Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema has spent time this week at the sEC spring meetings setting the record straight on a number of hot-button issues he has not handled all that well this offseason. He has stuck to his stance on player safety and apologized for some of his previous comments. Now Bielema just wants to be able to focus on the development and rebuilding of Arkansas football. With wins will come respect and a chance for his voice to mean more to those willing to listen.
“I haven’t won a game, so it’s hard to say you know what you’re talking about,” Bielema said in a story by CBSSports.com. “I’m tired of Wisconsin statistics. I’d like to have some Arkansas statistics to brag about.”
Bielema actually is a good coach, and in time he will have Arkansas playing better football. He inherited a mess of a program decimated by the turmoil left behind by Bobby Petrino’s shallow recruiting efforts and John L. Smith doing everything he could to try and keep the S.S. Razorback from sinking. This is far from the position Bielem walked into at Wisconsin when he replaced Barry Alvarez as head coach. Bielema led the Badgers to three straight Big Ten titles, including two victories in the Big Ten Championship Game against Michigan State and Nebraska, and he took Wisconsin to three straight Rose Bowls as a result, but lost all three to TCU, Oregon and Stanford. At Arkansas, Bielema knows he needs some time to put his plans into motion, but he remains focused on a bigger prize down the line.
“I made this move for a lot of different reasons -- obviously assistant coaches salaries and all that jazz, but I just wanted to reboot the battery,” Bielema said. “I’d been at one place for 9 years. I thoroughly enjoyed it, loved every minute of it, I have great memories, great friends and great players. I just needed something to shake up my personal inventory a little bit to get where I needed to be.”
Bielema was also on record of suggesting one of the reasons he left Wisocnsin for Arkansas is because the SEC will be more likely than the Big Ten to field two teams in the College Football Playoff. Will either of those two teams ever be coached by Bielema?
If so, it will be a good day to be a Razorback.