FAYETTEVILLE -- Today's slate of SEC vs. Big 12 Challenge men's basketball games prompts thoughts of what if again Arkansas Razorbacks football falters next fall?
Arkansas football flopped 1-7 in the SEC for Bret Bielema's 2017 finale then plunged to consecutive 0-8s under Chad Morris.
Barry Lunney Jr. was beset with the interim task of leading the overmatched Hogs in their final two SEC 2019 games.
Morris was canned upon Western Kentucky embarrassing Arkansas, 45-19 nonconference in Fayetteville.
Increasingly, though certainly not yet resoundingly during these consecutive 2-10 football seasons combined 0-16 in the SEC, some Razorbacks fans murmur maybe Arkansas better escape the SEC for the Big 12.
The SEC is just too tough for these Hogs it seems by their logic. It's logic that fortunately new Arkansas coach Sam Pittman, a veteran of SEC good times and bad previously coaching offensive lines at Tennessee, Arkansas and Georgia, doesn't share.
Anyway, for these last couple of Arkansas teams what's the difference getting smoked in the SEC by Alabama, LSU, etc. than slaughtered by Sooners or bludgeoned by Baylor in the Big 12?
If the Group of Five likes of San Jose State, North Texas and Western Kentucky can and have embarrassed you, it doesn't seem the Big 12 will be any less football unforgiving than the SEC.
Seems finally competently and determinedly setting out to compete in the SEC with the greater financial resources it derives would get the Razorbacks back to respectability over being the one school too timid to stay in the SEC.
The Razorbacks proved they could win consistently in the SEC under Houston Nutt and Bobby Petrino. Bielema posted a 5-3 SEC season.
Besides it's so shortsighted to view an athletic program through football-only glasses.
While Razorbacks fans have lamented their football falling these last falls, they've surely enjoyed baseball coach Dave Van Horn successively winning packed house Regionals at Baum-Walker Stadium. Winning those regionals consecutively advanced Arkansas to the College World Series in 2018 and 2019 among Van Horn's six Arkansas Omaha trips to the CWS since 2004.
Playing in the SEC, Van Horn replied when asked Friday, definitely enhances Razorbacks baseball competitively and financially.
"Top to bottom there is not a better league," Van Horn said. "It helps us in recruiting because a lot of kids want to play in our league. The one's that are really confident, they say, 'I want to play in the SEC.' So it gives us a little bit of an advantage there."
Financially, it's not just more TV money that SEC schools have available for all their sports, but for baseball it's additional wealth shared from attendance, especially the SEC West.
"There's seven teams in our league (the SEC West), and I think five of them are like (nationally) one through five in attendance, which is amazing," Van Horn said. "So there's money being generated. We're able to fund our own budget and make a little money."
Money they'd throw away in all sports if their football turned tail.
Sports on 01/25/2020