Arkansas fans haven’t had much of a summer to kick back, relax and just enjoy some downtime before another season.
The magical run of the Razorbacks in the College World Series brought fans to July, SEC Media Days in the middle of the month kicked things off and now, about two weeks later, football practice is starting.
Along with it more of a semblance of what I consider football weather. Maybe it’s remembering two-a-days in the sweltering heat and humidity of Southeast Arkansas high school football, but THAT is football weather.
If you were lucky you needed long sleeves by the end of the season.
Razorback fans had a June filled with emotional swings, going from the height of excitement to the depths of despair in the length of time it took a high foul ball in Omaha to fall harmlessly to the ground in the middle of three players.
That is emotionally draining.
Add to that the fourth football coach in 10 years and folks are just now starting to ramp up some enthusiasm for the season that will now accelerate to the Sept. 1 opening against Eastern Illinois.
It will be a month of predictions, guesses, hopes and fears all wrapped into about 27 days.
The truth is none of knows. We may think we know, but we don’t really even know what we don’t know at this point.
But that’s part of the fun, right?
A record recruiting year
As of this writing, the Hogs are ranked No. 21 in the country in the 247Sports.com composite recruiting rankings.
The number of top 500 players Arkansas has committed is the second highest in school history and those who were questioning Chad Morris and his staff’s ability to recruit are having to re-think that now.
Now they aren’t all signed, sealed and delivered just yet, but this staff is doing it differently.
“This staff is more aggressive in recruiting,” tight ends coach Barry Lunney said this week.
If you’ve paid attention to Razorback football, that is as clear of a statement as anything that’s ever been said. No one ever accused Bobby Petrino of being a great or aggressive recruiting, John L. Smith was insignificant and Bret Bielema started off dazed and confused, which turned to bewilderment as the entire landscape of the recruiting game was changing as he was coming to a league he knew nothing about.
Morris goes hard and fast at everything.
And it’s paying off with just a few months to go before the first signing date.
High school coaches have done pretty well moving up
Since Morris’ hiring in December, there have been a few in the national media taking shots at his comments about being a high school coach.
Well, there have been a few, including one who took his high school system all the way into coaching immortality.
In 1931, a high school turned to one of their own and 24-year-old Paul Brown did things his way, creating a lot of what is now considered standard practice in football.
That was where the coach calling offensive plays by shuttling players in with the new play started. He emphasized quickness over strength and over, recruiting players from within the school and he invented something many considered baffling — a playbook.
His last six years, they lost one game, took six state titles and outscored opponents 2,393-168.
He left for Ohio State, where he took a playbook, focused on quickness and even adopted the 40-yard dash as a means of measuring speed of football players.
They improved the first year, going 8-1-1 and won the national title their second year, then World War II interrupted everying, Brown ended up in professional football and pretty much created the foundation of the game played today from junior high to the NFL.
High school coaches can move up the ladder, but only special ones are successful. Art Briles and Gus Malzahn may be the two most recent ones to do it successfully.
We’ll find out if Morris gets added to the list.
