Jeff Long was very tight-lipped regarding his search for a coach. If Gus had been offered the job, he turned it down and decided on Auburn. Or perhaps Gus had interviewed with Arkansas and was waiting on an offer that never came. We'll probably never know. However, we do know that Coach Bielema had been at the top of Jeff Long's list for a long time. Anyway, Gus had just been hired at Arkansas State. At the time, he and everyone else expected Bobby Petrino would be at Arkansas for quite some time. Besides, had Gus wanted the Arkansas job at any opportune time in the near future, it would have made a lot better sense to pick another head coaching job besides the one at Arkansas State. And he had other offers.

Bobby's fiasco happened on April 1. IMO, Gus' sites were most likely set on Auburn all along and Jeff Long knew he wanted Coach Bielema shortly after the Petrino incident. Remember the letter Jeff Long received from Coach Bielema after the incident? But Jeff knew it would be much wiser to wait until Coach Bielema finished the 2012 season to make an offer since that would put him in a better position to seal the deal. And don't forget Coach Bielema was quite popular at Wisconsin and was probably waiting to see whether Barry Alvarez was going to accommodate his requests regarding assistant coaches.

The whole situation had a lot to do with timing. Hence...the interim hiring of John L. Smith even makes more sense under those circumstances. Anyway, this is all just speculation on my part as to how it all went down. And I'm glad we have Coach Bielema.

This post was edited on 7/5/15 at 6:40 am