Reactions To The Bielema Hire

 

 

Nobody saw Bret Bielema coming, and if you nibble at the robust trough of social media these days, you got the distinct impression that not many wanted to see him coming.

And why, pray tell? Because a 68-24 record in seven years in a BCS conference wasn’t good enough?

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So this raises two obvious questions: Why would Bielema leave? And if the Big Ten can’t hold on to this coach, in this situation, does it have any prayer of actually competing with the SEC?

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But he evidently didn’t have enough resources to keep him in Madison. Why else would he leave such a good situation? He’ll also inherit much better facilities and more money to hire top assistants.

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It’s the greatest assertion of power since Michael Corleone ordered the assassination of the heads of the rest of the Five Families. As long as we’re using Best Picture metaphors, the SEC didn’t just drink the Big Ten’s milkshake. The SEC ate its bratwurst, too.

Not only did Bielema lead the Badgers to the Rose Bowl, he led them to their third consecutive Rose Bowl. No coach has done that since Bo Schembechler took Michigan to Pasadena from 1976-78. After the 1981 season, Schembechler thought about leaving Michigan for Texas A&M but didn’t. Why would he? He coached the best team in the Big Ten.

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There is plenty of sense to be found here. Bielema has a 68-24 record as a head coach at Wisconsin, shared one Big Ten title in his tenure, and did what great Big Ten coaches traditionally do: lose multiple Rose Bowls. He ran a clean program, did a pretty good job keeping the small pool of talent native to Wisconsin in state, and once coached a team that scored 83 points on Indiana.

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Long was less worried about getting someone with Southern ties than he was getting someone with an established winning record.

Although Bielema’s winning percentage of .739 is the highest of any Wisconsin coach since George Little in 1925-26, he struggled to escape the shadow of program architect Alvarez – who remains at the school as its athletic director. Wisconsin’s relatively modest facilities might also have been an issue for Bielema – a problem he will not encounter at Arkansas.

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Bielema is 2-4 in bowl games. He played at Iowa and was an assistant at the school as well coaching under Bill Snyder at Kansas State before moving to Wisconsin.

Bielema’s philosophy figures to fit in well in the SEC. If he follows his Wisconsin ways, Arkansas can look forward to a crushing ground game to go along with a solid defense. Sounds a lot like a certain defending national champion.

Makes sense. The last sitting Big Ten coach to leave for the SEC was Nick Saban in 2000.

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His teams recorded at least 10 wins four times and will appear in their third consecutive Rose Bowl next month. ESPN reports Bielema hopes to coach the Badgers (8-5) in their bowl game against Stanford, though neither Arkansas nor Wisconsin has confirmed he will do so.

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Arkansas just hired the man responsible for taking Wisconsin to three straight Rose Bowls (well, two, if you give credit to Ohio State’s tatoo scandal and the Penn State demise-either way, impressive) and has a 68-24 overall record. He also defeated the Razorbacks in that miserable Capital One Bowl on New Year’s Day 2007.

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