It wasn’t really surprising when the SEC sent out a press release Friday on the media’s voting at SEC Media Days that put Arkansas squarely on the bottom of the West.
That was pretty much the prevailing view everybody has, including a large segment of the Razorbacks’ fan base more afraid of being let down than having a positive view.
“I’m not going to put a number on it,” Chad Morris said Wednesday when asked point-blank at one point about wins-and-losses.
If he had, it likely would have been the biggest newsmaker to come out of the four days of mostly boredom where the press spends a large amount of time, well, interviewing each other.
But you get the idea Morris feels like they’ve turned the corner in building the “culture,” which may have been the most often-repeated phrase from every coach over the four days.
“Inside our program and talking to our seniors and our leaders, and they want to leave their legacy,” he said. “Getting this program into the post season is definitely a goal of ours, and it’s something we have talked about. We started talking about it 235 days ago, but it was going to take a lot.”
What Morris inherited was a group of players that had little direction, motivation or accountability. When the head coach has a private room in the back of a club down on Dickson Street to sleep off social hour, well, it filters down.
Morris has taken steps in all three of those areas.
“How far do you really want to go with this?” he talked at Media Days about asking everybody in the program. “I’m asking for our football program and our staff to be consistent and to be the best they can be each and every day.”
Like coaches winning the championships these days, Morris has his own process that he’s banking on getting the Hogs back to a level of success. Don’t forget last year, but don’t particularly use it as a baseline going forward.
Morris is changing just about everything.
“It doesn’t happen overnight,” he said Wednesday.
When you’re competing for (and winning) championships, it’s more about that culture word we keep hearing these days. What it means, simply, is the players take accountability for themselves and the other players.
It’s exactly how John McDonnell used to explain piling up all those championships. If there was an issue with an athlete, he often found out about it after it was resolved by the athletes themselves with the leaders taking charge.
There was none of that the last few years at Arkansas. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of the upperclassmen weren’t teaching the exact wrong things.
“The process has gone from being a coach-led team to a player-led culture following three steps we always talk about: I know it. I do it. And I own it,” he said of what he expectins each player to be saying to himself.
The little things usually make the difference in college sports these days. The Razorbacks found themselves falling farther and farther behind, starting over a decade ago. Coaches still trying to make what worked 20-30 years ago in an ever-changing modern world was a path heading downhill and picking up speed.
One coach thought he couldn’t be fired. The other didn’t care with the amount of money he was owed. He didn’t demand the ridiculous buyout after a less-than-mediocre .500 season, but he wasn’t going to turn it down, either.
The result was a snowball rolling down a mountain for a decade and Morris inherited it.
At that point, well, it may have just been better to go ahead and get to the bottom so you could start back up, which may explain last season.
It was a year of cleaning house. The direction it goes this season will say more than last year.
Attitude is a big part of it.
“Our vision is Every,” Morris told the gaggle at Media Days. “The word Every. Every matters. Every rep. Every day of those 235 days, that day one really does matter. What we did on that first day matters and what this year looks like. Everything matters and everything counts.”
He said it last year. It comes back to the accountability thing we mentioned earlier.
The players likely know he means it now.
