Lunney knows plenty about interim times

FAYETTEVILLE — Barry Lunney Jr. has been through what his players are going through now.

One game into his freshman season in 1992, Lunney’s head coach at Arkansas, Jack Crowe, was fired following a 10-3 loss to The Citadel. The Razorbacks’ defensive coordinator, Joe Kines, was promoted to interim head coach and oversaw the remainder of Arkansas’ season.

Lunney was the team’s starting quarterback for the final six games that year. He famously helped the Razorbacks a 25-24 upset of No. 4 Tennessee on the road in his first start and went on to start 40 games in his career, including the SEC Championship Game as a senior.

The former team captain is leading the Razorbacks again, this time as interim head coach following Chad Morris’ dismissal Sunday. Morris was the first Arkansas head coach to be fired during the season since Crowe 27 years ago.

Those who know Lunney think he is cut out for his task over the next few weeks, trying to hold together a team that has little to play for except pride, and whose focus will be on futures that in many cases will be elsewhere.

“I know he remembers - as everybody who had anything to do with that team - you remember those days very, very vividly,” said Louis Campbell, who as an assistant coach recruited Lunney at Fort Smith Southside and was on the 1992 Arkansas staff. “He knows what those players are feeling like, he knows what they’re going through. He knows they’re sitting there thinking, ‘Do I stay? Do I go? What do I do?’ He’s been there and he’s felt that like no one else can other than a player that goes through that. He can draw from all those resources. To me, he’s the very logical person to fill that position.”

This is the third time Lunney has been through an in-season coaching change. He was co-offensive coordinator at San Jose State in 2004 when Fitz Hill stepped down as the team’s head coach with one game remaining, although Hill coached the final game that year.

Hill was also on the Arkansas staff in 1992 when Crowe was fired. He said each in-season change is different, but said Lunney will be helped “tremendously” by going through similar situations.

“You make it all about the kids,” Hill said. “A decision has been made and you rally the troops.”

Lunney will coach the Razorbacks’ games against LSU on Nov. 23 and Missouri on Nov. 29. Arkansas is off this week, giving Lunney some time to get his feet in his new role.

“He’s been around it long enough to realize that in the next two weeks he can create a positive chemistry to fit the players to play to the best of their ability,” Hill said. “That’s his task at hand.

“This will be something that he will cherish for the rest of his life because he gets the opportunity to do something that I’m pretty sure two weeks ago he never thought he would be doing.”

The Razorbacks were 1-4 when Lunney was inserted as the starting quarterback midway through his freshman season. He led the team to a 2-3-1 record and helped salvage a 3-4-1 conference record in the Razorbacks’ first year in the SEC.

“When we went to Tennessee and won, that right there, when you walk into that environment as a freshman, and you play and execute in that environment, there’s probably never another challenging experience,” Hill said.

In addition to football, Lunney played baseball for the Razorbacks and spent a short time playing in the minor leagues. He returned to Arkansas as a graduate assistant coach under Houston Nutt from 1998-99 and has been back as a full-time assistant coach since 2013 working under two different head coaches, Morris and Bret Bielema.

“Obviously he’s got an Arkansas background, but he’s a guy that can work in a lot of different scenarios and situations, and to me nobody’s got a better feel than him to know what that’s like, and that can begin to heal all the broken pieces with high school coaches, recruits, as well as the people on the staff right there,” Campbell said.

“He’s very positive, very upbeat, very knowledgeable. He’s a great young coach of character. It’s people like that who can reach out and touch the players, meet with them as a team, individually and just try to get their mind right before you have to go out and play again Saturday.”

Lunney comes from a coaching family. His father, Barry Lunney Sr., is perhaps the greatest high school coach ever in Arkansas, a retired winner of 248 games and eight state championships during a 28-year career spent mostly at Southside and Bentonville in the highest classification in the state. His grandfather, John Lunney, played for the Razorbacks in the 1940s and coached high school football in Fort Smith.

Lunney Jr. worked for his father for eight seasons at Bentonville High School before getting back into college coaching.

“He was raised the right way,” Campbell said. “He’s a man of great integrity and character, and great spiritual values, and all of those are what make Barry Lunney Jr. who he is. I think that’s the reason why he was chosen to be the interim head coach.”