I don't think the steroid era record setters should be in the Hall of Fame any more than Pete Rose. The unfortunate thing is that the Cooperstown loses something when the all time leaders are not included. Baseball is a game of numbers and statistics are the measuring stick used for the Hall. There used to be a direct correlation between statistics and the Baseball Hall of Fame. What I mean is, you could read the record book and identify the all time leaders in specific categories and almost always they would be in the Hall. Or, you could read a list of Hall of Famers and know which ones led their league or the majors in something for a season or a career. The reason I say it "used to be" is because the leaders in today's record book have no shot at the Hall.
There was a time when 714 was a magic number. When Hall of Famer Babe Ruth was passed by Hall of Famer Hank Aaron the new number became 755. That milestone was a big deal. When 755 was passed, the record now is 762, the fan fare wasn't as great. PED's may not have ruined the game but they sure ruined the record book and tainted the Hall of Fame. The all time home run king will probably never enter the Hall.
Another special number was 60, so special when it became 61 they made a movie about it. Now the guy who hit 60 is in the Hall (inaugural class). The guy who hit 61 is not. Not for reasons the guy who hit 762 is not. Seems the guy who hit 61 doesn't have the body of work to gain entrance to the Hall. I'm good with that. But the guy with 762 lifetime homeruns also hit 73 in a season. That means the single season record holder will also never be in the Hall.
61 has been bested 6 times, none of whom will be enshrined in Cooperstown.
Another PEDer, Sammy Sosa, hit more than 60 home runs in a season 3 different times. From 1998-2002 he hit 292 homeruns. How good is that? The most home runs that Babe Ruth hit in a five year period was 256.
Most home runs in a single season:
1. Barry Bonds, 73
2. Mark McGwire, 70
3. Sammy Sosa, 66
4. Mark McGwire, 65
5. Sammy Sosa, 64
6. Sammy Sosa, 63
7. Roger Maris, 61
8. Babe Ruth, 60
Most home runs over a five-year period.:
1. Sammy Sosa, 292 (1998-2002)
2. Mark McGwire, 284 (1995-1999)
3. Sammy Sosa, 279 (1997-2001)
4. Mark McGwire, 277 (1996-2000)
5. Barry Bonds, 258 (2000-2004)
I guess the most significant vacancy is the fact that the all time leader in games played, hits, plate appearances, singles and times on base will also never grace the Hall. Poor Pete.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tom Watson Ryder Cup Captain
This is a reprint of a recent Joe Posnanski Blog post I found most interesting and wanted to share.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012
Captain Watson
I've been lucky enough to be around the next American Ryder Cup captain, Tom Watson, a whole lot in my life. He has asked me to introduce him at various functions and to be his co-host at various events. I've caddied for him. I've interviewed him hundreds of times, of course, and I've had many long and sometimes intense conversations with him about life and politics and the belly putter and journalism and what excellence really means. I don't say all this to brag (mostly).
I say all this because even after all that, I can't say that I really know Tom Watson.
All I really know for sure -- for absolute sure -- is that the son of a gun wants to win more than anyone I've ever been around.
That's a blurry and ineffable trait if you think about it. Competitiveness. You will hear people talk all the time about how competitive they are. They will usually try to prove this point by saying they cannot stand losing even at some thoroughly unimportant game -- most often tiddlywinks.
"You know me, I want to win everything, whether it's tiddlywinks or whatever," former Cubs manager Dallas Green said.
"I don't care if I'm playing you in golf, in tennis, in checkers, in tiddlywinks, I want to win," tennis star James Blake said.
"I'd love to manage Arsenal -- I hate losing at tiddlywinks, we need that mentality," tweeted longtime German soccer player Dietmar Hamann.
"These boys hate losing at tiddlywinks," said former English football star Graeme Murty to explain how hard it was on his team when they were going through a rough patch.
"I have to win at everything, even tiddlywinks," said England tennis and club mogul David Lloyd.
"It doesn't matter if we're flipping a coin or playing tiddlywinks or football, I want to win," said Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn.
And so on, there are thousands of these tiddlywinks quotes -- tiddlywinks seems to be at the very heart of whatever it is that makes some people insanely ambitious and cutthroat. There are also versions of this competitive-speak where an athlete/coach talks about how they want to win so badly they never even let their child win at anything -- not tic-tac-toe, not arm wrestling, not anything -- even when their child is a toddler.
And finally there are those particularly zealous souls -- I seem to remember Bill Russell, perhaps the most famously competitive athlete, saying this -- who combine the two themes and say they would never, ever -- not in a million years -- let their child beat them at tiddlywinks.
All of this is well and good … but what kind of person really wouldn't let their three-year-old child win at tiddlywinks? Would you want to be friends with that person? Somewhere along the competitiveness spectrum there is a line between healthy and unhealthy, sane and unstable, between a relatively sane person who really wants to win at tiddlywinks and a half-crazed lunatic willing to drop a piano on a competitor so he can get the last doughnut.
Watson gingerly walks that line. Watson actually has two defining qualities -- two qualities that, on the surface, seem to clash. On the one hand, he wants to win more than I know. On the other hand, he is -- in his realm -- the most principled person I know. He's a ferocious rules follower; so much so he has written more than one book about the rules of golf. In other words, he's the most competitive person I know, and he's the least likely to cheat or take shortcuts. It's a unique combination. Watson is a unique person.
He displays this competitiveness in lots of ways -- for instance, it's fun to watch people interview him (sometimes more fun than actually interviewing him). Most of the time, Watson is a pleasant and friendly guy. He will answer any question you ask (unless you keep asking different versions of the same question). But he's not much of a small-talk guy, and he will not meet you more than halfway. Let's say, for example, he's played a round at the Masters in the rain. The first exchange will inevitably go like this:
Reporter: So, it was a wet one out there today.
Watson: Yep.
That's all. There will be a few brief seconds of awkward silence -- but Watson is done talking. The reporter is hoping that Watson will expand on the rain, how hard it was to play in those conditions, what the greens were like, how long the course played, what holes were especially tough and so on. But the reporter DID NOT ASK any of those questions. The reporter simply said it was wet out there. Watson confirmed.
Interviews will go on like this, a battle of wills. He will not just go along with storylines if he disagrees with the premise (and he disagrees with most premises). He will not anticipate the next question to make it easier on the interviewer. He will not direct traffic to a good story if he's not asked directly about it. I don't mean to make this sound like Watson is a bad interview … I find him to be a terrific interview, thoughtful, opinionated, well-spoken. But an interview is a competition. For Watson, everything is a competition.
It is this extreme competitiveness that made Tom Watson the best golfer of his day, one of the best golfers of all time. Oh, he was a great player on many levels -- great striker of the ball, remarkable imagination around the greens and, in his day, the best putter north of Ben Crenshaw -- but what made Watson a five-time British Open champion and the PGA Tour player of the year six times was his fierce unwillingness to give in. He might be the best bad-weather player who ever lived. He might be the best wind player who ever lived. He might be the best links player who ever lived.
Why? It's because those things challenge the soul, they test your patience and your willpower and your sense of fairness. A bad bounce. A gust of wind at the wrong time. A sideways rain. These things will crush your will. How do you endure? At some point, the circumstances and conditions and bad luck become so overwhelming that you just laugh and throw your hands up in the air and wonder why the fates have it in for you. The question is: At what point do you throw your hands up? For Tom Watson, that point is … never. If he's on pace for 84, he will fight like heck to shoot 83. If a perfectly struck shot hits a land mine and blows up, Watson will hit every ball fragment. I imagine he would never lose a game of chicken. Ever.
The wonderful caddy Bruce Edwards gave the best description of Watson's competitiveness. He said that some players -- you can probably think of a few -- hit a bad shot into an impossible spot and say, "Why me?' Tom hits a the same bad shot into the same impossible spot and he says, "Wait 'til you see what I do with this." Yep. Along with Seve Ballesteros and Tiger Woods, Watson probably followed up more bad shots with brilliant ones than anyone ever.*
*When I suggested this to Watson, he begrudgingly agreed. Then I said, "What about Jack Nicklaus?" He said: "Jack was as good as anyone at putting his bad shots behind him. But Jack didn't hit nearly as many bad shots as I did."
Watson once told me something funny. You already know, few people have ever loved golf as much as Tom Watson. He loves the history, the rules, the intricacies. He loves designing golf courses and studying golf equipment and breaking down the swing into the tiniest morsels. But he cannot stand playing golf on a sunny day. The very idea of many people's perfect day -- beautiful course, windless morning, a few friends, a six pack, 18 holes of joy -- strikes him as something of a nightmare.
You might think this is because golf is his business and so he cannot enjoy it the way others do, but that's not exactly it. A sunny windless day -- there's no challenge. There's no pressure. There's nothing at stake. Even if there are bets going, it doesn't matter, a few dollars are not enough to feed his competitive hunger. Give him a howling wind. Give him a big crowd. Give him crippling pressure. That's what he needs. That's what allows Watson to test himself. That's what golf means to him. Joe Montana once said that he liked driving better on icy roads. Same thing.
And that's why Watson never could quite deal with the reaction to his amazing second-place finish at the British Open in 2009 when he was almost 60 years old. He came to the final hole with a chance to win -- he needed a par -- but he hit his second shot too flush, and he kind of flubbed his first putt, and he missed the par putt. He lost in the playoff, and in Watson's mind it was a pure failure, plain and simple, nothing more or less.
Of course, that's not the way most people around the world felt. Most of us felt like it was heartbreaking to see him lose, sure, but it was an inspiration to see him come that close at age 59. It was almost the greatest sports story of the year and the greatest golf story of all time. For many, it was life-affirming beyond words. On his drive back to the hotel, Watson got a call from Nicklaus, who told him that Watson's effort had so inspired him that he actually watched golf on television, something Jack never does. Countless people from all around the world wrote and called and emailed and tweeted their appreciation to Watson for what he accomplished. Tom said all of that softened the pain of losing.
But you know what? It really didn't. He has admitted to me since that he will never get over losing that tournament, because he never gets over losing. Certainly he appreciates the support from people all around the world, and he's glad that some of them took some measure of motivation from what he did. But he doesn't really UNDERSTAND any of it. "I lost," he said. That's where the story ended for him. He won many. He lost that one. That's Tom Watson.
All of which is to say: He's an arresting and brilliant choice for Ryder Cup captain. The only choice, really, after this year's final-day meltdown. He's the first person since Nicklaus in 1983 and 1987 to repeat as captain (Watson was the captain of the U.S. Team in 1993, the last time the United States won the Ryder Cup on foreign soil). He also follows a series of pretty blasé choices -- Davis Love, Corey Pavin, Paul Azinger, Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton, Curtis Strange. All these men were excellent golfers and strong competitors and perfectly fine choices if you are trying to honor someone's career or if you want to make it comfortable for the players. Oh, those guys LOVED playing for Lehman and Love. They also lost both times.
And this is the point: If you want the Ryder Cup to be a bunch of friends playing a few rounds of golf for fun, sure, have at it. But if you are trying to WIN, yeah, you go get Tom Watson. True, captains don't win or lose Ryder Cups. True, Watson does not know these guys nearly as well as a younger player like Love, who is still active on the tour. True, Watson is not warm and fuzzy like Love -- he has never been shy about his issues with Tiger Woods, for instance.
But Watson will captain to win. Plain and simple. This is the man who in 1993 told his team during the Ryder Cup: "Remember, everything they invented, we perfected." This is the man who said that while he believes that Woods played golf better than anyone who ever lived, he would have LOVED to be young in Woods' era so he could try and crush him -- that's what it's all about for Watson. This is the man who hit the ball into the rough on 17 at Pebble Beach, told his caddy Bruce, "I'm going to make it," then made it to beat Nicklaus at the U.S. Open. There might not be much Watson can do to lead his team to victory. But you know Watson will do absolutely everything.
One last quick Watson story, one I've written before. Watson and I both sponsored teams in the Kansas City RBI program -- Reviving Baseball in the Inner City -- because we both love baseball and both want more kids to have the chance to play. It's a pretty loose thing, obviously. It isn't like they send you a stats packet after each game. They never really even tell you if your team won or lost. Such things don't matter. Unless you're Tom Watson.
"Hey, my team is playing your team tomorrow night and ..." I told him.
"We're going kick your ..." he said instantaneously.
He didn't smile. He didn't smirk. He didn't blink. He just glared at me, his eyes flaring. I remember thinking at that moment that, deep down, he was joking, but he showed no sign of it. And he never showed any sign of it. Not too long ago, I was interviewing Watson at an event, and I told that story, and looked for a smile from him. I got none. He glared at me again.
"I wasn't joking," he said. 'We did kick your …"
I say all this because even after all that, I can't say that I really know Tom Watson.
All I really know for sure -- for absolute sure -- is that the son of a gun wants to win more than anyone I've ever been around.
That's a blurry and ineffable trait if you think about it. Competitiveness. You will hear people talk all the time about how competitive they are. They will usually try to prove this point by saying they cannot stand losing even at some thoroughly unimportant game -- most often tiddlywinks.
"You know me, I want to win everything, whether it's tiddlywinks or whatever," former Cubs manager Dallas Green said.
"I don't care if I'm playing you in golf, in tennis, in checkers, in tiddlywinks, I want to win," tennis star James Blake said.
"I'd love to manage Arsenal -- I hate losing at tiddlywinks, we need that mentality," tweeted longtime German soccer player Dietmar Hamann.
"These boys hate losing at tiddlywinks," said former English football star Graeme Murty to explain how hard it was on his team when they were going through a rough patch.
"I have to win at everything, even tiddlywinks," said England tennis and club mogul David Lloyd.
"It doesn't matter if we're flipping a coin or playing tiddlywinks or football, I want to win," said Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn.
And so on, there are thousands of these tiddlywinks quotes -- tiddlywinks seems to be at the very heart of whatever it is that makes some people insanely ambitious and cutthroat. There are also versions of this competitive-speak where an athlete/coach talks about how they want to win so badly they never even let their child win at anything -- not tic-tac-toe, not arm wrestling, not anything -- even when their child is a toddler.
And finally there are those particularly zealous souls -- I seem to remember Bill Russell, perhaps the most famously competitive athlete, saying this -- who combine the two themes and say they would never, ever -- not in a million years -- let their child beat them at tiddlywinks.
All of this is well and good … but what kind of person really wouldn't let their three-year-old child win at tiddlywinks? Would you want to be friends with that person? Somewhere along the competitiveness spectrum there is a line between healthy and unhealthy, sane and unstable, between a relatively sane person who really wants to win at tiddlywinks and a half-crazed lunatic willing to drop a piano on a competitor so he can get the last doughnut.
Watson gingerly walks that line. Watson actually has two defining qualities -- two qualities that, on the surface, seem to clash. On the one hand, he wants to win more than I know. On the other hand, he is -- in his realm -- the most principled person I know. He's a ferocious rules follower; so much so he has written more than one book about the rules of golf. In other words, he's the most competitive person I know, and he's the least likely to cheat or take shortcuts. It's a unique combination. Watson is a unique person.
He displays this competitiveness in lots of ways -- for instance, it's fun to watch people interview him (sometimes more fun than actually interviewing him). Most of the time, Watson is a pleasant and friendly guy. He will answer any question you ask (unless you keep asking different versions of the same question). But he's not much of a small-talk guy, and he will not meet you more than halfway. Let's say, for example, he's played a round at the Masters in the rain. The first exchange will inevitably go like this:
Reporter: So, it was a wet one out there today.
Watson: Yep.
That's all. There will be a few brief seconds of awkward silence -- but Watson is done talking. The reporter is hoping that Watson will expand on the rain, how hard it was to play in those conditions, what the greens were like, how long the course played, what holes were especially tough and so on. But the reporter DID NOT ASK any of those questions. The reporter simply said it was wet out there. Watson confirmed.
Interviews will go on like this, a battle of wills. He will not just go along with storylines if he disagrees with the premise (and he disagrees with most premises). He will not anticipate the next question to make it easier on the interviewer. He will not direct traffic to a good story if he's not asked directly about it. I don't mean to make this sound like Watson is a bad interview … I find him to be a terrific interview, thoughtful, opinionated, well-spoken. But an interview is a competition. For Watson, everything is a competition.
It is this extreme competitiveness that made Tom Watson the best golfer of his day, one of the best golfers of all time. Oh, he was a great player on many levels -- great striker of the ball, remarkable imagination around the greens and, in his day, the best putter north of Ben Crenshaw -- but what made Watson a five-time British Open champion and the PGA Tour player of the year six times was his fierce unwillingness to give in. He might be the best bad-weather player who ever lived. He might be the best wind player who ever lived. He might be the best links player who ever lived.
Why? It's because those things challenge the soul, they test your patience and your willpower and your sense of fairness. A bad bounce. A gust of wind at the wrong time. A sideways rain. These things will crush your will. How do you endure? At some point, the circumstances and conditions and bad luck become so overwhelming that you just laugh and throw your hands up in the air and wonder why the fates have it in for you. The question is: At what point do you throw your hands up? For Tom Watson, that point is … never. If he's on pace for 84, he will fight like heck to shoot 83. If a perfectly struck shot hits a land mine and blows up, Watson will hit every ball fragment. I imagine he would never lose a game of chicken. Ever.
The wonderful caddy Bruce Edwards gave the best description of Watson's competitiveness. He said that some players -- you can probably think of a few -- hit a bad shot into an impossible spot and say, "Why me?' Tom hits a the same bad shot into the same impossible spot and he says, "Wait 'til you see what I do with this." Yep. Along with Seve Ballesteros and Tiger Woods, Watson probably followed up more bad shots with brilliant ones than anyone ever.*
*When I suggested this to Watson, he begrudgingly agreed. Then I said, "What about Jack Nicklaus?" He said: "Jack was as good as anyone at putting his bad shots behind him. But Jack didn't hit nearly as many bad shots as I did."
Watson once told me something funny. You already know, few people have ever loved golf as much as Tom Watson. He loves the history, the rules, the intricacies. He loves designing golf courses and studying golf equipment and breaking down the swing into the tiniest morsels. But he cannot stand playing golf on a sunny day. The very idea of many people's perfect day -- beautiful course, windless morning, a few friends, a six pack, 18 holes of joy -- strikes him as something of a nightmare.
You might think this is because golf is his business and so he cannot enjoy it the way others do, but that's not exactly it. A sunny windless day -- there's no challenge. There's no pressure. There's nothing at stake. Even if there are bets going, it doesn't matter, a few dollars are not enough to feed his competitive hunger. Give him a howling wind. Give him a big crowd. Give him crippling pressure. That's what he needs. That's what allows Watson to test himself. That's what golf means to him. Joe Montana once said that he liked driving better on icy roads. Same thing.
And that's why Watson never could quite deal with the reaction to his amazing second-place finish at the British Open in 2009 when he was almost 60 years old. He came to the final hole with a chance to win -- he needed a par -- but he hit his second shot too flush, and he kind of flubbed his first putt, and he missed the par putt. He lost in the playoff, and in Watson's mind it was a pure failure, plain and simple, nothing more or less.
Of course, that's not the way most people around the world felt. Most of us felt like it was heartbreaking to see him lose, sure, but it was an inspiration to see him come that close at age 59. It was almost the greatest sports story of the year and the greatest golf story of all time. For many, it was life-affirming beyond words. On his drive back to the hotel, Watson got a call from Nicklaus, who told him that Watson's effort had so inspired him that he actually watched golf on television, something Jack never does. Countless people from all around the world wrote and called and emailed and tweeted their appreciation to Watson for what he accomplished. Tom said all of that softened the pain of losing.
But you know what? It really didn't. He has admitted to me since that he will never get over losing that tournament, because he never gets over losing. Certainly he appreciates the support from people all around the world, and he's glad that some of them took some measure of motivation from what he did. But he doesn't really UNDERSTAND any of it. "I lost," he said. That's where the story ended for him. He won many. He lost that one. That's Tom Watson.
All of which is to say: He's an arresting and brilliant choice for Ryder Cup captain. The only choice, really, after this year's final-day meltdown. He's the first person since Nicklaus in 1983 and 1987 to repeat as captain (Watson was the captain of the U.S. Team in 1993, the last time the United States won the Ryder Cup on foreign soil). He also follows a series of pretty blasé choices -- Davis Love, Corey Pavin, Paul Azinger, Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton, Curtis Strange. All these men were excellent golfers and strong competitors and perfectly fine choices if you are trying to honor someone's career or if you want to make it comfortable for the players. Oh, those guys LOVED playing for Lehman and Love. They also lost both times.
And this is the point: If you want the Ryder Cup to be a bunch of friends playing a few rounds of golf for fun, sure, have at it. But if you are trying to WIN, yeah, you go get Tom Watson. True, captains don't win or lose Ryder Cups. True, Watson does not know these guys nearly as well as a younger player like Love, who is still active on the tour. True, Watson is not warm and fuzzy like Love -- he has never been shy about his issues with Tiger Woods, for instance.
But Watson will captain to win. Plain and simple. This is the man who in 1993 told his team during the Ryder Cup: "Remember, everything they invented, we perfected." This is the man who said that while he believes that Woods played golf better than anyone who ever lived, he would have LOVED to be young in Woods' era so he could try and crush him -- that's what it's all about for Watson. This is the man who hit the ball into the rough on 17 at Pebble Beach, told his caddy Bruce, "I'm going to make it," then made it to beat Nicklaus at the U.S. Open. There might not be much Watson can do to lead his team to victory. But you know Watson will do absolutely everything.
One last quick Watson story, one I've written before. Watson and I both sponsored teams in the Kansas City RBI program -- Reviving Baseball in the Inner City -- because we both love baseball and both want more kids to have the chance to play. It's a pretty loose thing, obviously. It isn't like they send you a stats packet after each game. They never really even tell you if your team won or lost. Such things don't matter. Unless you're Tom Watson.
"Hey, my team is playing your team tomorrow night and ..." I told him.
"We're going kick your ..." he said instantaneously.
He didn't smile. He didn't smirk. He didn't blink. He just glared at me, his eyes flaring. I remember thinking at that moment that, deep down, he was joking, but he showed no sign of it. And he never showed any sign of it. Not too long ago, I was interviewing Watson at an event, and I told that story, and looked for a smile from him. I got none. He glared at me again.
"I wasn't joking," he said. 'We did kick your …"
Monday, December 10, 2012
The Curious Journey of Gus Malzahn
Auburn University hired Gus Malzahn to replace Gene Chizik. It has been a whole two years since the Tigers won the National Championship and haven't beaten Alabama since, so Chizik gotta go, right? Well, his replacement is a man called Gus Malzahn and for those of you who wonder how it came to be, here is the story.
Malzahn was one of the first high school coaches to develop the no huddle, shot gun, throw it all over the lot, spread offences. He did it in the state of Arkansas, parlaying success as head coach at Shiloh Christian to directing powerhouse Springdale in 2001.
In 2005, Malzahn's Springdale team easily captured the 5-A championship, outscoring opponents 664-118. About this same time Huston Nutt, University of Arkansas Head Coach's seat was beginning to get hot. Seems the folks in Fayetteville felt to compete with LSU and Alabama in the SEC West, the Razorbacks needed to upgrade their offense.
Another piece to the puzzle is the Springdale roster included a bevy of Bluechippers including Player of the Year QB Mitch Mustain. In a nothing surprises me anymore moment, Arkansas hired the never coached in college before Malzahn and Mustain and the other bluechips happened to make their way to pig heaven.
In 2006, Arkansas won the SEC West, but it was the ground game, not the spread that was responsible. Losses to LSU, Florida (in SEC Championship) and Wisconsin in Cap One Bowl resulted in tension over the offensive philosophy and led to Malzahn leaving for Tulsa. Ironically (not), Mustain transferred to USC.
In 2007, Tulsa led the nation in total yards per game and became the first team in NCAA history to have a 5,000 yard passer. In 2008, Tulsa finished with the second highest scoring offense in the history of major college football.
In 2008, first year coach Gene Chizik named Malzahn offensive coordinator at Auburn. The Tigers offense steadily showed improvement and in 2010, with Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton at QB, the Tigers led the SEC in scoring offense and total offense on their way to an undefeated 13-0 record. Auburn won the 2011 BCS championship. In December of 2011 Malzahn left Auburn to become head coach at Arkansas State. He went 9-3 in what would be his only season, because in December of 2012 he was named to replace Chizik at Auburn.
Malzahn was one of the first high school coaches to develop the no huddle, shot gun, throw it all over the lot, spread offences. He did it in the state of Arkansas, parlaying success as head coach at Shiloh Christian to directing powerhouse Springdale in 2001.
In 2005, Malzahn's Springdale team easily captured the 5-A championship, outscoring opponents 664-118. About this same time Huston Nutt, University of Arkansas Head Coach's seat was beginning to get hot. Seems the folks in Fayetteville felt to compete with LSU and Alabama in the SEC West, the Razorbacks needed to upgrade their offense.
Another piece to the puzzle is the Springdale roster included a bevy of Bluechippers including Player of the Year QB Mitch Mustain. In a nothing surprises me anymore moment, Arkansas hired the never coached in college before Malzahn and Mustain and the other bluechips happened to make their way to pig heaven.
In 2006, Arkansas won the SEC West, but it was the ground game, not the spread that was responsible. Losses to LSU, Florida (in SEC Championship) and Wisconsin in Cap One Bowl resulted in tension over the offensive philosophy and led to Malzahn leaving for Tulsa. Ironically (not), Mustain transferred to USC.
In 2007, Tulsa led the nation in total yards per game and became the first team in NCAA history to have a 5,000 yard passer. In 2008, Tulsa finished with the second highest scoring offense in the history of major college football.
In 2008, first year coach Gene Chizik named Malzahn offensive coordinator at Auburn. The Tigers offense steadily showed improvement and in 2010, with Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton at QB, the Tigers led the SEC in scoring offense and total offense on their way to an undefeated 13-0 record. Auburn won the 2011 BCS championship. In December of 2011 Malzahn left Auburn to become head coach at Arkansas State. He went 9-3 in what would be his only season, because in December of 2012 he was named to replace Chizik at Auburn.
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