PINE BLUFF — The plane ride Tim Horton and Steve Caldwell took from Northwest Arkansas to Pine Bluff late Monday afternoon was a bit more relaxing than it would have been a day or two earlier.
Instead of spending another day curious about the immediate future of Arkansas football, the two Razorbacks assistant coaches boarded a plane at about 4:30 p.m., bound for a Pine Bluff Razorbacks Club function, less than an hour after a team meeting in Fayetteville at which they learned officially that John L. Smith had been hired as the Razorbacks head coach for at least the next 10 months.
The decision by Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long to bring the former Razorbacks assistant coach back gave a group of nine assistants something they hadn’t had since Bobby Petrino was fired April 10 - an assurance that they’ll be around through the Razorbacks’ 2012 football season.
Smith was special teams coordinator at Arkansas under Petrino from 2009 until he left in December to become head coach at his alma mater, Weber State.
“It’s all about putting the Razorbacks first,” said Horton, Arkansas’ running backs coach, at the Pine Bluff Country Club.
“For our staff to be able to stay together and coach this team, we’re really excited about it. ... Because when you lose your head coach at this time of year, you’re worried about having to go find a job when there are no jobs to get.”
Horton and Caldwell, Arkansas’ defensive ends coach, said they had yet to speak with Smith, but both assumed Smith would allow each assistant to remain in their current roles. Caldwell considers that a plus considering what can happen to a coaching staff when a head-coaching change is made.
Caldwell arrived at Arkansas in 2010 after 14 seasons at Tennessee, the last coming in 2008 when Phillip Fulmer was fired after a 5-7 season. The Volunteers then hired Lane Kiffin, who didn’t keep Caldwell or any of Fulmer’s former assistants on his staff.
“Most of the time, when they bring in a head coach, he’s going to bring his own people in,” Caldwell said. “Doing this, in the coaching profession, in [April], that’s not a good time. I think this was just a great hire by Jeff Long.
“It was [a relief] for us personally and our families. A lot of people are involved in these decisions.”
About 200 members of the Pine Bluff Razorback Club filed into the Pine Bluff Country Club on the south end of town Monday, and the hiring of Smith, news of which trickled out through Internet reports earlier in the day and was announced by Arkansas’ athletic department a little after 4 p.m., dominated most conversations.
“We’ve got a new coach,”Horton said to a fan as he entered the country club’s main entrance.
Horton said he was relieved the process is over - for now - but that he and his colleagues were able to ignore any rumors and names mentioned as potential candidates during Long’s 13-day search because they were in the middle of spring practice. That ended with Saturday’s Red-White game.
“You were just focused on doing the job that you do,” he said.
Horton said each assistant coach had individual meetings with Long but that “I don’t know if you would call it an interview.”
He then brushed aside a question gauging his interest in the head-coaching job.
“That’s the past,” he said. “Let’s just move on to this deal.”
Sports, Pages 18 on 04/24/2012