Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Whole Hog Sports podcast. And now, here's your host, Matt Jones.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey. Today on the show, Jonah Dillon from the Memphis Commercial Appeal will join us to talk about Ryan Silverfield and his time coaching the Tigers. Also, Christina Long will be here in studio. First, a word from Kendall King.
[00:00:15] Speaker C: Kendall King, we're proud of over four decades of design.
We're continuing the legacy of great creative design by combining our brands of Kendall King, Soapbox and Shopcart. Together, these brands represent a new focus in marketing design with individual attention to specific areas.
Through our design expertise, supported by a team of talented professionals, we showcase our best. We are Kendall King. We are Soapbox. We are Shopcart. We are Design.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Jonah Dillon covers the Memphis Tigers for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. He joins us now. Jonah, this is a crazy last few days for you, I'm sure, too, losing a coach with Ryan Silverfield coming over here to Arkansas. Just what's this process been like? And are you surprised by what happened?
[00:00:58] Speaker D: Yeah, it's been, like you said, a crazy last couple of days. Definitely. I think the timing and the speed with which this happened on Sunday morning, surprising to some people around here in terms of kind of what we've been hearing both from the Arkansas search and then just in terms of where Ryan Silverfield was in terms of job prospects at Arkansas and beyond, with how the last season had gone from Memphis, especially how it gotten in November down the stretch.
So definitely a surprise, obviously. Look, all these dominoes in the coaching world fall and then it ends up in a certain way.
But it's been interesting to kind of see the fallout, how fans are reacting and where Memphis kind of goes from here.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: What do you think made him appealing to Arkansas?
[00:01:38] Speaker D: Yeah, it's one of those things that the wins are obviously just the record. Right. The sustained success. I think if you're Arkansas right, you need a floor raiser because the floor has obviously been pretty low, including this year. And what Ryan Soviet can sell himself as and what people around him can sell him as is a four raiser. Someone who maintained this program, obviously it was doing well under Mike Norvell. It wasn't like he had to build it from nothing. But there's a lot of programs that you see that have years where they bought him out or they bought him out completely as a program. And the one thing that Ryan Sorfield did that you can't really take away at Memphis is he consistently had the floor at we're going to a bowl game every year. There's no question now There were some six and six years, but Memphis has one of the longest bowl streaks in the country. They were always expected to be one of the better teams and they never had one of those seasons where the bottom fell out.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: This year they went 8 and 1 and then they finished 8 and 4 with a three game losing streak. Now I've tried to explain to people that those were three of the top teams in the American that they lost to, but how do you, how do you look at how this season ended for Memphis? Because I think the expectation was that Memphis would be one of those top teams and certainly it didn't end up that way.
[00:02:47] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean the end of Memphis season it comes down to those three games. Obviously it comes down to moments in those games because especially the two lane game which was the first loss, Memphis was a couple plays away.
A big story of the entire second half of the season was Brandon Lewis, Memphis quarterback, was injured.
Now one of the, one of the things he was injured in the loss to AB then he played the next week, then he looked like he was getting better and he aggravated the injury against Rice. He was still in the game. Memphis was up 38 to 7 in the fourth quarter against Rice. Brendan Lewis was still in the game, got injured on a run, re injured the ankle and then continued to be injured basically the rest of the season. It was a huge storyline even at the time, fans saying why was he still in the game, upset with Ryan Silverfield for that decision. Ultimately his injury was a storyline throughout the rest of the year. He was not 100%. He tried to gut it out and they did what they could, but like you said, they lost it to three good teams. It wasn't like they got blown out really. The one thing Ryan Zelfield was, was excellent. I was. He never got blown out. And Memphis is almost always competitive, especially in the past couple years, even against good teams.
But they didn't get over the hump. They couldn't beat those teams. They couldn't consistently beat good teams enough. And that's one of the things that people are talking about this week.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: I was told that when he was at Memphis and actually it began when he was an assistant coach there, that he was really good as a fundraiser. I wonder if you can kind of shed some light on that.
[00:04:09] Speaker D: Yeah, really good as a fundraiser and really good as a recruiter. I think you're looking at the things and I'm seeing even with how Arkansas fans are reacting to the recruiting success that he's already had right in the past couple of days. And recruiting was never an issue at Memphis for Ryan Silverfield. He was always one of the best recruiters in, in the conference and Memphis was always landing the top recruiting classes not, not just in the conference, but really in the group of five. That just was not the problem or any kind of a problem for Memphis.
And yeah, I would agree. I think in terms of fundraising he did well. That's obviously really important now with, with the amount of money and nil and rev sharing and all that stuff.
But as Memphis fans will tell you, money doesn't lead to and as USF fans will tell you, Memphis money doesn't necessarily lead to winning. And so the amount of recruiting classes, if you have the best recruiting classes consistently in the conference, they're going to expect you the conference. And obviously Memphis wasn't doing that.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Are those the two teams, Memphis and South Florida, that's the most well resourced in that conference?
[00:05:04] Speaker D: Yeah, I think definitely now there's been a gap that's existed. Some Memphis fans, Memphis people will tell you that USF is beyond them now. They've invested a lot into their program, but there's definitely a gap that's now being created that it feels like it's growing between those two and everybody else.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: It's interesting that with Silverfield, you look at his record against these other coaches from the American who have left in the last week. I think he was three and oh against Golis, he was two and oh against Eric Morris and he was 01 against John Summerall with the loss being the one that we talked about a few weeks back in those games where they went head to head. Anything stand out to you?
[00:05:41] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean look, the Eric Morris stuff you're talking, we're talking about resources. Eric Morris is doing way, way more with less compared to those guys.
Memphis was playing those teams and every player on Memphis's team was higher recruited than every player on North Texas team and he's finding guys. You know, obviously Drew Bestemaker is a crazy story, but thinking about some of those games, Memphis played a crazy game against North Texas a couple years ago. Chandler Rodgers, guys who were playing there for a year and then leaving.
The Alex Goelish stuff is interesting because you think back to that game this year and USF really should have won that game. And Alex Goal is made some decisions in the fourth quarter that USF fans are not happy about and did not do well enough to win them the game coaching wise. And they have a penalty right on the last play before what would have been a Game tying field goal.
And so that was an interesting one.
I don't, again, like the USF last year they played Byron Brown was out and they didn't have anyone as their backup quarterback. So I don't think it was really fair to expect them to be competitive in that game.
And so when you go game by game, I don't know that there's a huge storyline there in terms of Ryan Drew feels better than those coaches. I will say every one of those games, I feel pretty confident, aside from USF this year, that Memphis was more talented than the other team.
And so, yeah, you see how it goes and it's interesting.
But yeah, all those guys, for various reasons dealt with those types of things when they were in this conference.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: One of the things that Silverfield is going to have to face is this, this, this doubt that Memphis coaches can go win at the Power 4 level. Justin Fuente got fired at Virginia Tech after six seasons. We know what's going on with Norvell at Florida State right now. One of the things that is, or I guess kind of stands out to me a little bit is that Silverfield stayed at Memphis longer than those two stayed there. And I think I even heard him say on a radio interview yesterday that he had offers to go to other schools, to other powerful schools, and, and he turned that down. What, what do you know about what he turned down in the past? And why do you think he stayed there for as long as he did?
[00:07:38] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I, I look, I think why did he stay here as long as he did? Especially even. Let's compare him to those American coaches. The, the Eric Morris is in those people, how quickly they, they come in and come out.
I think it's fair to say that people were not clamoring to hire Ryan Silverfields earlier, you know, as much as those guys.
And even maybe this year, you look at obviously the Alex Ghoulish stuff, even with Arkansas, but so I think part of it is the interest was not at the same level, I think it's fair to say. I know every coach will tell you that they're turning down jobs every five seconds and, and who knows? I mean, somebody, you know, somebody calls you and says, hey, we're interested in you, or we want to do this to the point where, you know, going through an entire process and interviewing and being offered a job, I don't know that that has happened that much, but certainly this year it felt different. I would say even, you know, going back to the Arkansas game against Memphis earlier in the year, There was way more interest this year in my silver field, aside from even before we knew how many openings that were going to be, where the openings were going to be, there was more interest this year. People were talking about the sustained track record, stuff like that.
But in the past, I think the reason he didn't leave is because there just wasn't as much interest as some of those other guys.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: The American has changed a lot in the last, what, three years? I mean, you look at, and I wonder if there's a correlation here or if there's something going on.
When he has the most success in his career is when Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and then SMU the next year leave the conference.
What is that correlation there?
[00:09:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, it's like you said, the correlation is that the conference got worse, Right. Because those teams left SMU obviously having a lot of success before they left and even now, so the expectations were raised. I think even the nine and nine and three and ten and two seasons, fans are not happy.
You know, like, look, you can just go look at what Memphis fans. Even if you, you know, what Memphis fans were saying about Ryan Silverfield's after the game against Navy on Thursday before he left for Arkansas was not positive. It's not the same. You don't have, you know, these other, again, to compare to those other schools. You have ads coming out proactively and saying they want to keep coaches and they're doing everything to keep them. Now, this came together quickly, obviously, but it's not. We didn't have that in Memphis.
So it's definitely interesting. I think, again, you win a lot of games and they were competitive, especially a couple of years ago, being competitive with power conference teams, winning against a lot of conference teams, winning bowl games every year against power conference teams.
And so there's a lot on both sides you can point to of here's why he has a sustained track record of success and will be successful at the next place. And then Memphis fans saying he didn't get us over the hump. We felt like this program maybe had plateaued a little bit with where it was. And so it's really interesting to see both sides of that and then to see how it all plays out in Arkansas.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Memphis is going to have a bowl game coming up here. They've Reggie Howard, they promoted him to be the interim coach when all the dust settles. How much do you think Arkansas, in terms of staff and personnel and maybe even roster looks like what Memphis had this year? I guess maybe another way to say that is how Many people do you think come over?
[00:10:48] Speaker D: I think I think of a few.
I would expect there to be people from Memphis currently going to Arkansas. Now, I know if you're right in Silverfield and any coach who takes that kind of a job, part of it, you want to bring some people that you know that you can trust. You also want to maybe get some hires of people who are coming in from other places. Obviously Ryan Sortfield has a, has a network going back to his NFL day, so he knows people. I saw him talking about that in an interview, you know, about connections that he has and people he wants to bring. But I think it's fair to say there are going to be a few people from Memphis staff wise, who come over. As for players, it's going to be really interesting. I think it's going to obviously depend on who the next coach is at Memphis. If I was a player at any of these schools, who loses your coach, right? You want to see who the next coach is and maybe they have a sell for you just the same as all the Arkansas players kind of dealing with it. Now with Ryan Silverfield, do I want to stay? Do I want to, you know, talking to him about what, what the vision is in that type of thing. But there are some players from Memphis who, if they were in the portal, would be attractive to a lot of programs, including Arkansas. Obviously, Ryan Silverfield knows who those people are and so I'm sure people that he wants, he'll be able to have real conversations with about potentially coming over there.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: I think Memphis is a hard job and I know it's one of the more resourced, well, resourced jobs in the, in the group of six. But you know, you're still, you, you're still looking at the fact that, I mean, kind of like what happened with Memphis last year, right? You lose a lot of players in the portal and you got to go overhaul the roster.
What do you think the, the prospects are as they look for a new coach to, to replace Ryan?
[00:12:18] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a really hard job. And, and to be fair, one of the reasons is because I think the next coach, without even knowing who it is, there are a lot of people in the city who are going to say, we expect you to win the conference championship this year like in your first year, because there's no more rebuilding. Especially when you look at the conference, right? All the other schools, most of them, the top of the conference, are losing their coaches. So they're in the same situation in terms of rebuilding. And Memphis has the resources to be able to compete at this level. Now they never got to the conference title game under Ryan Silverfield. And that's going to be the thing ultimately the next coach is going to be judged on is do you get to the conference title game? If you don't, I don't think people will be happy as you saw with the reaction Ryan Silverfield. But there's also potential now for Memphis where the floor was really high and now you're walking in an unknown of what is the. The floor could be way lower with the next coach. It's possible.
But yeah, like you said, I think it is a tough job. I think there's a lot of pressure and expectations with the resources and that means that you don't have a lot of time to put together a roster and develop players and stuff like that.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: What's the feeling been in Memphis about him moving on and, and I wonder what's the feeling over there as they've seen the reaction that this has gotten, which has not been overly positive?
[00:13:30] Speaker D: Yeah, I think not, not surprised, especially at first. Like I said, I mean legitimately, people having conversations about wanting Ryan Silverfield to be fired on Friday and Saturday and then he leaves on Sunday. So obviously from those people, the reaction is, wow, they just saved us. And not only that, they're going to, you know, pay us to, to take a coach that, that we didn't want.
At the same time, there's a lot of uncertainty, obviously. I think the general feeling, I think when the dust settles will be that kind of people feel like it was Ryan Silverfield won a lot of games at Memphis, but the program had plateaued. They weren't getting to a conference title game, which is what the expectation was and what people want the expectation to be. And so they're going to feel like I was ready for something else. Even if it's not like Ryan Silverfield did a horrible job and the program was a disaster.
So I think people, Memphis fans not surprised by Arkansas fans reaction. You saw a lot of people on social media being like, oh, thanks for taking him.
And like I said, even the recruiting stuff with the past couple days of wow, he's getting people on board with recruiting. I don't think a lot of Memphis fans are surprised by that because he was always a good recruiter when he was in Memphis and so not surprising. But yeah, I think that the Arkansas fan sentiment, people in Memphis probably expected that and not surprised by it.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Jonah Dillon with the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Jonah, we appreciate your time.
[00:14:46] Speaker D: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: All right, thank you. When we come back, Christina Long will be here in studio with me. First, a word from Kendall King.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Kendall King, we're proud of over four decades of design.
We're continuing the legacy of great creative design by combining our brands of Kendall King, Soapbox and Shopcart. Together, these brands represent a new focus in marketing design with individual attention to specific big areas. Through our design expertise, supported by a team of talented professionals, we showcase our best. We are Kendall King. We are Soapbox. We are Shop. Cart. We are design.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back. I want to tell you about our friends at Bentonville Glass. They've been serving their community since 1971. They're committed, professional and versatile. If you're looking for a quality leader in northwest Arkansas or looking for skilled craftsmanship, look no further than Bentonville Glass for all your glass market needs with the highest quality products. You can come by and see them now at 507 South Main in Bentonville or online at Bentonville.
Christina Long is in studio with me now. Kind of a busy first day for Ryan Silverfield and that's to be expected. I mean, this is a busy, busy time. Probably even busier, I would say, for coaches who are taking over right now than coaches who have ever taken over because you got this signing period that starts on, on Wednesday. We're going to get into the recruiting part of this and some of the, some of the headlines from yesterday, but you know, really the number one thing I think that we found out yesterday, in addition to he went on some radio shows and we touched on this yesterday, kind of gave, you know, his, I don't know if I would say outline for the program, but he kind of gave his thoughts about why he took the program. He did his rah rah.
But I thought really the most newsworthy thing that came out yesterday was that he's going, we got his term sheet, his term sheet. He has not signed his full contract. This is very, this is common by the way.
Typically you sign a term sheet, maybe a, an MOU and then sometime later, sometimes it's a couple of weeks, sometimes. When Chad Morris was hired as Arkansas's coach, it was six months after he got hired that they actually finalized his contract. I wrote that story from a Panera Bread in Omaha, Nebraska while covering Arkansas's run to the national championship series in 2018.
But we don't have the full contract yet. But we did get a five page term sheet for Ryan Silverfield yesterday. We told you that the, the, the total of the contract was 33 and a half million dollars. Yesterday. It's a five year contract. He's going to get paid six and a half million dollars next year. He's going to get $100,000 pay raise each year of the agreement. It'll go up to 6.9 million in the final year of the agreement. I think anybody with a brain knows that this is not going to be like. Like he's not going to get paid $6.9 million in 2030. One of two things is going to happen. Either he's going to do so poorly that he never makes it to that point or he's going to do. He's going to have one season that in somebody's eyes he deserves a pay raise.
Nobody ever gets to the final year of the contract. But that's what's written is that goes from six and a half million in year one to 6.9 million in year two.
Really the thing that stood out to me though, Christina, was the agreement that there's going to be a minimum salary pool for his assistant coaching staff. There's two different pools here. There is a pool for the 10 member on field staff. So that's your coordinators, your position coaches. And then there's going to be a minimum salary pool for his support staff, his strength coaches, his director of operations and quality control and on down the list. What is that amount? We don't know. Those numbers have been redacted and I've got some thoughts on that here in just a minute. But what I do think is notable is that there are. That I've never seen this in a contract that they agreed to a minimum amount of money that they were going to pay to the assistant coaching staff.
I suspect it's going to be a bigger amount of money than they paid this year. I think they paid their 10 assistants this year somewhere in the 6.5 million range, which was. Here it is 6.465 million.
That was the highest figure in program history. I suspect it'll be greater than that. And that goes into this quote, unquote, new and improved revenue model for football. I think I may be. Actually, I think I'm butchering that quote that Hunter Jureczyk had in his statement. He said a quote, new and significant financial advice, investment.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: For football.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I, I was wondering if this is more common than we think. I mean, we haven't seen it in any Arkansas contracts. I don't know if we've seen it, you know, if. If other coaches at other programs recently have similar kind of stipulations. About salary pool, I would definitely do. I would think so. I would think this is becoming more common or is more common than we think. It just hasn't really. We haven't really seen it in Arkansas yet. And it's a. I think it's a good move.
I'll be. You know, they've redacted the numbers, but we will eventually be able to get. Once they have hired assistants, we able to get their contracts. We'll be able to kind of work out what that is. It'll be very interesting to compare, you know, what it looks like versus what last year's stuff. Like you said, the biggest pool in program history on this past season staff, how it compares to that.
So we'll see kind of how that goes.
Is there anything else in this contract that struck you as new or unusual? I don't. I didn't think there was anything that was really that different from what we would expect. Some people were mentioning that they thought the incentives for various, like hitting certain win thresholds or achieving certain milestones should be higher.
I don't have strong feelings about that.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I don't think it's any different than what you see in most of the contracts that they've had in the past.
And here are the. Let me pull up the bonuses here. I can tell you what the numbers are.
So if he wins a national championship, a million dollars, if they appear in the national championship game, that would be $750,000.
And I think none of these are able to accumulate. It's like you get the highest total, 500,000 for being in the CFP semifinals, 250,000 for being in a quarterfinal, 150,000 just for making the playoff. And if you get to a. What's called a tier one bowl. And that tier one bowl, from what I can tell, is not stipulated here. But I would think that would be something better than maybe the Liberty Bowl.
[00:21:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: 150,000. It has been defined in the past. I don't see it defined in here, though.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: It's usually. Yeah, it's usually defined in the language, I guess, maybe in the full contract it'll be defined as opposed to the term sheet. Because I remember looking at Pittman's contract when they made one of their bowl games and looking at what he would get for that. And it was defined in the language of the contract because I was like, oh, that's an interesting way to see the bowls kind of laid out.
So, yeah, I think some people thought maybe you should be getting more for some of the, you know, like what's the sec Championship bonus?
[00:21:50] Speaker B: 250,000 for winning, a hundred thousand for getting there.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: So.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: And again those, those cannot accumulate. You get the highest total based basically what they have in here. They have three different categories and you get the highest amount that you, you get one amount they can't accumulate. So you can't get 750,000 for just making the championship game and 500,000 for being the semifinals. If you, if you win the championship, you get a million dollars. That's it. If you win the SEC, you get $250,000. That's it. And then there's SEC coach of the year, NCAA coach of the year. You can get some money for that. 25,000 for conference coach, 50,000 for national coach. You're laughing because I'm losing my voice.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: You are. You do this every day?
Every day. The throat clearing. But it's accelerated today.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Thank you. I'll be self conscious the rest of the show now. And then there's some stuff in here for gsr, apr, that type of stuff.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Graduation.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: How they perform in the class.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: There's always a little bit of that. Yeah. I. So the, the SEC championship winning is more than like a playoff appearance. Is that right?
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Say that again.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: The making or winning the SEC championship game.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: 250 is more than if you were to just make the playoff.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Playoff. That's interesting. But if you win the sec.
Yeah.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: You're also going to win playoff. And so you get the 250,000 plus the 150,000.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
So will any of this ever matter? Who's to say?
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Who knows? Who knows? No. So that didn't surprise me. I don't think anything else.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: No, I don't think so either.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Surprised me. Looking over just some of the other things that are in this contract. You get 70% of the value of the contract if he gets fired. This isn't a deal like Sam Pittman where you're counting down to does it get under 50% win total? Nope. It's just 70% of the value of the contract that he would get.
Silverfield would owe Arkansas 10 million if he took another job. By this time next year, that figure goes down by two and a half million until the last year when it goes down to 1.25 million. Arkansas is going to give Memphis a million and a half dollars to buy out his contract there, which isn't that.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Bad, I don't think. I guess I don't know where that ranks relative to some other schools, but I don't think.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Well, I Mean, it's not, it's not 10 million that somebody would have to pay Arkansas if he were to leave next year.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: That's true.
So it's, it's six and a half.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: The first year annual six and a half million.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: So I was looking, I wanted to see kind of where that falls in the sec, you know, among coaches from this past season. USA Today keeps a really good database of head coach salaries. This is as of October 2025. So this is before a lot of firings. You know, like they've still got Sam Pittman on here. But that would be lower than any coach, any SEC coach made. That's not true. It would be between Jeff Lebby and Hugh Freeze, what they made this year. So Jeff Levy made 4.3 million. Hugh Freeze made 6.7. So it would be bottom of the SEC besides Clark Lee. Well, what we think Clark Lee makes since he's a private school.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Well, I think the reports are that he's going to move up to 9 million next year. Clark.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Okay, we'll just slot him up there near Mark Stoops and Josh Hyple.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Then Mark Stoops is gone.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And so is he. Freeze. So these are, you know, this is relative to, you know, how teams came into this year.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: I would wonder if Kentucky would pay for Will Stein. Is it Will Stein? Is that the. I keep wanting to call him. Who's the basketball player?
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Willie Collins.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: But yeah, I'd be interested to see if they pay him more. Kentucky, with all the resources they put into basketball, I'm going to guess that they're not going to pay him. I would guess that his salary would be lower than Silverfield, which means that you're probably talking about 14th in the SEC ahead of Mississippi State, ahead of Kentucky. Yeah, right.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: I think. I mean, I don't know what goal is.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Goal is a seven. Four.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Goes in four. So that's up higher. That's up on par with what billion?
[00:25:39] Speaker B: I'm sure Somer all is going to get a big number.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, probably. I don't think I've seen that number floating around yet, but yeah, I think.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Kevin's getting a big number. Yeah. Is that right?
[00:25:48] Speaker A: I would say Golding.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Do we know Golding's making it Ole Miss yet? Maybe he. He may be lower.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: I would guess. I would guess he might be a little bit.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: That's still shocking.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: That they've, that they've moved to him. I tell you the more than the numbers here.
Let me tell you the thing that Stood out to me the most about this term sheet is when they signed it because they signed this thing electronically, which means that you get the time of their electronic signatures. Hunter, your check signed this at 1102 Saturday night. Saturday night.
And Silverfield signed it at 1109 Saturday night.
So when we were all listening to Alex Goelish's press conference to see if he'd drop any hints and nuggets about Arkansas, Arkansas had already moved on like they were. They were hiring Ryan Silverfield Saturday night.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: And it's actually kind of surprising that this got signed Saturday night and it was probably what, 10 to 11 hours before people got a hold that he was. That. That he was coming to Arkansas. Yeah, I mean, it's about 10 o' clock on Sunday morning.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Which I don't usually know. I don't know the time between. The typical time between like contract to sign and when people start kind of leaking that out and putting that out there. I don't know what's normal, but it's interesting because I always kind of think I, I tend to approach these things as like, if something's happening, there's a certain point at which we'll know or like if something was happening, we would know things like that. That was something that came up a lot. I feel like when we were kind of thinking about the coaching search and trying to figure out what was going on.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Don't you miss the coaching search? Don't you wish you had it back right now?
[00:27:22] Speaker A: I loved waking up today and not having a game to get ready for, not having deadlines to deal with. I was like, wow, I don't know what I'm going to do today. I'm so excited about it.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: The leak.
The leak, if you will, that Silverfield was coming to Arkansas, it came from Memphis because if you'll notice, the initial reporting was that Ryan Silverfield has informed Memphis he is taking the Arkansas job.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: So there's that.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And we don't know what they're doing yet, do we? They haven't.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Well, they've. They've promoted a, an assistant coach to be interim for their bowl game, which they'll find out who they're going to play in a bowl next week. But as far as, as far as who their next head coach is, they haven't made a decision.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that'll be something to track. I mean, it's like we talked about yesterday. It's one of, if not the best job in the group of five, six, whatever it is.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: So, I mean, which I think is saying something, by the way, because I don't think Memphis is really that attractive of a job. Like, in terms of. Yes, I think it's an attractive job in the group of six, but I don't know that there's a power four job. There might be two or three power jobs that you would say, okay, Memphis, maybe you put that on par with Boston College. You know what I'm saying? But, you know, for the most part, it's. I don't know, it's kind of interesting that it's. Yes, it's a good group of six job, but would you consider it one of the best 65 jobs in America? Probably not.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be quite a ranking. We'll just do that one show. We'll just sit here and rank and you wonder schools.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: That sounds like a good summertime show. If we've got to do one, you wonder for Memphis how. You know, it was earlier this year. They were trying to buy their way into the Big 12.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Nobody wanted that.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: They were trying to do the same thing in the Big 12 that SMU had done in the ACC, where you forego all the TV revenue and you give them money. And, I mean, it's like. It's. It's kind of like being on a fraternity, basically. You know, you buy your friends.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: And they didn't work. It didn't work out for them. I think they were. I think they were trying to buy their way into the Big 12 for like $200 million or something. It was crazy.
[00:29:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: They're doing all this work. I mean, they've got a great arena where they play basketball.
I think their base does their baseball team. They may have it on campus stadium, but I know they had played some games downtown at the Redbirds Stadium in Memphis and then, you know, football. During the process of doing this overhaul for their football stadium that.
We'll see what it looks like. I mean, it's. That's an old stadium. It is a rundown stadium. The area around the stadium is not great.
We'll see how that looks once they finish it. The two times that Arkansas played over there the last couple of years hadn't looked great.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: But they haven't finished it either. So I'm interested to see how that goes. But they're trying to elevate their program. It's just a matter of can they get to that point?
I don't know if they can. I would suspect that whoever they hire as a football coach is going to play a big role in whether or not. They. They can elevate themselves into. Or elevate themselves.
Leverage. What am I trying to say? Leverage themselves into a power four job.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah. You talking about their stadium much lately?
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Been clearing my throat too much.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: You talking about the stadium made me think. We should have known. We should have known that all of these trips we've had to make to Memphis over the last, what, 18 months or whatever. Maybe less than that. We should have known it was all foreshadowing. We were just supposed to be getting familiar with Memphis, understanding the program.
It was all leading to this.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: If we need to, I. I will take one for the team and go over there and expense a lunch at Corky's.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Ethan likes Memphis, I think. Send Ethan over there.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: I like Corky's.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: You guys go together. Yes. Corky's was good.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: I like Corky's.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: It was good.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Memphis.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: We went to commissary in Germantown. Commissary was great. It was over in Germantown. And we went, oh, I've been there twice now. It's fabulous.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: I like Corky's. Over Central Barbecue. That's like a big.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: I don't know if I've been to. I've been to the Central that was here and it wasn't.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why it's not here anymore.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it was not good.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: I think we can say that. I don't think they're an advertiser. They're gone. Right. So Arkansas had a big day yesterday in terms of getting some recruits. And we, we touched on a few of them yesterday.
But even after we recorded the show yesterday, they got this.
I want to make sure I've. I've got this correct.
They got a commitment from. Yeah, here it is. Little Rock Central, four star defensive lineman Anthony Kennedy Jr.
And this is a big one. He was committed to Miami. So you're talking about. They got four players yesterday who some of them had decommitted previously from their old school, but they were players who. You had a defensive player committed to Oklahoma, and I like to look at that sometimes. Like your position. Where have you committed and what is that program's reputation at your position? Oklahoma's got a good reputation. Brett Venables has a good reputation as a defensive coach. So you get Jigori Smith from Bryant. He had been at ou, now he's at Arkansas.
You get Hodges, the running back, D.J. hodges, the running back from Bryant, going to Missouri. Okay, you got Missouri. They had the Doak Walker Award winner two years ago.
They may have the Doak Walker Award winner this year, although I think Jeremiah Love from Notre Dame is probably going to win that.
And, but you know, Missouri, that's a program with a good reputation for running backs. You get this Anthony Kennedy, defensive lineman from Little Rock Central, committed to Miami. Miami's got a good reputation, Mario Cristobal does for producing linemen on both sides of the ball.
And then you get Danny Beal, the defensive lineman from Cross county who's going or was going to Oklahoma State. Now he's coming to Arkansas.
I can't remember a day like this where not only were you getting players from the state of Arkansas, but like you're getting the high profile players in the state of Arkansas, which hasn't been happening. Three of these, five or three of these were in the top five of the state's, you know, top five rankings.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Tell me if you think this is. Let me know if this is speculation on my part, but tell me if you think this is fair speculation to point out that three of these are defensive players.
Do we think that means there is a defensive coordinator, sort of, at least verbally, if not inked, there's somebody that they're able to sell people on. You think that's fair? I'm speculating. But do you think that's fair speculation? I don't think I'm.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: That's where my mind went immediately.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Got to be careful what I say about this because I have heard something about the defensive coordinator, but it's not something I want to say Right. Publicly. Okay, well, so I, bottom line, I don't think they have hired a defensive coordinator.
Okay. That's what I would say.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: I just thought it was interesting that they were, they signed three pretty big time defensive players. If they don't have a defensive coach.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Set up, maybe they just said, hey, maybe it's a matter of resources. And they say, hey, we're going to, we're going to reallocate some money over to the defensive side because we didn't do that enough this year. Somebody on our message board said something yesterday, said Arkansas needs a miracle worker defensive coordinator. And I thought, no, they don't. No, what they need on defense is they need to be able to evaluate the players better than they did this last season and they've got to be able to spend some money on defense because it was clear, I don't know what they spent offense versus defense this year, but I think anybody who looked at that roster and looked at the way that they played and we were even talking about this before the season.
They put their money toward offense. They didn't put their money toward defense. They put their money toward a quarterback. They put their money toward offensive linemen. I would say that those are the two areas where they probably spent the heaviest this year was quarterback and offensive lineman. You can't look at that defensive line. You can't look at the linebackers. You can't look at the secondary and say that they went out and they really tried to outspend somebody for those players.
I just don't think they did. I know they were able to get some players who came in for Kenai. Walker had been at OU and Wooden had been at Auburn.
They'd gotten some players who had been at other SEC schools. Avian, sorry, you know, this wasn't his first year, but he'd been at Georgia previously. But when you kind of look at where some of these players came from and sometimes you can get portal hits. And so it can come off as you're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. You can't. You can't praise them for going and finding whoever from wherever and then saying, well, they made a mistake because they took a cornerback from Maine.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: But like we were talking about yesterday with coaches, too, it's a. It's the risk. It's the risk factor. And it seemed like some of the risks they took worked better on offense than they did on defense. Maybe they scouted it better, maybe it was. I don't know.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: I feel like for the most part, when you're taking a lot of the players they took this year, you're taking them for depth and not necessarily because you expect them to be your main players.
And I think what that's actually kind of what ended up happening was that some of the players that you took for depth ended up being the best player available at their position.
And that's why you saw a defensive score like you saw this year.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's difficult too, because I do think they had gotten some, you know, in their last few recruiting classes. They've had. I mean, I'm looking at 24, 7 right now. They've had some, some highly rated defensive players.
It's just that they're younger guys and that they weren't developed and then you had to plug holes through the portal and things like that. I mean, they still have. I mean, let's look at this.
Four or three four star defensive players from the class of 2024, Charlie Collins, Selman Bridges, Bradley Shaw, all those Guys are still on the roster.
They all played this year. They're young, they need some more work. But I think all those guys are guys that they feel like have, have bright futures. Um, so it's not as if they didn't do anything high school recruiting wise defensively especially. But I think it's difficult to obviously get freshmen and plug them in right away. And then these are guys that they have wanted to develop. But then, you know, then you get into the whole conversation about development when you're bringing in portal guys to plug holes from guys who leave, you know that. So that's kind of the thing like we were talking about yesterday. You have to. How they kind of build this to start is going to kind of set the tone for how things go in future years.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: So it was good, it was good day one for him. And they're building up their, their signing class. I want to look this up.
I do want to see what their, their recruiting class is ranked right now.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: It's next to last in the sec. Auburn has dropped below.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Where is it though nationally, do you know?
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Not off the top of my head. But it would be easy to.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: Cause that's always, that's always. The tough thing is when you recruit, when you report this, it's, hey, They've got the 25th best recruiting class but it's 13th in the SEC.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: It looks like it's number 70.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Number 70.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: I think so.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Wow, that's. That's still way down there. Yeah, that's. It's.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: But it's also because there's only 13 players.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: I was going to say that's. Well, I think it's more than 13 now.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: It's 13 according to 24 7. Unless there's somebody else today.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Maybe they had some decommitments yesterday.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah, they did. They had several. They had some guys that posted, you know, hey, I talked to Ryan Silverfield and I am no longer committed. So I think those were some guys that they may be told to decommit.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: There were a few of those.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: They've got three, four stars and ten three star players. They need four stars like they need a lot more four star players this year in this signing class. But again, I think that yesterday there's a decent start. I mean I think that at least it shows. I think it shows two things. It shows that he is serious about wanting to recruit the state and I think that whatever the pitches that he's giving the players, they're responding well to it.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think so too. And you know Richard Davenport wrote a story that's on our site today about some of his recruiting at Memphis and kind of what he was able to do. So, I mean, I think there's something here and, and I think there's a lot being done here, especially on the in state front. I mean, people have complained for years about Sam Pittman's lack of in state recruiting and, or how they try to. I know, I know.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: It was me.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Well, it was you. And a lot of people trying, you know, or they try to get some of the top players in the state and they can't get them. Why can't they get them? And now here they are, they're getting a few of them.
So, you know, it's not nothing. It's, it's addressing some of the concerns that people have had for a long time.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Kind of interesting looking at the 247 stats, by the way, six of their top seven commits are from Arkansas, Arkansas high schools. And Jacquori Smith is not one of their four stars, which kind of surprises me. He's a three star, I would say based on what I saw from him in one game, I was, I was impressed.
Three of these players who committed yesterday, those. Those. Com. Those are their three four star players. Those are Beal, Hodges and Kennedy. All right, Christina, good stuff. You can read Christina at our website, whole hogsports.com hope that we see you there or again on our podcast tomorrow. Raise your backs, play Louisville tomorrow. We'll have Anthony Christensen here in studio tomorrow to help preview that big game at Bud Walton Arena. Hope to see you then. Have a good day.
