Ryan Silverfield didn’t get to pick his timing.
He walked into SEC Media Days in Tampa on Thursday carrying the weight of an Arkansas program that’s posted three 2-10 seasons over the past nine years.
That’s not a stat you can spin. It’s just bad, and Hog fans know it better than anyone.
Every summer, most in the media try to find nuggets of optimism for the fans. Most of it is just encouraging hope and talking about how close things were to being something else.
Almost is the most useless word in the dictionary. Almost doesn’t matter.
So Silverfield didn’t try to spin it. Instead he tried something different. He tried to close the book on it entirely.
New coach with an old problem
Arkansas hasn’t strung together a season with fewer than six losses more than once in the last decade, and that lone bright spot came back in 2021.
Everything else has been a struggle, capped by last year’s 2-10 finish. That’s through two head coaches under one athletic director that admitted he didn’t give the last coach the resources to win but fired him anyway.
For a fan base that grew up on Frank Broyles stories and Darren McFadden highlights, watching the Razorbacks sit near the bottom of the SEC has gotten old fast.
Three losing seasons like that in nine years isn’t a rough patch anymore. It’s a pattern, and patterns are hard to break.
Silverfield knows it. He just doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Last year has absolutely zero to do with what we’re doing moving forward,” Silverfield said. “We (have) limited retention from staff altogether and players.
“Ultimately, those players that chose to come back are the ones that are going to help us make a difference moving forward, but what happened in the past?
“I’ve got so much respect for the history of Arkansas football, but the recent struggles have nothing to do with us moving forward. That’s in the rearview mirror. We’re looking forward.”
Trying to change the conversation
That line about the rearview mirror hasn’t been a one-time thing either. Silverfield leaned on it again Thursday when someone asked about the biggest challenge facing his rebuild.
That was mostly for the folks not around the program on a regular basis. They’ve heard it before.
“The biggest thing right now is people want to continue to talk about what occurred in recent history,” he said in his media room session. “We want to talk about the history of Arkansas. Let’s talk about Darren McFadden, right? Let’s talk about the ’64 national championship team.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the obstacles we’re facing in the short term right now … is what’s occurred over the last couple of years.”
He didn’t stop there, either.
Silverfield said the goal is simple to make sure nobody’s asking about last year’s record when he’s back at this podium 12 months from now.
Resources there, but wins haven’t followed
Part of what makes the losing so frustrating for Razorback fans is that Arkansas isn’t short on resources.
The program sits close to Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, three Fortune 500 companies that could be pouring money into the NIL space.
Instead, Arkansas was slow to get moving once NIL became part of college football, and it cost the program momentum right after that promising 9-4 season in 2021.
Silverfield says he’s already working to change that.
“Every time I have a microphone in front of me, I’m going to continue to talk about how do we get Walmart on board?” he said Thursday. “You think about that headquarters, Tyson’s Chicken.
“John Tyson’s been tremendous to us and the other athletic programs, and obviously the entire Northwest region. J.B. Hunt. How do we get them involved?”
Long wait for double-digit win season
Arkansas hasn’t had a double-digit win season since 2011. That’s 15 years and four head coaches without hitting that mark, which is a hard thing to admit for a program with the history the Hogs have.
Silverfield can’t fix that overnight, and he’s not pretending he can.
What he can do is show up every day and keep pointing forward instead of backward. It’s a modest pitch, but it’s an honest one, and honest might be exactly what this fan base needs to hear right now.
Besides, Silverfield really doesn’t have many other options these days.
Arkansas opens the Silverfield era Sept. 5 against North Alabama at 3:15 p.m. on SEC Network
Nobody in Fayetteville expects a finished product on day one. What they want is a program that finally feels like it’s headed somewhere again, even if it takes time to get there.
In other words, Silverfield’s pitch is just keep the hope alive because he hasn’t got much else to offer.
Key takeaways
- Arkansas has posted three 2-10 seasons in the last nine years and hasn’t had a double-digit win season since 2011
- Silverfield spent SEC Media Days deflecting questions about last year’s record and pushing fans to focus on the future
- The Razorbacks open the season Sept. 5 against North Alabama at 3:15 p.m. CDT on SEC Network
