re: Why does Arkansas have such an incredible history of successful coaches?

Funny how everyone forgets Houston Nutt.. haha

Charlie Strong is from Arkansas as well, verdict is still out on him being a big time coach though. He did great at Louisville yet having a tough time at Texas so far.

I knew Ohio was up there as well, but their combination of population, money, and football culture makes them a likely candidate for raising coaches.

Tuberville is also good enough to include on the list, IMO.

Now list the number of championships. Arky coaches have produced. It is impressive, actually.

Well people in Arkansas are simply smarter, more resourceful, more creative, and raised with a certain dedication.

And we have nothing else to do but become obsessive over things like church and football.

Yeah I was unsure at first. Just a thread disappearance

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I am wondering if there is some geographical/social influence, or if this is just the result of a small sample size lacking statistical significance resulting in an unrepresentative distribution.

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I will take a shot at it, but this is just a guess on my part I will grant you. I think a large reason Arkansas has produced as many coaches as we have is that until relatively recently our education system was a wee bit different then what you will find in most states.

I'm not claiming intellectual superiority mind you. No, what I'm talking about is that the state used to have more high schools then you can shake a stick at. Hell, we still have a horde of Universities in the state despite our small population.

You had large high schools where a hundred kids might be on the football team all the way down to hole in the wall schools where 17 kids went out for football. If that many.

So many different schools with such wildly varying levels of talent meant that as a coach you had to be able to adapt and change your game plan from year to year. For example one coach, whose name escapes me at the moment, won a couple of state titles running the antiquated double eagle formation. Until he got a good passer one year and went full on spread formation Air Raid attack.

What works at a large school like Little Rock Central wouldn't work for the Winslow Fighting Squirrels. So you had a lot of coaches trying the latest (and sometimes oldest) schemes to try and level the playing field. As a result you had very innovative coaches coming up through the ranks and future coaches learning the business in this sort of football laboratory.

You had to adapt to what you saw from week to week because it was going to change. Heck the one time I saw a Gus Malzahn offense shut down in high school was when the other team threw out the three days older then dirt 6-3-2 defense against him.

Now that we have combined a lot of the smaller high schools in the state we will probably see the reckless innovation start to slow down since there will be fewer coaches coming up.

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You can either coach football or sell rocks on the side of the road, not much else to do.

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The pretty, shiny ones can be worth quite a bit...

Better question is why can't they seem to keep them. Every coach worth a shite hightails it out as soon as possible.

Maybe you give the high school coaches longer to develop. In Mississippi and Alabama, when the football coach has his second losing season we demote him to Principal.