Bret Bielema may have taken a year and a half to win his first SEC game after taking over as head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, and he may boast a mediocre .400 win percentage as coach of the Hogs, but he also might have an NFL future as a head coach.

That notion may seem strange to some, and there’s certainly no hard evidence that Bielema will ever leave the college ranks to try his hands in the pros, but one anecdote he shared with ESPN’s Elizabeth Merrill may shed light on his potential NFL future.

A brief summary of his account (and for what it’s worth, Merrill actually leads by saying “Bielema insists this is true”):

In early 2012, Bielema, then the coach of the Wisconsin Badgers less than a month removed from the Rose Bowl, was given the chance to interview for the Miami Dolphins vacant head coaching position. No one outside of Bielema and the Dolphins organization knew Bielema had interviewed for the job before Bielema admitted such to Merrill.

Bielema obviously didn’t get the job, which begs the question: What went awry for one of college football’s best coaches at the peak of his career to this point?

Well, after spending nearly two full days interviewing with Miami’s head honchos, Bielema was eventually removed from consideration due to a disagreement on his proposed draft plan. That draft plan involved selecting his quarterback, Russell Wilson, in the second round of the draft, and Bielema apparently guaranteed Miami a Super Bowl within five years if it followed his lead and took Wilson to be its future quarterback.

Miami was not keen on selecting a 5-foot-10 quarterback that high with that much at stake. Of course, Wilson was taken in the third round by Seattle, won a Super Bowl in his second year and reached the big game again in his third, while Miami failed to make the playoffs three straight years under head coach Joe Philbin. Bielema, meanwhile, coached another year at Wisconsin before departing for Arkansas.

So not only are we just learning that Bielema had a legitimate interview for an NFL head coaching gig just three years ago, but we’re learning he never got the job because of a philosophy that turned out to be correct.

Now, let’s not blow this out of proportion. There’s no guaranteeing Wilson would have been as successful had he been surrounded by Miami’s roster instead of Seattle’s, and there’s no evidence that the disagreement over drafting Wilson is the only reason Bielema wasn’t hired.

Nevertheless, he comes out of that interaction looking pretty darn savvy, and now that the story is public (thanks to Bielema’s own conscious doing) other NFL teams might take notice.

Far less accomplished college coaches have gotten a shot to run an NFL team (Lane Kiffin to Oakland comes to mind), and it certainly wouldn’t be earth-shattering if Bielema ever got his shot.

His teams consistently run the ball as well as any teams in the nation, no matter what conference the team is competing in. Successful schemes in the run game can translate to any level of the game, so you know Bielema’s NFL team would have something to lean on when it possessed the ball.

Bielema also consistently develops fantastic relationships with his players, and he’s never been shy about showing how much he cares for their well-being. Ego management is a large part of coaching in any professional sport, and Bielema would likely excel in this area as well.

Would his teams ultimately succeed? Unless you know a good fortune teller we don’t know. But has he shown the tools at the college level to indicate he can hack it in the pros? Absolutely. And does the Wilson-Dolphins anecdote prove he’s capable of handling the player personnel side of the job? I’d say so.

Bielema seems happy at Arkansas, and there’s no indication he wants to leave the school (Arkansas wasn’t the school he would’ve had to depart from if he’d gotten the Dolphins gig).

But the fact that an NFL team has already invited him to interview shows the league thinks he has potential, and the fact that he accepted the invite shows he thinks the same of himself.

So while Bielema may be happy with the Hogs right now, he very well might have an NFL future after all if he wants to.