Arkansas Football: Firing of Bret Bielema was a long time coming

Bret Bielema has officially been fired from his job as Arkansas football’s head coach and it was a long time coming for the Razorbacks.

Arkansas can now move forward as a football program. The Razorbacks are coming off one of the worst seasons in recent memory under Bret Bielema and after yet another underachieving season, the program has decided to go in a new direction.

After a tough loss to Missouri to end the season on Friday evening, the university decided to cut ties with the head coach, according to reports.

For Bielema, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as he stated earlier in the year that he had no idea what his future held and he wouldn’t be shocked if he was out of a job after the year. Well, here we are after Week 13 and the former Big Ten champion is now looking for a new job after leaving Wisconsin for the SEC.

You know the old saying “be careful what you wish for”? Bielema left a top program in the Big Ten because he wanted to compete with the best in the SEC and he had just three winning seasons in five years with the Razorbacks, never surpassing eight victories.

Arkansas continuously had the talent to compete, but just fell short of expectations. This came after he won three consecutive Big Ten titles with Wisconsin from 2010-12 and looked like one of the best coaches in the country.

Entering the 2017 season, he knew he had to likely win 7-8 games, at least, to keep his job, but the Razorbacks went 4-8 and 1-7 in SEC play. This was all with a veteran quarterback in Austin Allen leading the way.

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The head coaching search will begin instantly and names like Mike Norvell and Gus Malzahn have been tossed around already. It’s time for Arkansas to move forward.