quote:
When people protest so much I sense that they are talking out of two sides of their face. It's a good hire and remains to see just how good. Arky fans are a funny lot.

Eh you just have to understand that dynamics of Tim Horton. It's a two sided story with him and his coaching career.

The Horton name itself is very powerful within the University of Arkansas. Tim played at Arkansas and his dad Harold just retired as the Executive Director of the Razorback Foundation (the AD fundraising arm). The family is more connected to the football program than most any other family in the state.

With that being said they are a great family. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who would ever say an ill word about them. They enjoy a spectacular reputation around the state and Tim goes out of his way to befriend and keep in contact with all the high school coaches around the state no matter the size of the school. Coaches love that and they love him for that.

That being said, his coaching abilities are not at the level of his all-star personality to the point that there were rumors that he might be fired last year. However, people have long been worried that firing him would fracture the firing head coaches ties to the high school coaches. As a RB's coach our RB's actually fumbled the ball more every single year that he coached here. The number went the opposite direction from what you want to see. That is what led to the talk about him possibly being hired.

On the recruiting front, he signed about 73% of instate guys that he offered last time I crunched the numbers. It's a pretty solid # as during that same timeframe when I did the research, LSU was only signing like 72% of instate guys that they offered. However, it's a completely different caliber of athlete. A lot of those guys only had major offers of Arkansas and that's it where as LSU signs 10 guys instate that are as good as the top guy in Arkansas. With that being said, his track record wasn't as good with the 4* guys. Whether that was due to Petrino or not we will never know since he wasn't retained.

I stand by my position that you guys got an awesome guy as a coach. He's going to be coaching a position that you barely even use to it's worth the risk on his coaching abilities to have someone setup shop back in Malzahn's old stomping grounds. It's a great plan by Malzahn and I applaud him for it.