidates save for Jim Grobe). Plainly, I don't trust any situation in which Jerry Jones is the intermediary, and I don't trust any academic institution that has a Pravda man like Rick Schaeffer on retainer to disseminate the official story.

For Arkansas, there are two simple ways to break this down:

Petrino is a good hire because...Arkansas needed to save face after a coaching search that up to this point had seemed both far-fetched and disastrous. Lane Kiffin from the Oakland Raiders to the Razorbacks? Come on. He wasn't going to run to Fayetteville just because his father, Monte, the current Tampa Bay defensive coordinator, was an assistant there in the mid-'70s. Three of the four major candidates linked to the job--Butch Davis, Tommy Bowden, and Tommy Tuberville--had leveraged Arkansas' interest to engineer better deals at home. Wake Forest head coach Jim Grobe eventually turned down the Razorbacks after concluding the insanity and personal intrusions that had surrounded previous UA head coach Houston Nutt were not worth a more lucrative contract. It's rumored that Butch Davis cautioned fellow Arkansas alum Jimmy Johnson that the rewards of the jobs did not offset its headaches. In fine, there was a growing sense that, with their ruthless invigilation of Houston Nutt, untethered Razorback fans had made their bed and now were destined to lie in it. The Arkansas football program would be condemned to a level just above competitive mediocrity.

Mediocrity is the crucial word here. Despite two SEC Championship appearances in the past six years, Arkansas fans felt mired in perpetually also-ran status. They perceived that Houston Nutt had not the intelligence, activity, or moral fiber to lead them to the Promised Land. They prosecuted a witch hunt for Nutt's professional distractions and indiscretions and eclipsed the normal apathy and absenteeism of a disenchanted fanbase by becoming wild and fractious tormentors (see the acquisition of Nutt's cell phone records, sartorial protests to the direction of the program, sarcastic airplane banners flying over the stadium).

A picture of Lenny Kravitz would also have sufficed.

Arkansas has looked these past few years like a nation of incurable lunatics. Sure, Nutt played politics with the Springdale crew, but he had to under pressure from a mob of wealthy and meddlesome local boosters. That one nearby high school could create so much turmoil inside a college--much less SEC--athletic department was patently ridiculous. Frank Broyles should never have admitted the Springdale parents into his office or brooked a single complaint from the no-nothing, juvenile cadre. As for the charge that Nutt never gave Gus Malzahn a fair chance to run his "HurryUpNoHuddle" offense, it might be true: Nutt is at his core a jealous huckster, and his instinct for self-preservation is second only to Phil Fulmer's. Nonetheless, there was no reason to reinvent the wheel with the best tailback tandem in the country. Or with Darren McFadden alone--recent victim of the ESPN Heisman farce. From the outsider's viewpoint, Arkansas overachieved last year thanks to a sympathetic schedule (USC notwithstanding) and the best college football player perhaps in two decades. To expect more was and is foolish. The overall talent pool inside the Natural State is vastly inferior to the likes of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and certainly Florida. In their more traditional recruiting grounds in Texas, the Razorbacks are competing for whatever scraps fall from Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, and A&M. Simply put, Arkansas will never have the athletes, unless they become a national recruiting dynamo of Tennessee's caliber. Thus, four years ago the Hogs welcomed cornerback/safety Michael Grant when UGA denied him admission for improper sexual conduct with another minor (obviously, there are more unseemly, if not illegal, specifics here). And, thus, they yearly scour the JUCO ranks for impact players, always a dicey proposition since those student-athletes end up at junior college for good reason. From the outsider's viewpoint, Arkansas will never outclass the ability of its SEC rivals in quantity and quality. It's only hope of championships depends upon an immaculate brew of luck, good health, strategy, and execution. Consequently, the folks in Arkansas should have been happy with Nutt's winning record and appreciated his knack for cobbling together a dominating offensive line from second-tier oafs. If he had one glaring deficiency as a coach, it was his failure to recruit or develop an outstanding quarterback. (Matt Jones was a fleet giant. Mitch Mustain was a year or two away. I watched him practice his bounce pass against Wisconsin in the bowl game last year. Surprisingly, he found the SEC a little stiffer that his high school league).

So the rest of the SEC has long considered Arkansas fans provincial demoniacs, terminally fixated on the only communal property of the state. In the Deep South and inside Cavalier social sets in places like Atlanta and Nashville, there has been a tendency to attribute the Razorbacks' very literal fanaticism to the lack of culture's tempering influence. Northwest Arkansas is a place of parvenus and the nouveau riche, without the taste to mitigate excessiveness in entertainment, capitalism, and evangelical Christianity. There, it is only progress, no skepticism or sense of the absurd.

Did someone say absurd? Click on it.

If the Razorbacks feel like the red-headed stepchildren since joining the SEC, it's not without justification. A poster on an Arkansas website claimed the other day that he could no longer stomach disrespect from the media in the Southeast, that they never demean Georgia, Florida, or Alabama in the same way. That's not necessarily true, but it's undeniable that the ancien regime of the SEC has no memory of the halcyon days Arkansas fans desperately wish to return to. They were a million years and a million miles away, when Arkansas' face pointed towards Dallas and its butt towards Atlanta. In the SEC there is no precedent and historical imperative for Arkansas to be excellent.

The hiring of Bobby Petrino from the Atlanta Falcons, especially after weeks of administrative folly by the school, gives the Razorbacks the kind of certification they have been starving for. Yes, an NFL coach has left precious Atlanta to become the new head coach at the University of Arkansas. At once it signalizes to the fans that Arkansas is back: a major player, one of the big boys, top flight, etc., etc. (exactly what South Carolina and Alabama had felt). Despite the embarrassing hiccups, look at how sweet a job this was after all. Look at the power the Razorbacks command, pulling an NFL coach before the season ends. The sizzle factor of Petrino is undeniable. No doubt a wave of exhilaration rippled through the Natural State when his name was announced, bated by the fear of another reversal. Petrino is also a good coach who knows offense and, unlike Houston Nutt, thoroughly believes in a vertical passing attack. He will make the Razorbacks multiple and balanced. He took Louisville from relative obscurity to national relevance. Major kudos go to Chancellor White and AD Jeff Long for not pulling a stub (Skip Holtz) out of the bottom of the bag.

Survival this way. Giggity.

Petrino is a bad hire because...I promise I'll keep this shorter. Frankly, it's less complicated.

• This is not an improvement over Nutt in character. Petrino is mercenary, mendacious, and impatient. He's looked for a new job every year in the past five. He conspired in a covert plot to dethrone his former boss Tuberville at Auburn (see Bobby Lowder and Plane-gate). He lied about his commitment to the Falcons and then ran out the next day. He lied that he had never had contact with Arkansas before signing a contract with them. Strictly factual perhaps, but his agent has been a busy man. You can't trust him. It's worse than Sabanic; it's Petrinoesque. Oh yeah, and he is a LIAR. L-I-A-R. He never once mentioned Arkansas to any of the top brass at the Falcons when questioned directly about his future. Despite last night's televised Hog Call, he does not really care about the Razorbacks.
  
• He won't tolerate the shenanigans that have plagued Arkansas the past few years. This is a good thing, but it also means he will not suffer the particular Hog brand of crazy. For a man with a wandering professional eye, a breath of wind may cause him to jump ship again. What about a bacon-flavored acid bath?
  
• When the going gets tough, the tough bail. How many people had made commitments to the Falcons and Atlanta based on Petrino's being there? I cannot repeat enough that he didn't even finish a full season in his contract. Look, Vick was an out and out fiasco. But as Falcons owner Arthur Blank said today, you don't leave the golf course just because the first two holes didn't go well.
  
• Arkansas does not have the personnel for a multiple offense. If McFadden and Felix Jones both leave, the talent will be immeasurably degraded. With this team and Texas, Florida, and the usual foes on next year's slate, instant success is not at hand. Arkansas fans did not just get an "offense genius" from the pros so they could wait a few more years.
• As an Arkansas fan in Atlanta said on the radio, Petrino shouldn't have any trouble transitioning back to college since he's been running a college offense with the Falcons all year.
• Louisville was solid before he arrived. The school accepts student-athletes liberally. Is Petrino that good? How will he fare with tighter academic restrictions (ahem) and against more robust opposition? How will he deal with all those fat, wealthy hands (Jim Lindsey, the Walton clique and claque, et al.)?
• The consensus among Falcon fans and football gurus is that Petrino is pouty, petulant, and inflexible and did a piss-poor job of coaching his first NFL season (see Steve Spurrier).

  Joey Harrington discovered he would not start the next game, after leading the team to two consecutive victories, from reporters at a press conference.

  He might have even stuck around had he not let his relationship with his players erode. Team members thought him a smug, condescending jerk. Among players and fans, the word "cancer" was thrown around.
• Petrino is an abysmal communicator with players and the media. Joey Harrington discovered he would not start the next game, after leading the team to two consecutive victories, from reporters at a press conference.
  
• Petrino can't utilize his NFL cache in recruiting because he washed out before completing a year.
• Petrino is not a long-term solution. His professional philandering prevents that.

And the conclusion is...this is a good, albeit precipitous, hire in terms of PR and restoring faith in the university's administration. However, the negatives outweigh the benefits in image. Petrino right now is a mirage. His NFL resume is specious. His merits as a coach are questionable in light of Louisville's featherweight schedule and utter defensive collapse this year. There is growing suspicion that the latter owes more to Petrino's inadvertence to the defensive side of things than the absence of his coaching majesty. And he may leave as soon as another program comes calling. Then what?

I would have preferred to see Auburn's defensive coordinator Will Muschamp get the job. He is young but he too has NFL experience. He's also served as DC for LSU's 2003 National Championship team.

I like Muschamp because of his youth, his energy, and his enthusiasm. He seems to be a straight arrow. He would devote himself to Arkansas and do it the right way, sustaining a program for years to come. The next two seasons could be lean, but Muschamp would still be lighting up living rooms across the Heartland and Deep South (he's from Georgia, Petrino from Montana) with his infectiousness and promise to young men that they would grow and win together.



At least we no longer have to witness Petrino's forlorn visage on the Atlanta sideline. The Falcons "now have one less quitter to worry about." Muschamp will get his shot somewhere. Everyone can be happy for the time being. Selah.