Have you got a secret you don’t want anyone in the world to know? No problem. Just tell it to University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long.
The man knows how keep his mouth shut.
Long’s for a new football coach since April, when he dismissed Bobby Petrino for putting his own mistress on the UA payroll and then lyingabout it to his bosses, his team and the fans.
Firing Petrino was the right thing to do, but it also placed Long in a tough spot. Petrino had built a winning program and the fans demanded it continue.
Long knew he needed an established coach with a good reputation to take the job, and also knew he’d never get what he wanted only four months before the start of the next season. So he brought in a former Arkansas assistant with head coaching experience, John L. Smith, to try to hold things together.
It turned out to be too big a job for the aff able and somewhat goofy Smith. Truth be told, the job was probably too big for any coach. A promising season turned into a painful 4-8 slog.
But it did give Long eight months to fi nd the right guy long-term. While he searched, he ran silent and deep. Everyone threw around names of potential Arkansas coaches. Everyone, that is, except the guy doing the hiring.
Long stayed quiet and did a lot of research, but he also remembered a letter he got from a highly successful coach at another school during the fall. The message praised Long and the UA for the handling of the Petrino situation. This was a guy, Long thought, we might want to consider.
As the Smith experiment came to a merciful end in November, the speculation around Long’s search for a new coach intensified. Even more names, allegedly coming from the people in the know, fl ew around.
They ranged from the ridiculous (Jon Gruden) to the sublime (Bill Cowher). Sportswriters, bloggers, talk show hosts and fans took a piece of information here and factoid there and tried to solve the Jeff Long Code. But no one was ever able to get all the elements together. They didn’t know about the letter, or Long’s interest in its author - until Tuesday. That’s when Arkansas shocked the college football world by hiring Wisconsin’s Bret Bielema.
Instead of Gundy or Petersen or Patterson or Miles or any of a dozen other “sure things,” Long hired a guy no one but him had ever considered.
Bielema has the resume, of course: seven straight bowl appearances, three straight Big 10 championships and BCS bowl games and zero seasons with a losing record. His players go to class, generally stay out of trouble and fi nd ways to win.
No one, other than Long, had a clue. Anyone who says different is trying to revise history.
Fans, once they recover from the shock or get over the fact that one of their favorites didn’t get the job, will give Bielema a chance to win their hearts. That’s a pretty simple equation: Win a lot of games.
Bielema got off to a good start Wednesday during his fi rst oft cial appearance as a Razorback, confessing to growing up on an Illinois pig farm, tearing up when talking about his new wife and making a great fi rst impression on his players.
In the meantime, we wonder what else Jeff Long knows that the rest of us don’t.
Well played, Mr. Long. Well played.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 12/10/2012