Wisener: Morris era ends with jarring thud

Arkansas coach Chad Morris answers questions following a 45-19 loss to Western Kentucky on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019, in Fayetteville.

It’s symbolic that the latest chapter in Razorback athletics came with a typographical error.

“After just 22 games, Chad Morris has been fried as the head coach of the Arkansas football program,” read a graphic posted on Twitter by a Fort Smith TV station.

Fried, as one enjoys a strip of bacon, rather than fired, the fate Sunday of the University of Arkansas’ second-year football coach.

Typographical errors can be corrected. Transposing a letter or two in a story occurs more often in journalism than anyone likes to admit. A notice in the next day’s newspaper that a mistake was made — usually regarding a factual error rather than a misspelled word — is often sufficient to placate everyone concerned.

For a major college to admit that it made a mistake in hiring someone it pays millions of dollars is something else.

Unfortunately, Arkansas is getting a knack for such errors of judgment, and if you’re an underpaid, overworked schoolteacher, policeman or waitress getting by on a shoestring budget, it should gall you that this rural state, traditionally low in some key economic indicators, shells out so much money for people not to coach.

For the increasingly overmatched Chad Morris, the proverbial white courtesy phone rang Sunday. The man from Texas who vowed to install at Arkansas a wide-open offense that would be “left lane, hammer down” instead was run off the road. He leaves with a .182 winning percentage, his 4-18 record including 0-14 in the Southeastern Conference, and not one victory over a team from one of college football’s five major conferences.

A 45-19 shellacking by Western Kentucky in a half-empty Reynolds Razorback Stadium on the Fayetteville campus reflected everything wrong in the Morris era. Ty Storey, one of 33 players to leave the Razorback program in Morris’ time, enjoyed as vengeful a homecoming as the Charleston youth might want.

One of six quarterbacks to start a Razorback game for Morris, Storey completed 22 of 32 passes for 213 yards, a 69-yard touchdown strike included, and ran 17 times for 77 yards and two scores.

Former teammates mobbed Storey after the game, congratulating a young man who wanted to be a Razorback but was constantly sidetracked at UA by Morris and predecessor Bret Bielema. Instead of showering Storey with superlatives, Morris said the Western Kentucky QB’s performance was “on par” and that he told Storey after the game that he’s a great young man.

Meanwhile, freshman John Stephen Jones and KJ Jefferson took turns quarterbacking the Razorbacks, whose overall performance, in extending Morris’ golfing analogy, especially on defense, scored a triple bogey.

Morris’ postgame spiel that “I am the man” to turn the program around sounded like Al Haig, then U.S. secretary of state to Ronald Reagan, that “I am in charge here” after an attempt on the president’s life in 1981.

Morris has been on thin ice since a Fayetteville loss to North Texas in his first month on the job. San Jose State and Western Kentucky each collected $1.5 million appearance fees for trouncing the Razorbacks this year. One-sided losses to national powers Alabama and Auburn coupled with narrower defeats to Kentucky and Ole Miss, considered more winnable opponents, raised doubts in his second year that a Morris-coached Arkansas team ever could compete in the mighty SEC.

Yet, even in what proved his final postgame press conference, Morris gave off the vibe that the reports surrounding his impending demise were greatly exaggerated. And that he not only would coach the two remaining games this year, at LSU Nov. 23 and Missouri at Little Rock on Thanksgiving Friday, but be back for a third season, if not for as long as it took to right the ship.

“Everybody’s frustrated with that and I get it … I am, too,” Morris said. “But I also understand that to get this thing right, it’s going to take some time in this league.”

Not so fast, my friend. The Western Kentucky defeat, especially the storyline regarding Storey, made this for Morris the equivalent of Jack Crowe’s 1992 game against The Citadel. Crowe was fired one day after his third season opener, an unspeakable 10-3 defeat to a lower-division opponent.

At least Crowe and Morris had one night to sleep it over unlike Bielema, who got his walking papers minutes after losing to Missouri in his UA fifth-game finale.

Although then new to the job, and others may have been responsible for hiring Morris, UA athletic director Hunter Yurachek comes across as a scapegoat. Though he is getting early positive returns for selecting Eric Musselman from Nevada to replace the likable, but ineffective, Mike Anderson in men’s basketball, Yurachek is under pressure from his bosses and Razorback Nation to make his second football hiring absolutely right.

As for Morris, says an Arkansas-born member of the media working out of Fayetteville, “we were all sucked in.” He came to Arkansas after getting SMU to 7-4 in his third season and with the reputation for saving Dabo Swinney’s job when offensive coordinator at Clemson. Jerry Jones, president of the Dallas Cowboys and a major UA contributor, was considered in Morris’ corner, enhancing the coach’s value. The coach’s early returns in recruiting looked promising.

Morris just never quite exuded the same confidence on game day. His handling of quarterbacks — six starters in 22 Arkansas games — was especially shaky. Typically, Morris’ last Razorback game coincided with successful homecomings for ex-UA quarterbacks Storey and Cole Kelley (Southeastern Louisiana against Central Arkansas).

Because Arkansas is a small state and does not produce NCAA Division I prospects in volume, a premium is placed on dynamic coaching in every Razorback sport. Whatever gains he made in recruiting, Morris showed an inability to teach or motivate players.

“They’ve got to get someone with a degree of head-coaching experience who can motivate players and coach them up,” my Fayetteville source says. “In Morris, they hired someone who didn’t play college football and pretended to be an SEC head coach.”

And now, the coaching search begins anew.