FAYETTEVILLE - First came “We didn’t come to paint.” Then came “Never Yield.” Perhaps it’s time for those who market the Razorbacks to cease using slogans.
Especially since it seems coming off their last outing that the Razorbacks could have come to paint a yield sign.
Last Saturday the South Carolina Gamecocks, favored by a mere six points, inflicted a 52-7 homecoming debacle upon Arkansas at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
“We didn’t come to paint” never made any sense, but because Bobby Petrino said it and was winning and it was something sort of quotable from the humorlessly unquotable coach, the university trademarked it for marketing.
It turned out the Razorbacks painted themselves into a corner.
John L. Smith, the coach that Petrino said actually was the first to say “We didn’t come to paint,” replaced the abruptly fired Petrino in 2012 as interim coach. Smith somewhat presided over a 4-8 collapse of an injury-wracked, veteran team that was picked in the preseason to finish in the top 10 nationally.
“Never Yield,” lifted from the Razorbacks’ fight song, is the title of the Razorbacks’ latest 2013 fund-raising venture. “Never Yield” adorns every informational missive the Razorbacks release.
At this juncture, “Never Yield” seems more satire than slogan.
The Hogs not only have lost four consecutive games, but they have been outscored a combined 41-0 in the fourth quarters of those games.
Not the statistical stuff of never yielding.
First-year Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema, who is accustomed to success with a 68-24 record and three Big Ten championships over the previous seven years at Wisconsin, refused publicly to believe the season would yield something this dire, although some Arkansas boosters sympathetically warned him that it could.
The program may have begun unraveling even before Petrino’s motorcycle crash on April Fool’s Day in 2012 that eventually revealed the scandal that forced his firing.
Bielema didn’t say it, but it’s likely that the pessimistic boosters tactfully mentioned that even before the motorcycle crash there were hints of subpar recruiting and a large, departing 2012 senior class that could make for a lean 2013.
“Everywhere I went,” Bielema said of his practically nonstop speaking schedule from winter into August, “everybody’s very positive but then there would be four or five that said, ‘Coach, we know what you’re getting into. We feel sorry for you.’ ”
While appreciating those boosters’ concerns, Bielema emphasized Monday that he was “pissed” to hear them back then. To his credit, he remains so.
Every Arkansas head football coach this writer has covered since Lou Holtz succeeded Frank Broyles in December 1976 has come in supporting the potential that he inherited. Bielema goes above and beyond, publicly refusing to point fingers, even as it becomes ever more apparent he generally was dealt a thin hand.
“Bret and his guys will need to recruit their way out of it,” South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier said Saturday. “And it’s going to take a little time as we all know.”
At least for this year and the next, the gist of Bielema’s team remains what he inherited. So his only course remains talking up and coaching up what he has.
From that short-term course, Bret Bielema must never yield, and to his credit he hasn’t.
Sports, Pages 19 on 10/16/2013