In this year that is unlike any other, there are a few things we can count on. Sonic Drive-in is still great. Will Ferrell still knows how to entertain. And Alabama sports media is as arrogant as ever.
In a 2020 season preview for the Crimson Tide, not only did a writer for SB Nation’s Alabama site feel it necessary to predict a win over Arkansas, but he also felt is important to add: that “Arkansas won’t win a football game this year.”
Dakota Cox continued: “Arkansas relies heavily on easy non-conference wins to have a prayer of becoming bowl eligible. With ten games in the SEC, that’s completely out the window. Winning three games would be a huge success for the Razorbacks.”
In another section he writes, “I’m sure this isn’t what Feleipe Franks was hoping for when he transferred to play for the Razorbacks, but this is the new normal for Arkansas. They might get lucky and upset a team or two on the way to an abysmal record, but they surely won’t contend with Alabama football. The Crimson Tide will likely have their bench in by halftime.”
Look, we get it.
In the last few years, Arkansas has been an SEC West cellar dweller. And, yes, Alabama has beaten the Hogs every season since the George W. Bush administration. But that doesn’t mean you have to go out of your way to predict that not only will your team beat the Hogs, but that the Hogs won’t even muster a single win against anybody else.
Fortunately, some Razorbacks like Rakeem Boyd are taking umbrage to this kind of talk.
“We ready to shock the whole state of Arkansas.. we been working #WPS,” the Hogs’ star senior tailback recently tweeted, sprinkling in some snort-face emojis for good measure.
Mike Woods, one of Arkansas’ top wide receivers, retweeted Boyd’s message, and then sprinkled on some cayenne pepper of his own:
We gon shock the whole nation brudda… we the worst team in the SEC with the worst head coach remember https://t.co/U8185kGcYR
— WOODS. (@TheMikeWoods) August 12, 2020
There’s a couple ways to take this.
One, he could be referring to all the media outlets like SB Nation’s Bama Hammer which have already deemed Arkansas as the worst team. On top of that, a lot of college football writers have rated Sam Pittman, who had never before been a head coach at a level above JUCO, as the worst head coach in the SEC.
But there’s another way to interpret the tweet. “We [were] the worst team in the SEC with the worst head coach remember,” is pretty accurate, too.
Arkansas has been the worst team, but that had much to do with having a head coach who went 4-18 in two spectacularly bad seasons on the Hill.
Morris is indeed the worst coach in Razorback football history in terms of overall record, and Woods’ tweet brings that to mind even if he was intending it to be sarcastic. Of course, mixing it up for the fans is nothing new for the Razorback junior receiver.
On his own YouTube channel, Woods gives unusually open takes on life as a Division I football player that are in stark contrast to most interviews done in the locker rooms.
In an advice video for high school athletes, he says: “The recruiting process is long, and all these coaches are going to tell you the same exact thing to get you to put that uniform on.
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“They just trying to feed their family. If they get you, they look good to the head coach. All these coaches, they going to tell you the exact same thing. ….So do your own research. You got to be able to go look at a school that offered you. You got to be able to go look at the school that offered you and go look at they roster, see how many people they got on they roster in your position.”
It was Chad Morris, by the way, who was the head coach who originally recruited Woods to SMU. When Morris left for Arkansas, he offered Woods a scholarship to come to the U of A. In other videos, Woods credits Morris and his staff for helping him get his head on straight during his freshman year when he got in academic trouble.
Morris, of course, was fired last November and ended up in Auburn as the offensive coordinator under Gus Malzahn. There, over the course of the next three seasons, he will make roughly 2.435 million a year ($1.7 million a year from Arkansas via the buyout clause and $735,000 annually from Auburn).
No doubt, Morris used some of that lucre to buy the new home that apparently provided the attic which became his studio here:
The suddenness with which Morris has jumped between three schools is par for the course in college football today. That’s why Mike Woods advises viewers to ” burn no bridges.”
“Because, bro, college football is a business. Coaches get thrown around like this… You got to understand, these coaches get new jobs every year. Just because you’re getting recruited by somebody at somewhere like Louisiana Monroe or something, but you’re talking to somebody in Arkansas, don’t talk bad or not respond to the dude at Louisiana Monroe, because next year he can be in the SEC.
“Next year, he could be coaching you. Don’t burn no bridges. You never know when that can come because everybody in football talks. So even if he don’t coach you, he could know if you’re trying to go to the NFL. Once you get to go to the NFL, he could know somebody in the NFL and trust me, word of mouth is strong in the NFL. They will not pick you up because of what somebody say about you. So do not burn no bridges. Be nice to everybody. Talk to everybody. Show everybody love.”
Currently, Arkansas is scheduled to play at Auburn on November 7.
Despite Woods’ advice, expect very little love to be shown on the field when these new Hogs take the field against Chad Morris and Gus Malzahn, two of the least popular coaches in Arkansas college sports history.
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Watch Mike Woods’ advice and tips videos for athletes below. His skill at talking while pounding down Chipotle deliciousness and not choking is impressive.
More realness:
