FAYETTEVILLE — In the same breath, Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long was praised for firing the last Razorbacks head football coach and advised on the criteria for hiring the next one.
Whether intentional or not, that criteria supplied by UA graduate Anthony Hicks, a former Razorbacks football letterman (1993-1996), identifies a current Arkansas assistant as ideal to become the Razorbacks’ interim head coach for 2012.
Promoting Tim Horton, the running backs coach/recruiting coordinator and the football staff’s only UA graduate, would assure that Long’s most memorable words from Tuesday night when he fired Bobby Petrino would not be forgotten upon hiring Petrino’s successor.
“No single individual is bigger than the team, the Razorback football program, or the University of Arkansas,” Long said while thoroughly detailing why Petrino’s transgressions were too insurmountable to retain him despite successive 10-3 and 11-2 seasons and forecasts for as good or better in 2012.
By now you likely know those transgressions by Page 1 rote, and they require no rehashing.
“I support Jeff Long 100 percent,” said Hicks, one of many former Razorbacks who have eloquently professed their university’s integrity above their acknowledged appreciation of Petrino’s on-field success. “His best statement was no man is bigger than the University of Arkansas.”
Hicks, an Arkadelphia native and current Fayetteville resident, continued, advising an administration increasingly filled by those without Arkansas ties.
“Whoever we get here next has to embrace who we are and embrace our culture and embrace our history,” Hicks said. “If you don’t, you are not going to be here long. They have to understand that we are Arkansas, and while we care about winning, we care about our entire university.”
Petrino embraced winning but little else.
Off Petrino’s success and intimidating style, this administration let him act bigger than the university and allowed him to isolate and operate the football program more apart from the university than as part of the university.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” 19th century historian John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton was quoted as saying, and it still rings true.
No worries about Horton seizing any authority beyond that which is required to represent in a first-class way a university he loves almost as much as life itself.
He’s lived it growing up the son of Razorback Foundation Executive Director Harold Horton, a Razorbacks letterman (1959-1961) and former UA assistant coach (1968-1980) who has been in Razorbacks administration since 1990.
Tim lettered as a Razorbacks receiver (1986-1989) for Ken Hatfield. He sacrificed being Air Force’s offensive coordinator for the 2007 emergency that created an opportunity to return to Arkansas as running backs coach on Houston Nutt’s last staff.
Petrino retained him and was rewarded. Horton kept mostly intact the freshman class of 2008 that was so instrumental in successes from 2009 to 2011.
Tim has the staff’s respect and four years coaching in Bobby Petrino’s offensive system.
Regardless of whatever “big name” coach some fans fancy, these Hogs would be set back adapting on the fly in August to a new coach who would inevitably bring in some new staff and new systems.
This team and this program deserve a coach who knows Petrino’s system and personnel as well as Arkansas and its university, and the Razorbacks’ importance within them both.
Knowing what all is combined, Tim Horton comes closest to knowing it all.
Sports, Pages 18 on 04/14/2012