Apparently several online news outlets have waited until the Arkansas bandwagon got rolling full steam … now they’re throwing themselves under it.
No, there has been no official announcement from anyone with the UA.
But everyone has suspected for weeks that Bret Bielema will be fired. The questions started back in September, then picked up steam in October a simmering calm after one-point wins over bad teams and now are back at full throttle.
Bielema has the Hogs at 4-7 this season with a game against Missouri on Friday. The Tigers have an offense that’s breaking scoreboards and a suddenly effective defense.
It doesn’t look good. Missouri will be favored. They are already a 65.9 percent pick in ESPN’s FPI rating, which is remarkably accurate.
A loss drops Arkansas to 4-8 in a season of discontent that started the second week of the season for many fans when they fell apart in the final half of the fourth quarter against TCU.
Bielema’s problem is he doesn’t have a single big time marker in his time at Arkansas. He is currently 29-33 overall and 11-28 in the SEC. That is the lowest SEC percentage of wins since the Hogs came to the league in 1992.
In all that, though, is an even more amazing statistic that I wasn’t aware of.
In all games against Power 5 opponents, Bielema is 14-32. One game shy of half of Bielema’s wins have been against non-Power 5 teams.
With an 8-22 record in games against SEC West opponents, the only team he has a winning record against is Ole Miss. He has never beaten Alabama or Texas A&M. He’s only beaten Auburn and Mississippi State once each.
If LSU and Ole Miss had bothered to do a moderate amount of preparation in 2014 and 2015 he might not have a couple of those wins.
But, I’m sure Bret would be quick to point out, they were close on so, so many occasions in those games.
That will be penned on his Arkansas monument: “He was close a lot.”
But he hasn’t been fired yet.
Some online news outlets are reporting that a site said “it appears that Arkansas is ready to move on from Bret Bielema.”
The only shocking thing about that is, well, everybody in Arkansas knew that a month ago.
It’s just a matter of days, folks.
And, of course, that starts an entirely new conversation.
