HOW WE SEE IT

Coaching Hires Give Hog Fans Way to Move On

It’s a Saturday. Are you having withdrawal from college football yet? Perhaps not. After all, there’s Valdosta State vs. Winston-Salem today in the NCAA Division II championship. Or there’s the Gildan New Mexico Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, where some team is likely to get mashed.

For the really hard-core gotta-be-watchingfootball fans out there, the season marches on. In Arkansas, well, we’ve moved on to what we’re told is the fastest 40 minutes in basketball and dreaming not of a white Christmas, but what kind of team Santa Bielema can put together for next fall.

It feels good to think about what might be as opposed to what was. Ever since Bobby Petrino’s famous Last Ride Into the Sunset, Arkansas fans have in many cases been consumed by what was lost. Fans hoped the 2012 football team’s talent and commitment, expected to be formidable under Petrino, would somehow drive the team to victories no matter who was the interim coach. It wasn’t to be.

Maybe, just maybe, the naming of a permanent coach (if the adjective can accurately describe coaching stints these days) at the University of Arkansas and, perhaps more so, the hiring of Bobby Petrino to be a Western Kentucky University Hilltopper can put to rest the distracting conversation about Petrino’s fall from grace and whether he should or should not have been fired. He was fired. Let’s just accept it, celebrate the Hogs’ new coach and wish Petrino well in his second-chance job as coach of a college program.

Whether he’s paid for his infraction is really a moot point and none of our business. It’s a personal matter between him and his family. The most impressive second chance he appears to be getting is from his wife, and we wish them well.

Back here in Arkansas, Jeff Long hired an outstanding coach who is building a team of coaches to lead the Hogs into the future. We love the potential and can’t wait to see it move into the realm of reality.

It’s worth remembering, too, that football fans revel in healthy (and sometimes not) debate over coaches, play calls and recruiting because, in one sense, it’s a great distraction from the more serious things in life. As all of us were reminded Friday, football and our other “passions” pale quickly in the face of news that reminds us to love life and recognize the things that really matter.

We’re always ready for a wooooo, pig, sooieee, but first, we’re going to go hug our kids.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 12/15/2012

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