No Need for Hogs Fans to Beat Themselves Up

Until dust settles on coaching search, assume nothing is true, decide whether to feel hurt later

Rebels head coach Chris Beard reacts after a win. He will remain at Ole Miss for at least one more season. / Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Arkansas fans woke up this morning acting like they lost something.

Chris Beard says he's happy and ready to work at Ole Miss. Jerome Tang looks like he's enjoying life up at Kansas State. Both appear to have gotten a little bit of a raise for sleeping in their beds a few days more.

Because of this, Razorbacks fans are soaking in a feeling of rejection that comes with the inferiority complex that naturally comes with cheering on the Hogs. While there's always the possibility both men legitimately got an offer from Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek, it's time to pull back the curtain a little bit because it's not certain that's the case.

When this first started, before the first letter was typed on the potential candidates list earlier this week, three names came out of nowhere and it appeared they were being pushed hard. It honestly felt a little too hard.

As everyone knows, those three names were Beard, Tang and Will Wade. All corners of the state latched onto those names and ran with them as if Yurachek went on KATV and made calls live on the air.

However, it just felt off. Perhaps it's because I try to look at things through the eyes of an administrator rather than fans, but the list didn't make sense.

This is a job that has a ton of interest from a lot of really good coaches. Arkansas fans may think little of themselves, but a 20,000 seat arena sold out way before the season starts, easy access to fruitful recruiting grounds, a history of deep tournament runs, and being one of the few schools that takes NIL for basketball seriously all add up to a desirable destination for coaches.

So, why then, from an AD's perspective, put Beard, Tang and Wade at the top of the list? Beard comes with tremendous baggage from his arrest for alleged physical abuse of his bleeding and bitten fiancee that got him canned in the middle of a potential national championship run at Texas barely over a year ago.

He's an immediate potential liability with Arkansas big money donors. Not just the ones on the athletics side either. Beard's hire had the potential to affect donations coming in on the academic side as well at a time when the university is in the midst of asking everyone who has heard of Arkansas for money.

Tang came with the opposite problem. He might not keep money from coming in, but he certainly would have caused money to go out.

The Hogs would have had to pay out $6 million to buy out his contract at Kansas State. While there are coaches out there who will remain potential targets with a buyout of this size, it doesn't make sense for an AD needing a home run hire to cough up that much money for someone who has two seasons of head coaching experience under his belt, the first of which was tremendous while the other showed a sizable regression with seven fewer wins.

Wade also seemed a head scratcher simply because Arkansas fans genuinely hate him and have a hard time not wanting to punch him in the face. As written here a few years ago, Will Wade was the Ric Flair of college basketball when he was at LSU. He was the dirtiest player in the game.

Despite this, he is the only one on this list who made sense to be near the top, although not in the Top 3. He's won everywhere he's been, is a strong recruiter, has won an SEC championship and what he got in trouble for is encouraged now instead of against the rules, so he has additional relevant experience.

From an AD's perspective, there are other high quality coaches who have to say no before putting yourself through the unenviable task of trying to convince Razorbacks fans to suck it up, swallow their pride, and join Wade in calling the Hogs.

Beyond it not making sense from an administrator's perspective, the forcefulness in which these names were coming felt like there was a personal agenda behind them. The way information gets out to the press is either from someone at the school of a coach Arkansas is pursuing or an overly talkative booster who likes the feeling of power that comes with sharing information that makes that person appear to be a big time player in these hires.

A lot of times, the information gained from these two potential sources is quality. However, it opens the door for manipulation.

As often happens, coaches will go out of their way to make their name's hot and heavy in a coaching search through backdoor channels. Sometimes it's because they want to amp up their spotlight because they legitimately want the job, but it's usually because they want to create fan pressure on their administrators to pony up a little cash or facility improvements to better their lives.

From a booster's perspective, a lot of times the incentive is there's a guy he or she really wants to get the job, so what better way than to leak a few names, make it seem like that's the primary target, and if the program doesn't land that booster's preference then the AD did a poor job of getting the top guy. Fans raise cane even though a lot of times the man doing the hiring didn't contact that person beyond seeing if there would be interest should the job be offered to know who to seriously consider on the list.

It's a move that might not work initially, but can set up opportunity to get the booster's way in the next hiring cycle because the AD has already been painted as a failure at getting who he or she truly wanted and there's also incentive to not be drug through the mud publicly again. It's an effective tactic that makes administrators miserable.

Now, it might turn out Yurachek actually is running around the country getting gunned down left and right for the best college basketball opening of the year. However, the truth of what really went down usually doesn't come out until well after the smoke clears from a coaching search.

There will be those who jump up and down and swear on their mommas this and that happened, but until the contract is signed, there is no truth out there. There's just judging whether information presented to reporters is true or another ploy to manipulate what's going on.

Even if Yurachek pulls up a chair at a reporter's dinner table and spills the tea between gulps of actual sweet iced tea, the information given could just be seeds planted to provide cover while he goes and gets the guy he wants.

So, for right now at least, fans shouldn't feel like they got shunned by Tang or Beard. They shouldn't stress themselves over how they feel about Wade's reported interview today.

No one has lost anything at this point. Until the process is over and fact can be sorted from deception, there's no need for the people of Arkansas to beat themselves up.

Some version of the truth will come out eventually. Then fans can decide how to truly feel about how the coaching search went.

HOGS FEED

• Big inning allows Hogs to clinch series with Ole Miss, now look for sweep

• Could Davis backtrack and return to Arkansas?

• Arkansas definitely going different direction than many fans expected as Beard shares commitment to Ole Miss

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