Now We Probably Know Razorbacks Rebuilding Football from Scratch

Ryan Silverfield got the Arkansas job because the Razorbacks' football fan base was about out of hope after it had been eroded in a decade of mostly misery.

At his press conference Tuesday, that was the unspoken message reading between the lines. After a couple of years with Bobby Petrino giving some hope the Hogs could get back in championship conversations, things have eroded to needing to tear the thing down and start from scratch.

"I don't care if you were a scout team walk-on," Silverfield said. "Everyone's coming here with a clean slate and it's time to start over. Now we're going to show you guys this is what it looks like to win, this is what it looks like to compete, this is what it looks like to be all-in every single day and what we're all about. The players, the ones that are returning, have bought into that."

That part about "start over" could mean to a certain degree for a player, but it applies to the entire program. Exactly how that works out won't be known until the end of the season and there will be a record everybody can see.

A lot of people like to use what Curt Cignetti did at Indiana, winning a national title in his second season. My opinion is he kinda caught lightning in a bottle, brought a core group of players with him that were winning at a smaller school, added some pieces and got everybody bought into what he was selling.

Just don't expect the same types of results from Silverfield in the first season.

"It's remarkable," Silverfield said about Cignetti. "Let's call it what is. I will say this, because everybody has asked me that, 135 other coaches are trying to do exactly what they're doing.

"I don't care if you say, 'Well, they were similar to what we are.' Notre Dame is trying to do exactly what Indiana did, Oregon, all the resources. Everybody's trying to do exactly what Indiana did. We all are."

Let's not start making those plans. Enjoy them if they happen because it would be good times for everybody, but it was becoming clear the Hogs' football program has slipped. Even the facilities where behind the fancy facade, it's starting to show it's age.

National and regional media are starting to notice at games played in Razorback Stadium the last couple of seasons.

We'll see if Silverfield has the kind of complete control you generally see at championship-level programs. Those coaches often have to sign off on things most would thing would be too tribial for them to even notice, much less decide.

Silverfield is looking in the windshield, not the rear-view mirror. Unlike a lot of people in charge that try to ignore everything about Razorback football before 2020, he's at least acknowledging it.

"I've got so much respect for everybody that came before me, whether they won or lost games, whether they coached, whether they played.," he said. "Everybody that was a part of this foundation prior to me getting here, I have a lot of respect for them.

"But the reality of it is, we didn't win a lot of football games and there's a reason I'm here. The guys have bought in. This new sense of energy, this new sense of, hey, this culture that we are going to create day in and day out."

In other words, he's well aware of why he's here. The Hogs simply haven't won enough games for a long time that anybody wanted folks kept around.

Maybe it was that culture thing. It might have been they simply weren't qualified and Arkansas hired them because it was the best they could with what they had to work with.

That's the question we don't know the answers to and it probably doesn't matter. There doesn't appear to be any interest in being transparent to back up their interpretation of the numbers.

None of that is Silverfield's problem.

He knows the only numbers that matter are the ones in the win column every season. Those are probably really the only ones that matter to the fans, too.