Success elsewhere hasn’t always been duplicated coaching Razorbacks

You’d think we’d be getting used to these coaching searches at Arkansas, which have resembled picking teams at playschool recess to a lot of the media and fans for the better part of the last decade.

It’s human nature, I guess, to automatically assume a coach that has success in one place can come in and have the same success at a different place.

The reality is that’s just one small piece to the puzzle. Razorback fans should have that figured out by now. That ain’t gonna work here.

Few places are identical. There’s different entrance requirements (and, yes, that comes into play much more often than you think), different interpretations of NCAA and even SEC rules (which often appear to be the starting place for negotiations).

Nothing is black-and-white in the world of college athletics these days. All of it is a huge gray area.

The Hogs have had three football coaches that won national titles. Only Frank Broyles won one here. Lou Holtz got his at Notre Dame after coaching in Fayetteville and Danny Ford won one at Clemson before coaching the Hogs.

Those guys along with Ken Hatfield are in the hall of fame.

Yet just one of them figure things out with Arkansas football for the long haul. After Broyles stepped off the sidelines in 1976, recruiting dipped a little, then took a nosedive.

The Razorbacks’ job is one that you aren’t going to recruit your way out of the hole immediately because there’s not a backlog of Top 10 recruiting classes like coaches inherit at places like Alabama, Ohio State and others. There’s not even a history of consistent Top 20 recruiting classes to build on like at Clemson.

If you don’t believe it, just take a look through the 247Sports.com composite rankings for the last few years. Arkansas has averaged a No. 26 ranking for the last 20 years.

Discounting the interim coaches, that’s four head coaches in that time span.

The Razorbacks have one Top 10 ranking (9th in 2001) and one Top 20 ranking (16th in 2000), according to that composite ranking of all the recruiting services.

You are what you are and the Hogs are never going to consistently be in the Top 20 in the recruiting rankings. If you believe otherwise, that’s called hope.

For a lot of the coaches on the fans’ latest wish list, that fact alone is enough they are not seriously interested in coming to Fayetteville, but they are perfectly willing to float it out there to advance their various agendas at times.

That doesn’t mean you can’t win at Arkansas, though.

Before coming to the SEC, the Razorbacks were the No. 10 program in the country in winning percentage from 1958-1991.

It should be noted, Broyles knew exactly that coming to the SEC was going to knock that down a few notches when he made the decision, but there weren’t a lot of options. He knew change was coming and the Big 12 wasn’t interested in Arkansas, which is what we know now prompted his interest in the SEC.

Before this latest train wreck season, the Hogs were 53rd in the nation in winning percentage since 2000. Under Houston Nutt, Arkansas was 35th in the country (1998-2007). With Bobby Petrino that improved to 26th (2008-11).

Don’t speculate about what might have happened if he could have stayed on a Harley. There are guesses both ways, but his track record says that wasn’t going to continue long.

Since 2011, though, the Hogs are currently at a 38.3 percent winning percentage, which will not even qualify them for a spot in the Top 100.

For those of us that remember when the Hogs were playing at a Top 10 level virtually every year, it is madness that the program has now fallen below Kentucky and Vanderbilt.

That’s NOT just about recruiting.

When Arkansas was winning the key ingredient was a coach that could evaluate players, develop them and, finally, motivate them to play above some concocted rating system.

It was Barry Switzer who said it best a few years ago, talking about how things have changed.

“Bear Bryant was the last coach that could take your players and beat his, maybe Bud Wilkinson before him,” Switzer said. “It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

That’s why this coaching search is about finding the right fit. Consider what Hunter Yurachek has to contend with:

• Instability with two coaches in the last three seasons, three coaches in eight seasons with a revolving door of assistants.

• A program that has never been a Top 20 recruiting program.

• A state that produces few highly-rated recruits each year.

• A program that is not even in the Top 100 in winning percentage over the last eight seasons.

• Playing in a conference where the program has never win a championship. In fact, only six teams have won a conference title in the last 60 years.

• Playing in the toughest division in all of college football that has produced a team that won the national championship six of the last 10 seasons and had one of the two teams playing for the championship nine of those 10 years (in 2011 both teams in the title game were from the SEC West).

If you think money is the answer to get a big-name coach here, you don’t understand anything about that profession. They aren’t broke now where they are and tackling all those issues isn’t something for everyone.

There is some in the coaching circles that view Arkansas a career-killer.

And it doesn’t matter what they’ve done somewhere else. That’s one factor, of course, but not the main one.

Oh, and Yurachek is probably in the position that if he doesn’t get this right, HIS seat is going to get considerably warmer.

Welcome to Football Coach Search 2019.