With Season Over for Hogs, the Real Coundown Begins

A 20-13 loss to LSU yesterday at Razorback Stadium ended the Arkansas football season at 4-8, a mark that fell far short of preseason expectations.  In retrospect, hopes for nine or ten wins this year were unrealistic at best, but it's still bittersweet when you see how hard the Hogs competed in their final game of the year, for nothing more than pride with no bowl game on the line.

It's hard to measure the frustration Razorback fans have endured with their football program over the past seven months.  Watching Tyler Wilson, Cobi Hamilton, Dennis Johnson and (likely) Knile Davis hit the exit door of their college careers yesterday didn't make it any easier to swallow. 

From the very moment that Bobby Petrino's motorcycle went into a curbside ditch near Elkins late last March, the 2012 season became a veritable throwaway.  Nobody wanted to hear it back in the spring, or the summer either, for that matter, but dreams of a return to the BCS mix for Arkansas were done.  Not that Petrino was the best recruiter, or the best defensive mind, or even the best possible leader of young men.  What he was though was a tremendous offensive coach, a scary motivator and a competitive freak.

Jeff Long had no choice but to do what he did once Petrino had put the program and the University at risk with his reckless behavior.  Whether or not John L. Smith was the best possible replacement can be debated all you want, but why waste your breath?  No one was going to come into Fayetteville and recreate the intimidating mojo that Petrino had just flushed down the drain with him. 

So they took their lumps this year, many times over, with the upset to Lousiana-Monroe in Little Rock setting a terrible tone, only to be followed up by massacres at the hands of Alabama and Texas A&M.  A loss to Rutgers was painful too, as were defeats to both Mississippi schools, Rutgers and South Carolina.

Wins against lowlights Auburn, Kentucky and Tulsa did little to the ease pain, and neither did the ongoing coaching search talk.  Surely 2012 will be remembered as the limbo year for the Razorbacks.  It was the inbetween season where every name under the sun came into the mix as a possible candidate, including some who were so unrealistic as to be laughable.

But such was the state of the Razorback football conversation this year.  Even as the season already fades in the rear view mirror, the anticipated hiring of a new coach within the next week or two will be the focus of the fans, a point for rebirth and reinspiration.  It can't come soon enough.

-JB