New Arkansas coach Bret Bielema told the AJC this week that he was “just joking” and “having some fun” with last month’s comments directed Alabama and coach Nick Saban.
Bielema was at an Arkansas booster club meeting when he was quoted as saying, “The reason the SEC is talked about all the time is one team, because of their dominance. But I didn’t come here to play Alabama, I came here to beat Alabama.” Bielema also said, “You can take Saban’s record when he was at Michigan State and when he was a coach in the Big Ten and put it against mine, and he can’t compare.”
Naturally that didn’t sit too well with Alabama fans. Bielema quickly clarified the comments on Twitter, explaining they were a “joke” – but they had already been picked up by the national media.
This week, Bielema explained that the environment was basically an Arkansas pep rally. People were excited about the new coaching staff and the upcoming season, and his comments were part of an answer to a question:
“That was the fifth question in a row in an open mic (session). I think there were about 500 fans. We’re just joking and having some fun. It was like a joke to a guy who made reference to the toughest schedule comment, and it got blown out of proportion – probably not 10, 20 or 30 times, but 1,000 times of what it was supposed to be.
“You know, I have nothing but respect for what the SEC was before I got here and everybody involved with it. It’s the reason I’m here. It would be silly for me to bash on anything that took place prior to me being here. It was something that was blown way out of proportion. And it was taken way out of context, more than anything. It wasn’t even comparable to the product that was being written about.”
Did Bielema reach out to Saban afterwards? “I left a message for him, and that was it.”
Bielema has yet to coach a game in the SEC, but has given the Arkansas fans some things to get excited about. The biggest was a happy ending to the recruiting soap opera of Alex Collins, the 5-star running back from Plantation, Fla. Collins signed with Arkansas but his mother favored Miami and declined to co-sign in a high-stakes drama that captivated the sports world. The next day, Alex’s father signed off in favor of the Razorbacks.
Bielema was very candid about a variety of topics, including a new strategy in recruiting Georgia, in an interview with the AJC:
- Regarding Alex Collins, do you think a kid should be able to sign with a college without their parents’ permission? “No, I think that’s a great rule. Obviously, anybody that’s involved in their life, there’s going to be certain times where … The majority of times, let me say this, in my seven years as a head coach and I’m going into year eight, we’re always going to have the best interests of the kid, with their parents, in mind. Sometimes, some kids have some different ideas about what they want to do, and how they go about it. You never know the whole story. The thing that excited us about Alex is that we knew how excited he was (about Arkansas). We definitely knew that it wasn’t at the approval of his mom. But everybody is entitled to their own opinions, and hopefully as he (spends) his time here, (his mother) will realize what a great decision he made.”
- Was the Alex Collins’ situation good publicity or bad publicity for Arkansas? “I’m a big believer, and I know there’s some extreme cases, but any publicity is good publicity as long as it’s something not in a negative light. I think the fact is it showed this kid as someone who came across so positively when they interviewed him. It was a negative situation turned good by a great kid who said all the right things, who handled himself in the right way, and who endeared himself to a lot of people – not just Arkansas fans but hopefully fans of college football.”
- You’re one of the few SEC head coaches that is really good on Twitter. What got you into that? “I’ve always been a fan of it. The main reason, the only reason, I do it is because of recruiting. Kids love (Twitter). There’s a rule by the NCAA that you can Direct Message kids starting their junior year. That really gives you an advantage, for me as a head coach, to build a relationship with our top priority kids. It allows you to have daily and immediate (impactful communication). If I see them tweet something about maybe their favorite movie or favorite song, then I can hit them right back on Direct Message. They know you’re following them. I don’t have time for it all the time. But if I have a lull … I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, when you’re on an airplane or you’re in a car, and you’re doing something that has idle time. You know, I’m not a big reader. I’m not picking up magazines and newspaper articles. I’d rather stay live and connected with something that matters. I think (Twitter) has allowed me to do that, which has been beneficial for all of us.”
- There’s always a lot of haters on Twitter, no matter who you are. Sometimes when people tweet negative things to you, you actually interact with them and respond.“I don’t really try to hate (back). I just kind of try to address them. I always I feel like if you ignore something you know is untrue … then you’re probably setting yourself up for future scenarios you don’t want to deal with. So I just kind of have some fun with it. I don’t really try to insult people. I try to educate them. I tell you what – kids respond to that. A lot of kids will say something back to me, or when I meet them on their visit they will say something. (Twitter is) something (outside) of the season you might be able to have some fun with. But I don’t know how much tweeting I’ll be able to do starting Aug. 1. That’s when we get down the business, and every minute of the day is consumed by the season. But I really do believe, and I’ve said this over and over – if you’re in the Kentucky Derby, you’ve got to have the right horse to win (the race). And for us, we need to get the right kind of kids in here. That means recruiting. That means (making some form of contact) with them on a daily basis. That means do anything you can to get an advantage over your opponent within the NCAA rules. And right now, Twitter is one of them.”
- What’s the biggest difference between recruiting for the Big Ten and SEC? “I don’t know if there’s a lot of difference. Obviously, there’s a lot of competition. But I think the key is, as it is everywhere, you’ve got to identify players that fit your system. It doesn’t really do you a lot of good to sign a guy who doesn’t fit who you are or what you do. I make it a point to tell our staff that I don’t care who is recruiting them. We’ve had kids who have gone on and accomplished great things that were recruited by everybody. We’ve had players that have gone on to be Big Ten players of the year that were never recruited by anybody else. We’ve got to find the ones that fit us and not worry about what everybody else thinks. The emphasis on recruiting stars and preseason rankings – those are all good and pleasant things to talk about but -- people win and lose championships, people keep or lose their jobs based on win-loss records. So we’re a little bit more into the postseason rankings than the preseason rankings.”
- Now that you’re coaching in the SEC, is the conference all that it is hyped up to be? “It certainly appears to be that way. We’ve done some film analysis, some breakdown of our first four opponents, as well as our first four conference opponents. It’s very apparent that there are great players all over the place no matter which (SEC) school you’re talking about. It seems to me that there’s a strong consistency of defensive linemen who are big, athletic and can run – maybe more athletic than we were accustomed to in the Big Ten. I think the other thing that jumps out is the special teams play. There’s a couple of players that jump out on film, no matter which game you’re watching. (Guys that) can really run, very athletic, and very difficult to bring down in the return game. But also there’s some tough guys to cover as they’re trying to cover their own kicks.”
- Moving forward, you’re going to make Georgia more of a point of emphasis in recruiting? “When I first got here, obviously one of the biggest things I wanted to address was to find out not only what Arkansas was traditionally doing but also what the SEC had traditionally done as far as where they sign players – natural ties, and things like that. I paid special attention to anybody that touches our boundary. I was very intrigued by Georgia, and I was really surprised by the numbers. There were more players taken out of Georgia by SEC schools than any other state. That made a big impression on me. We addressed that. I put one coach in there almost full-time exclusively, and have a couple of other coaches that will touch in there geographically during the spring, as well during the fall. What we also found, Florida is a big area for us, so we got down to the end here in recruiting, and there were 3-4 kids we were recruiting, and they had either a mother or father that were living in Atlanta. It seemed to pretty normal path or scenario that we want to cover.”
- So your research said that there more Georgia players on SEC rosters than any other state? “Yes. It was kind of amazing to me. The part that jumped out, everybody talks about Florida, Texas and Ohio for signing kids, pure numbers-wise. But the SEC had a very, very strong representation from the entire state of Georgia overall.”
- What makes you think Arkansas can be successful in recruiting Georgia? “First of all, we’ve got to sell our style. One thing that really helped us when we were at Wisconsin is we kind of have a unique way of doing things offensively. In particular, we run a Pro-Style set, which a lot of people don’t do nowadays. It’s really set on guys understanding that you do what you do here on this level, and the NFL is going to take appreciation in that. We’ve had quite a few players drafted during my tenure (at Wisconsin), especially on the offensive side of the ball. I saw a stat the other day that over the last three or four years, we’ve had more players drafted offensively than anybody in the country. The kids take notice in that. You know, it’s not like you’re running the spread. You’re not butt-blocking anybody on offense. You’re putting your hands on people and making them move, and that carries a lot of weight.”
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