Morris’ situation now looks in some ways like Hatfield’s in ’84

In the modern-day history of Arkansas football, it’s interesting to compare the situation Chad Morris inherits with other coaches.

That takes into account what was thought at the time of the talent available, any other problems and how he dealt with it.

As a forwarning, my opinion differed at the time of some of the changeovers. That opinion was based on talking to former coaches and players that have a good track record of judging these things.

And we’re not going back into the one-platoon days. Things are so different now there’s probably not a single aspect of college football today like it was 40 years ago, much less farther than that.

For us oldtimers, we remember when the 1960’s were called modern-day football, but that’s now simply history. For that reason, we’ll start it with Lou Holtz taking over the reins after Frank Broyles 19-year run after the 1976 season.

Because Holtz started off 11-1 and No. 3 in the country in 1977, folks tend to forget he inherited a team that had academic and racial issues, among others.

But that team did have a tremendous amount of talent and while some in the media were making preseason excuses for an average year, you had the feeling it was going to be a big season in the summer.

No, there’s not that kind of talent walking around for Morris and his staff. For the youngsters, that 1977 team had one NFL Hall of Famer on the roster defensively and several other really good players that simply hadn’t played up to their talent level in 1976.

Word of Broyles’ retirement breaking just past the midway point when they were down to the third-string quarterback just added to the confusion.

Okay, scratch that one.

Jack Crowe took over a team that he admittedly was scrambling to hold together after the announcement of the Hogs’ leaving the old Southwest Conference to join the Southeastern Conference a couple of years.

“Half of the team was ready to quit when they heard that,” Crowe said last summer. “About 75 percent of the team was from Texas and they didn’t like the idea of not playing games there.”

Crowe scrambled and got fired before ever coaching an SEC game. Joe Kines sort of used duct tape and chewing gum in 1992 before turning it over to Danny Ford for 1993.

Ford had served as, well, a consulting assistant coach during the disastrous last 10 games of the 1992 season and said later Arkansas didn’t have enough players to compete in the SEC.

Houston Nutt took over in 1998 and the change in direction from the coaching staff made a huge difference to a group of talented players who had seriously under-achieved under Ford for a variety of reasons.

Nutt led the Hogs to a hot start before blowing a game against Tennessee on the road and literally stumbling to a 9-3 finish.

What does compare with Morris’ situation this season is the total change in the atmosphere. Nutt brought in a similar high-energy, positive approach that Morris has injected into everything around the football program. Not sure the talent level is as high now as it was in 1998.

Bobby Petrino inherited a 2008 team that had suffered a little in recruiting and losing a ton of talent (Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, Peyton Hillis, etc.) and the program had been virtually split down the middle in controversy for a couple of years.

Nevertheless, even the Great Playcaller managed to coach a team with 7-5 or 6-6 talent to a 5-7 record that took a miracle win over LSU in Little Rock to get there. That was the first clue of Petrino’s lack of people skills.

When Bret Bielema came in for the 2013 season, he had a new direction and a new way of doing things.

Instead of trying to figure out a way to win games with what he had, he went ahead and dismantled it, but did blow some games he should have won (blowing late leads that continued to plague his five-year tenure).

Nope, completely different situation for Morris.

What is more than a little similar is Ken Hatfield’s homecoming in 1984, taking over a team that was 6-5 the year before and a lot of talented high school players left the state.

Hatfield and his staff more or less shrugged and got down to work. They had less at Air Force where they’d just won 10 games. Sound familiar?

He came in with a sense of urgency. There wasn’t any rebuilding. Hatfield expected to win from the start.

“He was going to do whatever it took to win that first year,” said quarterback Greg Thomas earlier this week. He was a freshman on that first team.

Morris gives off the same vibe.

Oh, he says they still have a long way to go. Morris hasn’t exactly said what that destination is, but the result he’s shooting for isn’t a 6-6 record.

When Morris says that, the guess here is he’s talking about competing for championships. He’s going to do whatever he has to for wins this season and you get the idea he has a sense of urgency not seen in Fayetteville in awhile.

Playing for the title probably won’t happen this year, to be honest.

But this team should win at least six games without a lot of breaks. Some like to warble on about Colorado State, but they’ve got more questions on offense after spring practice than the Hogs. They haven’t played defense in recent memory, either.

They could win seven or eight. Maybe more, depending on how things break across the SEC West. It’s a division with three brand new coaches and one who was on an interim basis last year (Matt Luke at Ole Miss) and another who was an interim coach the year before (Ed Orgeron at LSU).

It’s amazing what a change in attitude can do. Moving a couple of players to a position where they can be more successful is part of it. The attitude is another.

As one longtime observer said in the spring of 1984 when Hatfield took over from Holtz, “we’ve replaced nonsense with sense.”

People tend to forget this team was close. Bielema kept saying it all year and he was right. They probably should have won games against Texas A&M, Mississippi State and Missouri. They could have beaten TCU.

Add those wins to 4-8 and you end up with 8-4 or 9-3. Morris knows this. He’s likely seen every game by now. Probably a couple of times. He also knows he wouldn’t be here if the little things had been done in those close games.

Hatfield knew that, too, in 1984. They lost two games by a total of three points each.

He changed the attitude, the offense, the defense and took care of the little details. It turned into a 7-4-1 team that didn’t lose a single game by more than six points (and one of those came in the Liberty Bowl against Auburn and Bo Jackson).

A lot of that 1984 team looks familiar these days.