The Arkansas Razorbacks have been taking the the field in some from or fashion since the middle of July, first with walk-through workouts and then adding helmets and shells over the last week.
All of that was the build up for today, when the squad dons full pads for the first time. What was going on in practice before was necessary, especially during a year when there was no spring practice and no organized workouts from mid-March until the second week of June.
The Hogs and other players around the nation needed the last month to reacclimatize and rebuild their bodies and mental attitude for full-on contact that comes when teams strap on pads for the first time in preseason training.
All the work the Razorbacks have done over the the past two months has been to prepare them for what begins today with full-padded work.
Now, that said, when first-year head coach Sam Pittman and his staff begin to put the Hogs through their paces in pads today, it won’t be a bloodbath. No doubt there will be live contact, but don’t expect the meat-grinder approach some coaches used in the past.
Danny Ford’s practices in the 1990s were particularly brutal. He felt the team needed the work to produce toughness; however, his approach with the Hogs while they were transitioning to Southeastern Conference play left some of his squad worse for the wear and tear.
Ford’s goal, of course, was to create toughness by wearing guys down and then building them back up. It’s how he was coached at Alabama in the late 1960s during a somewhat fallow period of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s regime, and it’s how he coached Clemson through a highly successful stretch in the 1980s, which included a national title in 1981.
However, Ford’s tear-them-down-to-build-them-back-up approach only yielded one winning season in five as the Hogs’ head coach. Granted that 1995 team went to the SEC title game on grit and guts, but it couldn’t handle Florida’s overwhelming talent, particularly when Arkansas’ star sophomore running back Madre Hill went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament on the first drive of the game. The Hogs lost miserably, 34-3.
Ford continued his meat-grinder approach in 1995 and 1996, but the Razorbacks lacked experience on offense, particularly at quarterback. Ford also was dealing with the stress over his ailing parents during this period, which no doubt wore on him.
Ford did toughen the Razorback squad that Houston Nutt would inherit in 1998 and 1999, which proved to be the best back-to-back stretch of football for Arkansas in the 1990s.
Nutt’s 1998 team was squarely in the SEC championship picture until letting the Tennessee game at Knoxville slip away late with a fumble that led to the game-clinching touchdown for the Vols.
So why bring up Ford’s tenure as coach now, nearly 30 years later?
Mainly because Pittman and his staff face a very similar rebuilding process to the one Ford’s regime faced in the 1990s.
In a very real sense, the Razorback football program has lost its identity now just like it had in the 1990s after Ken Hatfield felt he had to get out of Fayetteville before then athletic director Frank Broyles chased him out of town. Ironically, Hatfield took the Clemson job in late January of 1990 that Ford had vacated.
Broyles — with his back to the wall because national signing day was fast approaching — violated his principal of not hiring an assistant for a head coaching position by elevating offensive coordinator Jack Crowe to the head coaching position. It was a desperate move that didn’t work out.
Crowe led a team that was picked to vie for the Southwest Conference title to a 3-8 season in his first year as coach. Arkansas bounced back with a 6-6 finish in the Hogs’ final year in the SWC in 1991, before Broyles fired Crowe the day after the 1992 opening-season loss to The Citadel, 10-3.
Broyles elevated Joe Kines to be interim head coach, but looked past the veteran defensive coordinator to hire Ford, whom Kines had brought in as a special assistant after a loss to Memphis to instruct the kicking game, as the next head coach in late November of 1992. Strangely enough Kines stayed on as defensive coordinator under Ford for two more seasons.
Yes, the situation was just as dysfunctional and odd as it sounds.
Pittman’s hire last December wasn’t quite as “juicy” as when Kines was passed over by Broyles to hire Ford, but there are similarities in that Arkansas is a desperate program today like it was when Hatfield exited 1990.
Just as it was a mistake to elevate Crowe to head coach back in 1990, it was a mistake for Arkansas to allow an interim athletic director in Julie Cromer Peoples to hire Chad Morris after the Razorback Board of Trustees and boosters fired athletics director Jeff Long and head coach Bret Bielema in hopes of luring Gus Malzahn from Auburn in 2017.
When the board and the boosters whiffed on Malzahn, they should have secured Hunter Yurachek first as athletics director, and then allowed him to find the new head coach. But they panicked and Morris was hired.
Morris, who is now offensive coordinator at Auburn, was offered to Arkansas as somewhat of a bait-and-switch for Malzahn by super agent Jimmy Sexton, and the Hogs bit hook, line, and sinker. Two seasons of truly miserable football was the result.
The Razorbacks have not won an SEC game in more than two seasons, dating back to Bielema’s 28-27 victory over Ole Miss on Oct. 28, 2017 in Little Rock.
To me it would be poetic justice if the Razorbacks upset Malzahn’s and Morris’ applecart on Oct. 10 when the Hogs visit Auburn, but neither fate nor my druthers have anything to with the outcome of football games.
Pittman and the Hogs have their work cut out for them this year. With the SEC going to a 10-game, conference-only schedule, the Razorbacks aren’t favored in a single game in what is perhaps the most difficult schedule any college football team has ever faced on paper.
Between COVID-19 and an all-SEC schedule packed with all the league’s power-house programs, the Razorbacks face a daunting task.
In Arkansas’ favor, Pittman hired an experienced staff that should serve him and the Hogs well, and the transfer in by former Florida quarterback Feleipe Franks gives the offense a talented and experienced signal-caller to lead the way. Still, the Razorbacks face a daunting task.
The only thing the Hogs can do is face this season one step at a time. Today’s step is strapping on pads and attempting to make incremental improvement for a season that stacks up to be one of the most challenging the Hogs or any other college team has ever faced.
