Arkansas needs to take the Gus Bus to return to relevancy

The Arkansas Razorbacks have hit rock bottom as a football program. They need Gus Malzahn to return to relevancy. Hop on the Gus Bus!

Not since Bobby Petrino was upright on that motorcycle have things gone well for the Arkansas Razorbacks football program. After a year of weird with John L. Smith in 2012, the Hogs went big game hunting and poached Bret Bielema away from the Wisconsin Badgers. Though Bielema had three winning seasons in Fayetteville, the Hogs stumbled to 4-8 in 2017 and he was fired.

So in came former SMU Mustangs head coach and Clemson Tigers offensive coordinator Chad Morris. He liked to go fast and was going to bring the up-tempo spread to Northwest Arkansas and three yards and a cloud of dust under Bielema didn’t cut it. What happened was a firecracker that didn’t go off, as that dud Morris was fired less than two years on the job.

Overall, it has been a miserable decade for Arkansas football in the 2010s. They went from a top-10 program under Petrino and Houston Nutt before that to a team that has won one SEC game since 2017.

We’ve been presented only problems and offered no solutions to how to fix the Arkansas football program. That is until now. Arkansas needs to get on the Gus Bus and ride that damn thing back to SEC relevancy. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Gus Malzahn is the head coach of the SEC West division rival Auburn Tigers. Will Arkansas’ favorite coaching son return to the Natural State?

Malzahn played his high school ball in Fort Hughes before walking on to the Razorbacks team as a wide receiver in 1984. He would later transfer to Henderson State in Arkadelphia where he would graduate. After that, Malzahn began coaching at the high school level from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s before joining Nutt’s staff in Fayetteville as the offensive coordinator.

From 2007 to 2011, Malzahn would serve as the offensive coordinator for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane and Auburn before getting the Arkansas State Red Wolves head coaching gig in 2012. After one year in Jonesboro, the Gus Bus went back to The Plains to become the Auburn head coach, the longest stop of his coaching career at seven years.

At Auburn, Malzahn has won 60 games. He reached the last BCS National Championship in his first year leading the Tigers in 2013 and the SEC Championship again in 2017. However, it has been mostly seen as a disappointment by the never-satisfied Auburn faithful. Always on the hot seat, Malzahn usually wins between seven and eight games a season leading a 10-win program.

So you can understand the frustration Auburn feels like the little brother school to Alabama, the safety school to Georgia and the least ferocious feline in the Tiger Bowl when they play LSU. Basically, Auburn’s relationship with Malzahn as it’s head coach got off to a great start but has been mostly rocky since falling to the Florida State Seminoles in 2013. But will he leave Auburn?

Well, there is a chance that the Gus Bus may have stayed too long in Auburn. Malzahn is a good coach, but not a great coach and Auburn isn’t good with being stuck in the upper middle of the SEC. Guess who would die to be in the upper middle of the SEC again? Arkansas. So back up the Brinks truck and dump some cold, hard cash in the Gus Bus to bring Malzahn home.

The reason it’ll work in Arkansas with Malzahn is like Ed Orgeron at LSU, he’s one of them; he’s a Hog. Malzahn knows how to recruit the SEC after having been in an around it for well over a decade. Instead of settling for imitation Gus in Morris, they’ll be getting the real thing this time.

Sure, you can try to convince Mike Leach to leave his remote outpost in Pullman for another in Fayetteville, but there are no guarantees. Mike Norvell might be walking on cloud nine in Memphis, but do you really want to hire another up-and-coming head coach from The American? We all saw the Morris era ended in Fayetteville. And do you really want to dance with Hugh Freeze to be good again?

Arkansas has time. Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek doesn’t have to rush to find a replacement for Morris to lead his football program. Arkansas has a great fan base, great facilities and a university that is committed to winning. It just needs a head coach that can lead the way. After an 8-4 season, it may be time for the Gus Bus to chart northwest to Fayetteville and come home.

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