re: Arktards - Question about your recruiting

TL; DR - Arkansas will always have a talent disadvantage vs. most SEC teams.

You have to understand something about Arkansas; and in particular - Northwest Arkansas. We have several factors the uniquely put us behind the 8-ball in terms of recruiting.

1) NWA diversity. Although it is getting better, the average high school up here is about 70% white; 27% hispanic (not big football culture) and 3% all other. In layman’s terms, we have no hometown pipeline for recruiting like a Baton Rouge, Dallas, Atlanta, etc. every few years or so we may get one local kid from NWA - but rare.

2) Arkansas geographics and demographics - our best Arkansas homegrown talent historically has come from cities/towns 3-5 hours away from Northwest Arkansas. These are the “poorer” demographics but truth be told our best talent. Even in good years, we only get about 4-6 Arkansan commits. Our best years as a program we’re in the 60s when all/most players were white. We just do not have a pipeline into dedicated pool of stellar athletes.

#3 As a result of #1 and #2, Arkansas has historically been an average program. Can over achieve with a good coach (Petrino) or can under achieve with bad coach (Bielema). Either way, our talent stays pretty consistent in the top 25-50 range.

So, taking #1 and #2 into account; it is imperative that the coaching must be above average in order to contend for anything at Arkansas. Whoever the Arkansas coach is (ie even a hypothetical Urban Meyer), they will always be playing with inferior talent vs. most of the SEC programs. I’m pretty sure our best recruiting year from a Rivals/247 perspective was probably still about 8th in the SEC. Not trying to be racist, but I’m pretty sure we have the most white kids on our team outside Vanderbilt. It is not fun watching a slow white linebacker try to catch up to an average SEC ball carrier.