Comments on: Hogs Turn To Smith; Smith Turns On Alma Mater; Some Turn On Hogs And Smith

By: emo king

emo king — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:12:06 +0000

@John at MrSEC
Some yes, most maybe. All coaches. Can’t go their. i.e. Richt, Mark, UGA. Every time you go off on one of your coaches aren’t loyal rants, I think about him and go “nope John, not all of them.”

By: freestate

freestate — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:15:53 +0000

The bad news is even if Arkansas has a really good season coach Petrino will get another job offer and will come get most of his staff.So keep the new coach but the staff might bail at seasons end.

By: Mith242

Mith242 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:44:55 +0000

For Arkansas I think it’s a good move. But Long did burn up some of that good PR he got a few weeks ago. But I think there was pressure to keep the rest of the coaching staff together and really try to make something of this upcoming season with the players that are left. Speaking as an Arkansas fan I think it’s a good move. But even I have to admit I really do feel bad for Weber State. I do think sometimes things come up and you can’t predict what will happen if a big opportunity falls in your lap, like it did for John L Smith. But I think Arkansas has to realize there’s going to be some bad PR involved with this type of move.

By: Lupin

Lupin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:51:14 +0000

@John at MrSEC I understand the loyalty part, but I also understand looking at retirement from a year or two away. That extra $500,000 can easily get you $25,000 a year forever. Tax free. And it’s a lot easier to put money away when you don’t have to sweat paying your bills.

No, after taxes and expenses it won’t be 500k but it will be close. JLS will be 64 in November and is a flesh and blood human being with real life needs, not some character in a TV show. Perhaps those of us whose lives are wrapped up in this soap-opera called football should take a step back every once in a while.

By: Fayettechill14

Fayettechill14 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:28:35 +0000

Alright John, good article overall. But let me give you this:

Think back to 4 1/2 months after you started MrSEC.com. Now imagine that you were offered a new job that included all of the following:
-A pay increase of five times your current annual salary (not including incentives)
-Coworkers that include a ton of your favorite associates from past jobs
-A ton of inside sources EVERYWHERE, great technology, basically the no-loss perfect situation to walk in to
-(in John L’s case) A chance to redeem yourself to the sports media world for an embarrassing failure of your past (Michigan State 2004-2006)

Would you take this job?

I like ESPN writer Dan Wolken’s Tweet earlier: “Some people just never “get” that coaches look at their jobs just like we look at our jobs. You get a better opportunity? You go.”

By: HogFanTN

HogFanTN — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:19:22 +0000

@John at MrSEC John, you turned down 6 times the amount of money out of loyalty??? Did you end up leaving that company at some point or are you still working for them in some capacity? Your turning down jobs is a little bit different than this-like apples and mangos. I laugh every year around week 15,16 or 17 in the NFL when a coach gets canned. The players don’t care-they’re glad he’s gone. The fans don’t care either. The owner’s happy he can find a new guy to win. But if you turn that around and the coach leaves, oh my lands! It’s an atrocity. Why can’t folks (read: media of all sorts) understand coaches leave and get fired and both are ok? It’s happened everywhere. Mike Shula wasn’t shown too much loyalty, yet if he left for another job the year before getting fired, he would have been roasted. Everyone will complain because that’s what people do. It’s business and a lucrative business at that. Things happen. The kid at Weber St. understood it, why can’t you and everyone else. He’s 22 or younger.

By: monkeygrassyass

monkeygrassyass — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:54:51 +0000

As someone eloquently said yesterday, this move is like a squeeze play in baseball. It gets the 2012 season across the plate, and Arkansas can swing for the fences in December.

As for the morality of the John L. Smith hire… there are good, rule-abiding, loyalty-preaching coaches that are shown the door before their contract expires every year. Not necessarily because they’re bad coaches (Donnan, Tubberville, Fulmer, Bowden) but because they aren’t winning enough. Or they aren’t beating the right team. In this fickle world of big money athletics, coaches reserve the right to pursue a better gig whenever they choose — it’s the nature of coaching at this level. Recruits know this. Athletic Directors know this. FCS schools know this. For some reason, many writers hold college football coaches to this ridiculous standard of loyalty reserved for priests and politicians.

Football players come to Arkansas for the chance to beat Alabama, Auburn, LSU, etc.. With this coaching staff teaching the X’s and O’s, you could hire that guy from the Bud Light commercials to attend press conferences and deliver locker room speeches. I don’t agree that Jeff Long should’ve limited the opportunity to coach this championship-caliber team to only those who were unemployed or currently on staff. Tyler Wilson, Knile Davis and company deserve better.

John, should you get the opportunity to write for ESPN or SI or CBS or TMZ or LMNOP and have to pull the plug on MrSEC.com, I hope you know that we all will understand. Really… it’s okay.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:20:25 +0000

@omahahog
Agree with omahahog. It’s bad for Weber State, very unfortunate. But the moralizers in the media never put these ‘Once-In-A-Blue-Moon’ events into the proper context. Like the oversigning mistakes some schools have made. Those schools are demonized without acknowledgement that 99% of the time signing committments are honored. 99% in any endeavor is as good as it will ever get in this world. Since Smith jilted his school, the blanket demonization of the values in college football goes out by all the holier-than-thou scribes. It’s as predictable as the sun coming up.

By: John at MrSEC

John at MrSEC — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:02:34 +0000

omahahog…

Agree that people take better jobs in most cases, but I’ve turned down gigs out of loyalty in the past. And I didn’t have 85 players, their families, a host of assistants and their families to think about.

Coaches are a different breed.

Just my take.

Thanks for reading,
John

By: RazorJamon

RazorJamon — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:44:26 +0000

razorjamon One very minor correction, he actually had worked with Paul Haynes at Mich St as well, so Johnson is the only new face. The biggest negatives for me are that this puts recruiting in a lurch until probably December but on the other hand Arkansas has only had one Top 20 recruiting class (by Rivals rankings) even with Petrino’s success so who knows what effect that has. The other obvious negative is that with the interim title and all of Smith’s ties to Petrino, it doesn’t really change the focus away from that story as much as a lot of people probably would have liked. That being said, if (as his contract implies) he’s giving over full control of play-calling to the coordinators and dealing with administrative issues and the press for these 10 months, maybe it works out. A lot of Arkansas fans will judge this move at the end of the season, and hope for the best in the mean time.

By: omahahog

omahahog — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:33:37 +0000

I do laugh a what Dodds, Wojciechowski, and the other pundits say. They would both swap jobs in a heartbeat if the conditions and money were right and could care less if it was their current employer who gave them their first break. I do feel bad for Weber State and their kids. It is what it is.