Reality is fans have to take bitter with sweet in the SEC

ROB KEYS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

So I'm sitting around the house the other day, wondering if we are better off biting our tongues instead of biting the hands that feed us?
Well, in most cases, probably so.
But what if you end up biting your tongue so much that you can't taste your food?
As our friends the Beastie Boys say, "Can you catch my drift?"
Any fans who left the Arkansas-Georgia game early didn't hurt recruiting nearly as much as the Razorbacks team that sleepwalked through the 38-7 loss.
Besides, have you ever heard a recruit say he didn't sign with a school because he went to a game where fans left early? Come on.
And as for the fans who booed, maybe they're not the most loyal the program has ever known. And, as a general rule, booing 20-year-old kids probably isn't a good idea.
However, as much money as people have to plop down for tickets these days, booing can be expected when a team stinks it up like Arkansas did against Georgia. And it could have been worse. All the fans who left could have stayed and booed.
Moving on to Houston Nutt and the play-calling.
Not being a football player or coach makes it most difficult to judge whether the play-calling was good or bad. A good guess, though, is that some of the play-calling was bad.
Think about this: Columnists write bad sentences sometimes, cooks make bad burgers sometimes, and goodness knows even the president makes bad decisions sometimes.
So why should we think that football coaches don't call bad plays sometimes?
Really, whether there was bad play-calling or not, the bottom line is it looked like the Georgia defense was in the Arkansas huddle for much of the day.
As we've been reminded, some of Arkansas' woes against Georgia also were due to the fact the Razorbacks are playing without 14 departed senior starters. Only four seniors started against the Bulldogs.
Oh yeah, don't forget the injuries. Remember, Arkansas was playing without Cedric Cobbs, Fred Talley, George Wilson, Randy Garner, Shannon Money, Harold Harris and probably someone else who escapes memory right now.
On top of that, the Razorbacks were playing before fans with unrealistic expectations. Nutt should be given four years, we're told, to build an SEC-caliber talent base.
It seems here that the last two senior classes had plenty of SEC-caliber players, and surely recruiting has only gotten better since they were signed, right?
None of this is meant as a shot at Nutt, his coaches or his players. They are human just like the rest of us. Just because they play and coach football doesn't make them any more special than the rest of us. On occasion, they will make mistakes, they will perform poorly, they will lose.
That's just the way it is.
If you really stop and think about it, Arkansas had a loss like this coming. Since Nutt has been running the show, Arkansas has had a few ugly losses, but they have come on the SEC road, a most treacherous place.
But until Georgia did it, no team had been able to beat Nutt and the Razorbacks inside the borders of the Natural State.
Odds and probability would have told you it had to happen eventually.
Did the odds and probability tell the loss would be so ugly? So lopsided? So utterly revolting to some Razorbacks fans that they were moved to the exits early?
Absolutely not.
But, hey, it happened. Georgia did to Arkansas what Arkansas has done to lots of teams since Nutt took over. Georgia outcoached, outplayed, out-everythinged Arkansas.
Nutt himself called the loss bitter, and there's no way to make it taste any better. There aren't enough excuses in all of Hogland to make it taste any better.
Whipping Louisiana-Monroe helped a little, and winning at South Carolina would bring back a lot of the missing sweetness.
Either way, here's hoping you can taste it.

This article was published on Sunday, October 8, 2000

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