Yes, if you’re Vanderbilt or Mississippi State — with very few SEC football championships to your name (none for the Commodores, one for the Bulldogs, in 1941) — you have lived the most impoverished existence in the conference over the longest period of time.
However, for certain programs at the end of September, life in the SEC seems so much worse.
Arkansas has been a member of the SEC for less than a quarter of a century. Therefore, it has not carved out a lengthy trail of tears in the league. Tennessee, a longtime SEC member, has enjoyed many rich and fruitful periods as a program. It is one of only 12 schools to have won a BCS national championship. Life has certainly been very good for the Hogs and Volunteers over the larger run of time — not perfect, and maybe not great, but certainly very good.
When proud programs fall on tough times, it’s reasonable to step back and say something to the effect of, “Hey, even great teams go through lulls and difficult periods. The New York Yankees had the late 1960s and early ’70s. The Montreal Canadiens haven’t made a Stanley Cup Final, let alone won one, in over 20 years. The Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics are stuck in misery right now. The Boston Red Sox are in a ditch. Nothing lasts forever. Cycles occur.”
However, after a few seasons of taking lumps — and not handing them out — fans at programs which have established considerable (and legitimate) expectations have a right to expect things to improve.
A few bad seasons after the destructive behavior of Bobby Petrino? Sure.
A few difficult years after Lane Kiffin’s one-year jungle-swing through Knoxville? Perfectly understandable.
However, for grave problems to persist even now, in the third seasons of two coaches’ tenures, is certainly alarming. This doesn’t guarantee that Bret Bielema and Butch Jones are doomed to failure in their respective Villes of Fayette and Knox. It doesn’t mean that the final verdicts on their coaching acumen should be rendered just yet. Both men will — and should — coach their programs in 2016.
However: The more Arkansas and Tennessee affirm their losing patterns, the harder it will be to undo them… and all the damage they cause.
This is the story of two programs that can’t escape their own shadow under their current coaches (who will happen to face each other next Saturday — the loser will have a hard time facing the rest of the season).
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The dynamic which exists at Arkansas in its new SEC series (formerly a Southwest Conference rivalry) with Texas A&M is a smaller-scale version of what Tennessee is enduring at the hands of Florida.
It is one of the most captivating and impossible-to-look-away-from realities in the larger theater of college sports: Even though players wear a school’s colors for just a few short years, and coaches can enter into a revolving-door whirlwind of change (as has been the case at Arkansas and Tennessee in recent years), one university continuously breaks another’s heart, autumn after autumn. It defies logic, but it keeps on happening.
Tennessee, even though Will Muschamp coached Florida from 2011 through 2014, could not beat the Gators in any of those years. The Vols couldn’t beat Florida in any year since 2004. Last year, Tennessee led by two scores, only to improbably lose by a point late in regulation. Surely, when the Vols took at 27-14 lead over a lifeless Florida offense, they were going to break this streak, one which was due to be snapped.
Yet, with Florida #UNOFFICIALLY converting 67 of 67 fourth downs in the final stages of the fourth quarter (officially, the total was 5 of 5), and with the Vols going into a shell in an attempt to protect their lead, Tennessee blew it. The Vols gave up a touchdown on a fourth-and-14 play, with defensive backs and safeties being improperly aligned at the outset, and then taking the wrong angles to the receiver once the action unfolded. The collapse was capped by Jones’s refusal to use a timeout when his team was clearly disorganized in the last 10 seconds of regulation. Jones cost his kicker five yards on a game-ending boot, one that just missed from 54 yards.
One gets the sense that Tennessee could play Florida 50 more times and not win… if only because the Vols — to quote the great Casey Stengel — “find ways to lose I never knew existed.” In the very temporary world of college sports, that kind of thought is preposterous on its face. However, it’s reality in the ongoing Vols-Gators football series.
For Arkansas, it’s as though games against Texas A&M are taking on the same quality. The Razorbacks can play well through three and a half quarters in Jerry Jones’ stadium all they want, but unless they’ve already driven the stake through Dracula’s (okay, A&M’s) heart, the first three and a half quarters are preliminary… and not significant enough to matter.
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Bret Bielema, like Butch Jones, keeps finding himself trapped in this Groundhog Day cycle of rock-bottom misery. Unlike Jones, however, Bielema didn’t commit any whopping game-management mistake on Saturday against Texas A&M. Yet, the result — a loss following a late-game implosion — was the same. His players clearly tightened up under late-game scoreboard pressure. His secondary froze when it faced the prospect of winning the game with one final stop, leading 21-13 in the final four minutes. Texas A&M was so bereft of ideas that it ran a fade pattern as its tying 2-point play… but because the Arkansas cornerback bit on a fake at the two-yard line, the fade worked to perfection.
Arkansas quarterback Brandon Allen then fumbled due to moderate contact. Texas A&M didn’t win the game in regulation following that fumble recovery — Bielema smartly iced the Aggies’ kicker — but the demons of 2014, when Arkansas blew a 28-14 fourth-quarter lead in JerryWorld and then lost in overtime to A&M, had already been unleashed again.
In overtime, the story was all too reminiscent of 2014. The Aggies, with a get-out-of-jail-free card in their hands, played liberated ball. Arkansas shriveled. Football involves only 12 games a year, eight in the SEC. The sample sizes will always remain small. Yet, every football coach at a big-time program knows he has to win a reasonable percentage of close games — not all of them, not 80 percent of them, but at least half of them.
Bielema, with this loss, is now 0-9 at Arkansas in one-score games (eight points or fewer). He’s 0-3 in overtime.
In 2012, his last season at Wisconsin, Bielema went 0-4 in Big Ten games decided by one score, 0-3 in overtime. His team did win two non-conference games by one score that season, but in conference, Bielema’s teams have had remarkably bad luck in tight tilts.
The last season in which a Bielema-coached team (at Wisconsin) won more than one Big Ten game decided by one score? You’d have to go back to 2009, when the Badgers won three conference games by one score, plus their bowl game for good measure.
Wisconsin’s bowl games in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 seasons, however? The Badgers all lost those contests by one score.
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Butch Jones. Bret Bielema. One coach mismanaged his team into a loss at Florida. The other coach simply watched his players lose focus near the finish line. Both suffered losses to opponents on Saturday which were all too reminiscent of 2014.
Both men face each other next Saturday. Both men know that if they lose, season-long goals will be pretty much out of reach… and the flames of pressure for 2016 will begin to softly flare up in the fireplace known as SEC fan expectations.