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When Arkansas and Texas take the field tonight to do battle in the Texas Bowl in Houston, fans will watch two similar teams.
Tonight, the Razorbacks have the edge. Bret Bielema’s club is the more talented, physical team in year two of his tutelage. But that’s tonight.
In the coming years, it’s Texas that has the upper hand. First-year head coach Charlie Strong took a sledgehammer to the walls of the crumbling Texas program legendary coach Mack Brown built. The former Louisville head coach and Florida defensive coordinator hopes to construct a new program, a program founded upon discipline and physicality.
But Strong makes no bones about it; it will be done his way.
Take the two teams that will square off tonight inside NRG Stadium and the current state of the Arkansas and Texas programs. Bielema has seemingly waved a magic wand in Fayetteville, injecting a burst of positive energy and backing it up with a strong second half of the 2014 season. The former Wisconsin coach kept teaching, and coaching, his players even after 2013’s difficult-to-swallow 3-9 campaign. Things have to get worse before they get better.
Now they are getting better for the Hogs. Arkansas competed with the best of the SEC West this season, winning two of its final three games to get to a bowl. Bielema is feeling the effects of playing in the SEC on his recruiting prowess. The first two classes he’s wrung in have been better than any recruiting class he signed at Wisconsin.
What Bielema’s faced with is tougher, however. There’s a ceiling coaching in Fayetteville. For a previous coach, that ceiling was 11 wins, a Cotton Bowl victory and a top-five ranking. What’s the ceiling for Bielema?
That’s unknown, but there is a ceiling and whenever he reaches it, the Razorbacks will plateau.
The team standing on the opposite sideline tonight — the Hogs’ bitter, old Southwest Conference rivals — is on a similar trajectory right now, but Strong’s Texas program has much more room to grow than the Razorbacks.
Sure, Arkansas is ahead of Texas in terms of rebuilding. But Strong leads the richest program in the country. The school itself has an ESPN-backed television network, no one can compete with that.
Not only are the Longhorns deep-pocketed, but as much as Bielema desires to recruit his “Tex Hogs”, if Strong gets Texas back to national prominence, it will dominate the Lone Star State in recruiting. Those around college football act like Texas’ reign has ended and SEC programs such as Arkansas and Texas A&M will recruit the state of Texas better in the long run. While that is true now, the culture hasn’t shifted. If Texas is good, high school players still want to go to Austin. The Longhorns are a blue blood program in college football, and their resources, national exposure and history match that.
But back to tonight. The Hogs and the Longhorns will do battle for the first time since 2008. Arkansas ought to win; Bielema’s program is farther along.
The Razorbacks are on the faster track, however, Texas can sustain success longer in the future.
And to stay on that fast track, Arkansas needs a win tonight more than Texas.
After living in Birmingham, Ala., Jordan left the ground zero of SEC Nation to head south to Florida to tell the unique stories of the renowned tradition of SEC football. In his free time, his mission is to find the best locales around.
