HOG CALLS

Buy-in ensures track dominance continues

Arkansas coach Chris Bucknam watches Saturday, April 22, 2017, during the John McDonnell Invitational at John McDonnell Field in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE — Salesmen alone aren’t dependent on clients buying what they sell.

So are coaches. College coaches must sell themselves and their program to their administration, boosters and recruits.

But it starts with those they coach buying what they sell.

Great coaches consistently reap great results once what they sell is so established that athletes automatically buy into it.

For the new coach, that first big sale is the most important. Especially when you are a new coach like Chris Bucknam. He came to Arkansas in 2008 from the University of Northern Iowa to succeed 40-time national champion John McDonnell, the greatest college men’s track coach ever and arguably the most successful collegiate coach of all time.

It wasn’t easy selling his ideas to distance runners coached by the greatest, so Bucknam forced no issues.

It did help considerably that Bucknam was joined at Arkansas by his Northern Iowa All-American, Dorian Urey, who would help Arkansas win 2009 SEC Indoor and Outdoor titles and ultimately win an NCAA Indoor 3,000 meter championship.

But to Bucknam’s everlasting gratitude, it helped as much or more that one of McDonnell’s men, SEC champion Scott MacPherson, immediately bought what Bucknam sold.

It set the precedent for Bucknam just like the Dick Booth-coached long jumper Alain Bailey set the precedent for Travis Geopfert. Bailey adapted from Booth, his Hall of Fame former coach, to win an NCAA long jump title for his new field events coach.

The same applies to sprintsvault coach Doug Case furthering the sprinters he inherited, then making a national name coaching two-time NCAA pole vault champ Andrew Irwin before recruiting and coaching 2016 Olympic hurdles gold medalist Omar McLeod and joining Geopfert coaching Bowerman Award-winning U.S. Olympic long jumper/sprinter Jarrion Lawson.

In whatever order — Geopfert-Case or Case-Geopfert — what they sell seems completely bought by Jamaicans Clive Pullen and Kemar Mowatt, the Razorbacks’ best bets to win at this week’s NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore.

Pullen, a senior two-time NCAA Indoor triple jump champion and Jamaican Olympian, has followed Geopfert’s format to recover from a pulled hamstring to qualify on a short approach at the NCAA West Preliminary. Pullen says he’s full speed for a full approach this week.

Mowatt, a junior just last year an obscure transfer from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, transformed under Case to the SEC Outdoor champion and ranked second nationally in the 400-meter hurdles.

Both, Bucknam said, buy what their coaches sell.

Totally buy, both athletes assert.

“I say it over and over,” Pullen said of his UA scholarship. “I am getting paid to execute and he (Geopfert) is getting paid to do all the thinking. Anything that happens is just a reflection of me listening. I am just there displaying what he’s doing.”

Buying into Case dropped Mowatt’s pre-Arkansas 400-hurdles best from 51.13 to 48.79.

“He’s my coach and he knows what I can do,” Mowatt said. “If he says I can do it, I just believe and I just do it.”