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One man's hogaholic relapse Thursday, Aug 31, 2006 By John Brummett We have big Arkansas doings Saturday in Fayetteville. It's the opening hogaholic convention of the fall. Southern Cal, which beat us last year by a 70-17 tally that wasn't that close, comes to town with question marks, but rich, deep talent. The Trojans have had preparatory problems. As a guy from California explained it, they could effect the crowd noise in Fayetteville, even pipe in the eerie hog call. But he said there was no way any eleven of them, whether third team or fourth, could simulate a defense as porous as Arkansas'. Those are fighting words, and our blowhard of a defensive coordinator, Red Herring, or something like that, will show them when he turns loose his four-foot linebacker, Sam Osamabamamojo, or something like that. Actually, I think this will be a pretty good year - nine wins, counting a bowl. I don't think we'll miss the toe guy so much. That Felix cat leaves people standing still. Oddly, I find myself leaning to retro-hogaholism. I'm once again rooting for the home team, at least for the moment. That's because we seem to have worked out the coaching problem. And the quarterback drama is positively engaging. The coaching problem has been, in a word, Houstondale, defined by Webster as a multi-tasker combining used car sales and the holy-roller ministry. When applied to coaching, it produces a team that's filled with the spirit, but comes without warranty. Yet it hasn't really been in our best interest to fire this Nutt. That's because there's no reason to think we could get a strong, competent coach, like, say, Tommy Tuberville, as long as Frank Broyles meddled. So, what Broyles has done, smartly, is effect an evolution by which we now have a defensive head coach, the blow-hard Herring, and a pair of offensive head coaches, Gus Malzahn and Alex Wood. That leaves Nutt a coaching eunuch, free to produce quotations worthy of G. W. Bush. Like the president who says "nuke-you-lur," G.W. Nutt refers to "Coach Mal-a-zon." There was G. W. Nutt's line about Robert Johnson's getting the starting nod at quarterback because "right now he's a little older than" Mitch Mustang, or whatever the boy's name is. As a poster on woopig.net put it, "How long will it take Mitch to catch up?" Which brings me to the powerful quarterback story line. You could write a pretty good novella about Robert Johnson's career, needing only the happy ending that I hope unfolds this season. He is a marginal bigtime quarterback prospect who is physically impressive and hard-working. He spent his first two seasons getting most of the first-team practice because the phenom starter, Matt Jones, had a chronic sore shoulder and didn't throw until the game. Then Johnson got his chance, such as it was - opening on the road on national television last year against, well, the defending national champ, Southern Cal. He did much better than Red Herring's defense. But the season turned into tragi-comedy with a loss to Vanderbilt that was hardly his fault. Johnson got replaced midseason by a young man of unfortunate surname who did relatively well. Then the Hogs signed the homegrown high school superstar, Mustang, or whatever the boy's name is, and people wondered why Johnson hadn't transferred, considering that he was number three and his viability as a Razorback had effectively ended. But he stayed the course. Then the young starter with the unfortunate surname turned out to have serious trouble at the L-2 vertebra. The high school superstar was deemed not ready for the baptism of fire to which Johnson had been sacrificed a year before. Johnson shone in scrimmages and, lo and behold, was picked to start at quarterback Saturday evening. It's an uplifting story of character and perseverance, one to hold up to your children as an example. I hope he completes 25 of 29 passes for 411 yards and five touchdowns with no interceptions, and that Mustang, or whatever the boy's name is, finds it advisable to transfer to UCA. ------ John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
