No, Morris, Musselman won’t get until 2021 if they don’t win enough

There was a column recently by a longtime friend in the media that Chad Morris and Eric Musselman would basically be judged by what the football and men’s basketball teams do in 2021.

Sorry to disagree, but they won’t get that long.

Face it, if Arkansas doesn’t win six football games in 2019, Morris is going to have problems in just his second season. Whether that’s right or not is not up for debate right now.

And, as always, there will be those more patient but the majority of fans are going to be slightly above restless with five wins or less.

Razorback fans aren’t patient in the best of circumstances. The lunatic fringe of the fan base is right up there with the most bipolar in all of college sports, basing the entire fate of the program on every little play.

Throw in the occasional psychotic internet trolls claiming to be fans of LSU and other schools who delight on social media in the negatives of things with the Hogs and, well, you end up with some dysfunctional folks.

It’s not really new, though. Old folks like me remember in 1967 when Frank Broyles had folks grumbling about him when Arkansas was 4-5-1. That was a decade when the Razorbacks had the third best winning percentage in all of college football. It was behind Alabama and Texas, which still rubs folks raw.

By 1975, they were screaming for Broyles the athletics director to fire Broyles the coach. He won the Southwest Conference, the Cotton Bowl and that subsided … until a collapse at the end of 1976 helped him fire himself and bring in Lou Holtz.

That set up a nice little 13-year run where the Hogs went 115-38-3. But even Ken Hatfield had some folks griping because he didn’t have a quarterback flinging the ball around enough and he took a job at Clemson without seeing the place in 1990.

Basketball was a little different, but you still had folks complaining about two Hall of Fame coaches in Nolan Richardson and Eddie Sutton except for one year when the Hogs won a national title (1994).

That title gave Richardson about three seasons before folks started complaining because he wasn’t getting close to another one.

There is a segment of the fans that just like to complain about something all the time.

Broyles the AD shrugged off all the negative stuff when it was the loudest.

“The worst thing of all is if they don’t care,” he was quoted as saying.

Fan apathy is the biggest problem for Morris and Musselman. Attendance at football and men’s basketball is dropped off dramatically. It looks worse because they are playing in environments designed for fan support of teams winning at extremely high levels.

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Combine subpar records with every game in both sports now televised (well, except for usually one game in Little Rock in men’s basketball) and you have a problem getting bodies in seats.

Musselman might get one year. Maybe.

Morris had his last year.

Expectations are not off the charts right now for football. I don’t care what you say if the record is less than 6-6 this year it’s going to be a LOT of noise that Morris is going to have to deal with.

In basketball, I’m not sure Musselman can have a losing record. There hasn’t been one for the Hogs in so long you have to question how well this fan base could deal with one.

And I’m not talking about the SEC schedule. Since the league basically mandated improvement there it’s gotten tougher and this past season showed it.

But Musselman better pile up some wins, especially in some rent-a-wins at Bud Walton in November and December.

Get ready because it’s going to be an interesting year in both sports.

Wins immediately will matter for many fans.

That won’t be longer than a year, either.