ASU football

ASU reached ‘next level’ because of community efforts

By Roy Ockert Jr.

Dec. 9, 2012

One of the provisions in the contract for the next football coach Arkansas State University hires should be that, upon winning a conference championship, the coach shall submit himself to four weeks’ house arrest in his mansion with no communications to the outside world.

That would complicate things if, as expected, such success should lead to a bowl invitation, but perhaps the head coach, closely guarded, could be allowed out of the hous to lead preparations for the bowl game.

I’m being facetious, of course, but extreme measures may be warranted after ASU’s thrill of victory turned suddenly, for the second straight year, on the same day and in the same way, into the agony of defeat in the money game that college football has become.

A more practical provision might simply be raising the payout that a university would have to make after robbing ASU of its head coach before his contract runs out. Gus Malzahn, or more likely his new employer, Auburn University, will have to pay $700,000 to ASU for the privilege of moving to the next level.

If A-State could be assured of getting a $1 million payout in return for its head coach, it could eliminate one of those money games that usually tarnish the season record.

Better yet, ASU’s search committee should consider loyalty as one of the attributes it seeks in a new head coach. Granted, that’s hard to measure, but you can start by looking at the candidate’s record. If he has never stayed in one place more than three years, there’s a strong chance he won’t this time.

The reason it’s so hard for ASU alumni, students and other supporters to understand the job-hopping we’ve seen from first Hugh Freeze and then Malzahn is that most of us have some sense of loyalty to this university. Spending four or more years in a place, especially during our youth, can make it special. Supporting your alma mater in whatever way, whether it be making monetary contributions, volunteering in alumni activities, aiding an academic program or attending ballgames, keeps us in touch with our roots.

The older you get, the more important that can become.

The conflict we have is that college football is no longer a college sport run for students and alumni but rather a big business. To compete on the highest levels, you must bring in and spend big money.

Freeze, whose success previously had been limited, took over a program that Steve Roberts had rebuilt from a dismal state. And in one year Freeze turned it around, then jumped at the first chance to make much more money.

Malzahn’s career, at least after leaving the high school ranks, had been meteoric, and ASU fans considered his hiring to be a major coup.

Few of us thought he would retire here. When you take on a hired gun, you expect him to move on after the gunfight and not stick around to rebuild the town.

But we listened to him promise things like taking the program to the next level and “those who think I’m only going to be here one year don’t know me.” True supporters of our alma mater, we believed.

Now we know we never knew Gus.

He said things we expect from a head coach because he needed our enthusiasm to win games.

The truth is that if he hadn’t been successful, we’d have turned on him quickly. In fact, some impatient fans were howling when ASU lost its first conference game to Western Kentucky.

The fickle nature of today’s college football can be summarized in the brief Auburn career of Gene Chizek, Malzahn’s former boss and the man he replaces. Only two years ago Chizek’s team won a national championship; this year, after a 3-9 season, he was fired.

Don’t cry for Chizek, though. He and his assistants, also fired, will get a payout of some $11 million.

That leaves Malzahn with quite a challenge. Right now Auburn supporters believe he was really the guy responsible for the success in 2010, and he will tell them what they want to hear. But if he doesn’t get Auburn back to the top within a couple of years, the Tigers will eat him alive.

ASU’s mistake with both Freeze and Malzahn was in making the coach the face of the program. When the coach bolts for greener pastures, you’re stuck with meaningless billboards and catch phases.

The fact is that Malzahn didn’t take ASU to the next level. His success this season was similar to that of Freeze, and both won with many athletes Roberts had recruited. Some national commentator last week credited Malzahn with taking a program that “had a good quarterback and not much else.”

We know better. Certainly ASU had a proven leader in quarterback Ryan Aplin, but Malzahn inherited much more than that, or it would have been a long season.

The Malzahn “era” was simply one part of an effort the ASU community has been making for several years to raise its football program and the university as a whole to the next level.

We are A-State, and we should never forget that.

Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.