We're not even to May yet, but Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long gets the early vote for Administrator of the Year in college football.

Long did the right thing – even though it was the hard thing – when he fired super-successful coach Bobby Petrino. Long handled that difficult duty with enough fortitude and passion that it turned fan disappointment and anger into pride in the institution. Big-money donations immediately flowed in after Long deposed his duplicitous coach.

John L. Smith coached under Bobby Petrino at Arkansas for two seasons. (Getty Images)Now Long has backed that up with a smart hire in John L. Smith as Petrino's short-term replacement. Not a sexy hire, but a smart one.

The Arkansas fans wildly wishing for one of the Usual Untouchable Suspects – Jon Gruden, Steve Mariucci, the ghost of Bear Bryant – may not love it. The Arkansas fans wildly wishing for one of the Unusual Suspects – Sean Payton or a current head coach at a powerhouse program – will be disappointed. But the Arkansas fans who want what's best for both a very talented 2012

Read More »from Arkansas hits a home run hiring John L. Smith

Arkansas has named John L. Smith as its next football coach, Yahoo! Sports has confirmed.

The former head coach at Weber State, Michigan State, Louisville, Utah State and Idaho will be announced as coach of the Razorbacks on Monday afternoon, sources told Yahoo! Sports. Smith was an assistant to Bobby Petrino the past two years at Arkansas and will keep the same staff together to enhance continuity.

The Associated Press first reported Smith would be the new Arkansas coach.

John L. Smith was an assistant to Bobby Petrino for two years. (US Presswire)

Heavy speculation over the last week was that Arkansas would hire an interim coach for the 2012 season and then work on a long-term replacement for fired Bobby Petrino. Smith is not an interim coach in title, but was given a 10-month contract and a long-term search is expected after this season, according to sources.

Smith had just taken the Weber State job this spring, but for several reasons is a good fit at Arkansas. Most importantly he will maintain continuity with the staff and has complete knowledge

Read More »from John L. Smith named head coach at Arkansas

Every once in a while in college sports, we reach a fascinating moment when otherwise intelligent people completely lose their minds.

This is that moment. SMU is that school. And Larry Brown is the object of its insane desire.

Larry Brown coached his last college game in the 1988 national championship. (US Presswire)The Mustangs are striving to hire a man roughly the age of Stonehenge, who last recruited high-schoolers in the 1980s and left the only two college programs he has headed saddled with major NCAA sanctions.

That's right. SMU, the historic leader in NCAA scandal scar tissue, is borderline desperate to hire a fossil with one vacated Final Four (UCLA) and one postseason ban (Kansas) on his collegiate coaching résumé. Brown never cared about the rules then; do you really expect him to pore over the rules manual and learn them all now? Yet this is the guy they want to throw considerable money at to coach a sport nobody at the school cares about – unless I'm misinterpreting that average home attendance of 2,013 this past season.

Anybody know the number for a Read More »from Larry Brown? Have SMU officials gone crazy?

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The men in blue shirts were loitering on the sidewalk between Wildcat Lodge and the Craft Center, waiting for their brush with greatness.

The five Kentucky basketball players who would make their professional declarations Tuesday night had to walk between the Lodge, where they live, and the Craft Center, the practice facility where they coalesced into a championship unit. This was the place for the gathered fans to beg for an autograph, a picture, a final fleeting connection with players they've barely gotten to know.

The men might not get another chance. Soon these young men will be gone.

Read More »from Kentucky's starters leave for the NBA, but a new crop of stars is ready to take their place

With the help of a crashed Harley-Davidson, we have arrived at a moment of truth for Arkansas football fans.

Will the Pig People treat one power-abusing coach the same way they treated another one five years ago? Will they mount another vigilante campaign to obtain his phone records to see how many times he called a woman who was not his wife? Will they not stop until the man is ready to flee his job leading the Razorbacks?

In other words, will Bobby Petrino in 2012 be a slow-roasted Hog the same way Houston Nutt was in 2007?

One would think so. But one must also consider this: Petrino is 21-5 in the past two seasons, authored the first 11-win campaign at the school since 1977 and has a team that should be ranked in the preseason top 10 – maybe top five. Nutt was 14-11 in the two seasons before the Arkansas faithful went after him like Billy Ray Smith chasing a quarterback.

Will Petrino's winning record and program momentum be enough to earn him preferential treatment from the public?

Read More »from Will Arkansas fans back a sinning winner, or roast Bobby Petrino like they did Houston Nutt?

NEW ORLEANS – On the way to Kentucky's "One Shining Moment," there was one fleeting moment when it looked as if the whole thing might collapse.

That moment came with 63 seconds left in Monday's national championship game. By then, gritty Kansas had whittled a seemingly insurmountable 18-point Wildcats lead to six, and the Jayhawks had the ball. The Kentucky fans in the Superdome were actively losing their minds, and John Calipari surely had a dreadful dose of déjà vu knowing that Bill Self already had swiped one seemingly secure national title from him four years earlier.

Now Self was getting close to doing it again. The Big Blue pucker factor was high.

Coming out of a timeout, Self drew up one of Kansas' go-to plays: Elijah Johnson driving to the right wing and looking for Tyshawn Taylor. In one variation of the play, Taylor would cut outside behind Johnson and take a shovel pass for a 3-point shot; that's the version Self famously ran with Sherron Collins and Mario Chalmers in the

Read More »from Stars playing without ego help Kentucky set a new standard for dominance in era devoid of dynasties

NEW ORLEANS – Author John Updike once famously wrote, "Gods do not answer letters." But I'm hoping they at least read their mail.

Specifically, I'm hoping they read this open letter to the Tourney Gods:

You owe us one.

You owe us a great national championship game Monday night. Specifically, you owe us a great ending. You owe us a Mario Chalmers shot – whether it's Kentucky or Kansas swishing it doesn't matter, just give us one. (Clearly, it will matter to the respective fan bases, but non-invested thrill-seekers will take a game-winner from either side.)

Without it, your tourney is lacking one of its key ingredients.

The NCAA tournament is like pizza – it's never bad. It may be merely OK at times, but it's never bad.

Tourney Gods, your 2012 work is not bad, but it has been merely OK. There has been a paucity of last-second drama. We have had precious few memorable shots and not enough edge-of-your-seat finishes. After 66 games, the ledger shows zero buzzer-beaters and one overtime

Read More »from Dear Tourney Gods: You owe us a great finish

NEW ORLEANS – And so it comes to this: The last impediment to John Calipari's Sherman-through-Georgia, slash-and-burn march to the national title is none other than Bill Self.

Perfect.

In a Final Four for settling scores, Calipari gets a shot at the guy who dealt him the most painful defeat of his career – the 2008 national title game. Cue the Mario Chalmers video because you're going to be seeing his immortal shot endlessly before the teams tip off Monday.

Against Self and Kansas, Cal's Memphis team had the game won until it collapsed at the end of regulation. A nine-point lead with 2:12 left melted into nothing when Chalmers hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to force overtime, and the shell-shocked Tigers were done at that point.

Perhaps it was best for Memphians that the Tigers lost that game because they would have had to endure a vacated national title had they won. Memphis was stripped of that Final Four appearance by the NCAA when star point guard Derrick Rose was declared

Read More »from John Calipari gets shot at redemption against Bill Self in Kentucky-Kansas title matchup