5 Reasons Auburn Should be Worried About Arkansas, Part 4

In anticipation of the 2014 season opener, we are counting down the five reasons Auburn should be worried about Arkansas. If you’ve missed any of the first three editions of this series, check them out here:

I know, in Part 3, I railed against ole BERT pretty well. He makes it easy sometimes because of his media persona, and some of the coaching decisions Bret Bielema and his staff made cost them dearly against Auburn last season. However…

4. Bret Bielema is a Very Good Coach – Believe it or Not

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You don’t go 68-24 as a head coach and win the Big Ten three times if you have no idea what you are doing.

Sure, we can talk about how the Big Ten has been down in recent years, and of course, since Bret Bielema showed up in Fayetteville he has been sticking his foot in his mouth at an alarming rate. Hell, he hasn’t won an SEC game yet.

But Bret Bielema is a very good coach.

Things have not been easy at Arkansas. Bobby Petrino left town in disgrace – which wasn’t completely surprising altogether, yet we didn’t exactly anticipate him leaving under such circumstances. Then, John L. Smith – an accomplished head coach in his own right, simply was not able to handle the job. To be fair, though, he didn’t have much of a chance after signing a ten-month contract to be the head coach.

The transition from Petrino to Smith was horrendous, and when Bielema showed up, he was the third head coach in the period of nine months. Regardless of the success a program has had in previous seasons (and the Razorbacks were certainly successful under Petrino), it was a very tough situation for Bielema to enter into.

However, Bielema now has the program headed in the right direction, and he is the right man for the job. At SEC Media Days, Bielema spoke about how far the program has come in his short tenure.

“If you sat down and interviewed my AD, I think he would tell you in every aspect other than wins, you can’t do anything but be happy with what we’ve done,” Bielema said. “We’ve increased GPA, accountability, our APR. All those things are skyrocketing. Our kids aren’t getting in trouble. We’re doing positive things that lead me to believe they’re learning and understanding what we’re asking them to do. When that thing comes full circle, we’re going to start to win. When we win, it’s going to be able to maintain a winning style than this other thing that we’ve been living through.”

Jul 17, 2013; Hoover, AL, USA; Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Bret Bielema talks with the media during the 2013 SEC football media days at the Hyatt Regency. Mandatory Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

In making these comments, Bielema is not simply trying to find a silver lining following an otherwise very difficult season. He lives and breathes stuff like this.

I had an opportunity to see Bret Bielema speak twice at the AFCA national coaches convention in 2011. I was a high school coach at the time, and was fortunate enough to work for a former college coach that understood the importance of such events. I honestly did not know much about Bielema before that weekend, other than he was the head coach at Wisconsin. And, for some reason, I really did not like the Badgers. Bielema changed my mind. I figured out quickly that this guy has “it.”

The first time I saw Bielema was in a pretty intimate setting. He was part of a panel discussion at the graduate assistant forum, sharing his knowledge and insight gained though his career rising from a GA at Iowa, to a position coach on Hayden Fry’s staff, later as a co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State under Bill Snyder, then to Wisconsin as the DC before his hire as the head coach in Madison.

During the discussion, Bielema was honest and open, as he always seems to be, and shared his hardworking values and a commitment to doing things the right way. It made perfect sense in the setting, as there were hundreds of young coaches in the room, most of them GAs at the collegiate level, and a few young high school coaches like myself that dreamed of making it onto a college staff one day.

You don’t go 68-24 as a head coach and win the Big Ten three times if you have no idea what you are doing. Sure, we can talk about how the Big Ten has been down in recent years, and of course, since Bret Bielema showed up in Fayetteville he has been sticking his foot in his mouth at an alarming rate. Hell, he hasn’t won an SEC game yet. But Bret Bielema is a very good coach.

Later during the convention, Bielema was the featured speaker at the General Session, which if you’ve never been there before, is a big deal. Only four coaches speak in the General Session each year, for about ninety minutes each, and they are the complete focus of the entire convention during that time. There are no chalk talk breakout sessions, and the hallways are empty. Thousands of coaches file into a giant space of eight ballrooms that have had the walls removed in order to fit enough chairs. The entire coaching profession is on hand.

That year, Bielema shared the stage with Mark Dantonio, Mike Gundy, and Les Miles as featured speakers. Each was chosen by the AFCA to speak, based largely on their team’s performance in recent seasons. Dantonio had just led Michigan State to an 11-2 record and a 2010 Big Ten co-championship (which they shared with Bielema’s Badgers). Gundy was also coming off an 11-2 season, the best year ever for Oklahoma State – at least until later that year when he would go 12-1. Finally, Miles was another coach whose team won eleven games in 2010, and all he would do in 2011 was win the SEC and play for the BCS National Championship. So, as you can see, these guys can coach.

(Continued on page 2)