As the Hog turns…
February 19th, 2007, 7:21 pm · Post a Comment · posted by jotto001
The Fayetteville, Ark.-based reality show that is the University of Arkansas athletics off’d one of its key characters Saturday when longtime AD and football coach Frank Broyles announced his resignation.
Broyles’ resignation, some believe, is a result of pressure from boosters and other influential people around the program over the soap opera that the football team has become.
In his column on ESPN.com, Pat Forde Broyles’ career as one that is unprecedented in college football, especially in the now omnipresent SEC.
Unfortunately for Broyles, I think he took a bullet that was meant for head football coach Houston Nutt. Last week, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a pretty lengthy piece on its website about e-mails sent by a friend of the Nutt family to Mitch Mustain and other members of the Razorback coach staff criticizing Mustain’s comments about Nutt (in a book about Mustain, the freshman quarterback said Nutt was a “dork”).
In the midst of a tumultous offseason that has seen offensive coordinator, and Mustain’s high school coach at Springdale High School, Gus Malzahn take the head coaching job at Tulsa and Mustain and fellow Springdale alum Damian Williams transferring out of the program, Houston Nutt finds himself back into a corner. It’s put up or shut up time for the embattled head coach and Nutt’s future as the head Razorback rests firmly between the two hands of running back, and 2007 Heisman frontrunner, Darren McFadden.
The fate that befell Frank Broyles this weekend is unfortunate but he certainly has to accept some of the blame for the outcome of his soap opera. After all, taking a meeting with the parents of the three Springdale players on the roster regarding the state of the football program was an awful administrative move.
Unfortunately for Broyles, he got caught in the crossfire because he put himself in the middle of a war.
