Positive Stallion

[Stallion]

....The foundation of the program was built on a flawed model-we will see some improvement in coming years because of improvement made a few years ago-right now we are playing basically with marginal Division 1A athletes-deal with it!

[Charleston Pony]

Old Pony: you keep harping on special teams and you're right...that was the difference in last night's game. But to blame it on coaching? Don't you think Comet knows better than to try to field a ball on the run inside the 10? Do you think the coaches instructed him to do that? Here's a guy who sat out last year and may have as much heart and desire to win as anyone on our team...but he made a mistake and it cost us dearly. Don't blame that on coaching. That's simply one of our playmakers making a mistake while trying to do too much.

I wasn't there so I can't comment about the bad punts, tipped punts, etc... Were they the result of poor coaching, or the result of poor deep snapping, poor blocking, etc... Bottom line is that it's the players who get the job done or don't. I agree coaches can make a big difference, but it seems to me the team with the bigger, faster, stronger & more skilled players usually make their coaches look better than the other team's.

I'm at least encouraged that we played Baylor as competitively as we have since the breakup of the SWC. This would have been a great conference game in the new "Southworst Conference".

[OldPony]

No- I think he knows better. I think Rushbrook does too. There are a lopt of things that happen wrong and players know better. The reason you practice and drill is to make it second nature. If you think, you lose.
The team's performance on special teams was horrid. Not 1 or 2 plays but nearly everytime they were called on. I'll guarantee you that Bennett is asking the special teams coach a lot of questions today and that it will be worked on a lot this week.

[GoRedGoBlue]

As I stated in my game summary, the defense was encouraging...the DLine actually looked VERY good. I would only fault the middle secondary, though we did get an INT.

[StangEsq]

Encouraged by the fact that we played them close? If we had scored a TD and beaten them by 4 it still would have been embarrassing.

[sam]

I will agree with Stallion on one point,if you have better players you will win more games but coaching is half of it also, Do you think that Arkansas have better players than Texas-NO- Arkansas had better coaching. That is why coaches like Holtz and Fran and Jones can take over a program and win with the players that are already there.

[GoRedGoBlue]

SAM,

I agree with you, however, those guys didn't take over bare cabinets (Holtz went 0-11 his first year at SCarol)...Fran took over TCU with good Pat Sullivan recruits, and took over Bama with good Pat Dye recruits...

Interestingly, he left both of those programs when his talent-level had been expired for the near term (TCU graduated 29 seniors when he left, Bama was looking at fewer scholarships), and thus his immediate chances of getting 'the next job' were at its near-term peak.

Bennett has 41 freshmen out of 79 scholarships, that is incredibly young. There are only 11 or so SRs on the team (including walk-ons).

Let's also remember that we had probation in 1999-2002 area (cannot remember exactly) to where we lost several scholarships per year for 3 years...those classes are Jr/Sr now...and were depleted in total numbers during that time span.

The cupboard was bare in a sense of the numbers of upper class athletes were diminished and were of much lesser talent than any coach that you mentioned's new school they took over.

Stallion is correct that SJSU has more upper Div1-A talent than we do, hell they just signed 15 JUCO's this year.

[Stallion]

I'd like to clarrify one thing that I purposely don't emphasize to make my point. Coaching does matter. But if you noticed what I have always said is THAT SMU(not Arkansas, TCU etc) has had a pathetic program based upon the fact that it has not allowed its coaches to compete on an even playing field. Many of you like to turn it into a Talent/Coaching Debate-=but that is not what I have said. The overriding reasons for SMU's futility has been lack of talent. Now the recruiting experts do rank UTs classes above Arkansas but Arkansas is perrennially in the Top 25 or so in recruiting. Every player they have is highly recruited. Cobbs their running back who torched UT was rated by some the No. 1 running back in the country. Their QB Matt Jones who was outstanding was very highly recruited. What an athlete at 6-6 and runs a 4.4. So Arkansas is full of highly recruited talent. Once the recruiting playing field is equalled like it is between Ark and UT then you can make some more evaluations between the two coaches but until the day SMU competes on an even playing field and especially in ALL SMU teams since the DP-coaching has not been the overriding reason why SMU has not fielded competitive teams. And no inspirational x and o genius could have bridge the gap there exists between SMU and our natural and traditional rivals.

[This message has been edited by Stallion (edited 09-18-2003).]

[OldPony]

Stallion is correct now that he finally admitted that coaching matters. No coach can take far inferior talent and win unless he gets lucky. There is a reason that some coaches make $1.5 million and others make $300,000 too. To compare the rankings of recruiting classes of Ark and Texas is a stretch though. I doubt that Ark has had a Top 10 class in 20 years. UT has been in the top 3 for the past decade it seems. That's why Houston Nutt's comment about UT winning the nation Recruiting Championship for the past 10 years was so funny. Ark didn't sneak up on UT. They gave them a sound [deleted] kicking. Especially the Ark Oline and Dline. One of the problems with the rankingsis that if UT signs a 3 star guy, he becomes a 4 star. Ark probably gets fair rankings and if SMU signs the same guy he would be a 2 star. Before you start Stallion, I know we have liitle to comapre since SMU hasn't beaten UT for a recruit since the DP.

[Hoop Fan]

No, but SMU has beaten Arkansas for one very recently: Chris Phillips. Something tells me that when this thing gets turned around, Phillips will be a big part of it.

[OldPony]

Not since Nutt arrived. My point re coaching being a large part of the equation also. Those clowns that were in before Nutt were examplews of bad coaches