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Location's vital as Arkansas tries to ascend

Arkansas coach Bret Bielema watches warmups prior to a game against LSU on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016, in Fayetteville.

There is no doubt that part of what is wrong with the Arkansas Razorbacks is geography.

First, they play in the Western Division of the SEC, the undisputed toughest division in all of football.

All four of their losses -- bad ones, too -- were to ranked teams in the SEC West.

Secondly, Arkansas is a small state and just simply doesn't offer the number of four- and five-star recruits that a school has to have if it is ever going to win the SEC championship, or even the SEC West.

However, the Hogs are not the only school in the country with that challenge. Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and South Carolina are limited as well, but they are fortunate enough to be in the SEC's Least Division.

Oklahoma apparently is not over-run with top-notch recruits, either.

On the Sooners' two-deep, they have one offensive starter from Oklahoma, two on the second team, and on defense they have two starters and three backups.

However, OU has six offensive starters from Texas and two more who are backups. On defense, the Sooners have two starters from Texas and four more who are on the second team. That's a total of 14 on the two-deep from Texas and eight from Oklahoma.

High school football in Texas is huge, and the Lone Star State has the most Division I recruits in the country, by average, every year, followed by Florida and California.

Arkansas ranks 26th, but there is a huge drop-off after the first three.

Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina and Missouri all produce more top recruits than Arkansas. Tennessee includes Memphis, which is like a different state for the Vols, and the Gamecocks are behind Clemson in the recruiting battles.

Obviously, Bret Bielema knows this. He and his staff are working hard in Texas -- where would the Hogs be without running backs Rawleigh Williams and Devwah Whaley -- and other states, and most likely they are using the bait, hey, come play football in the best conference in America.

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When Nick Saban was introduced as the new head coach at Alabama, he was called the best college football coach in America. He responded by saying he didn't know about that, but he was the best recruiter, and the proof is in the pudding.

The Razorbacks lost to Alabama 49-30, but it wasn't as close as the score. In the past five years, the Tide have signed the No. 1 recruiting class four times and was No. 2 the other year.

The other schools that the Hogs lost to also have had good recruiting classes.

Texas A&M, which won 45-24, has been in the top 17 the past five years and was No. 6 in 2014.

Auburn, an easy 56-3 winner, ranks in the top 10 almost every year.

LSU, which dominated 38-10 on Saturday, was No. 18 in 2012, but since then has been Nos. 6, 2, 8 and 5.

Arkansas' recruiting started to slip under Bobby Petrino (and he definitely seems to have learned from that), then came the fiasco with John L. Smith. Bielema came in to stop the bleeding, but he found the program was hemorrhaging.

When you consider the best class at Arkansas in the past five years was 25th in the nation and that was 12th in the SEC, the wins over Ole Miss, Florida and TCU should give pause because all three of those programs have signed top-ranked classes.

Bottom line is the Razorbacks need to be better, especially with a new stadium expansion just starting, and no one knows that or wants that more than Bielema -- who has made some recruiting inroads in Texas and Louisiana and is working to make those roads a little deeper and wider.

Sports on 11/16/2016