By BlogHawgs Stat Front Man Brian Rogers

Driving into work yesterday, I decided to flip through the dial of my satellite radio to see if any national shows were discussing the new Arkansas coaching hire. I landed on FoxSports radio at the top of the 7:00 hour to hear their question of the day, “Why is Arkansas a better job than Wisconsin?”. While that question would never have been posed one month ago, the fact that the question was even asked as a matter of fact speaks volumes.

I won’t rehash the numerous national columnists’ reactions (below on this site) on Arkansas’ hiring of former Wisconsin Coach Bret Bielema.

However, there has been a question posed that piqued my interest and put me into action to check out the answer.

Someone asked: How many times has a coach of a team headed to a BCS bowl left for a different college team? At first there were two obvious answers that immediately came to mind: Brian Kelly and Urban Meyer.

After a little research, it seems that since 1998, there have now been 8 instances:

·        2012 Bret Bielema: Wisconsin (Big10) for Arkansas (SEC) after 3 straight BCS bowl bids

·        2010 Randy Edsall: Connecticut (Big East) for Maryland (ACC)

         2012 Dave Doeren: N. Illinois (MAC) for N.C. State (ACC)

·        2009 Brian Kelly: Cincinnati (Big East) for Notre Dame (Ind) after 2 straight BCS bowl bids

·        2007 Rich Rodriguez: West Virginia (Big East) for Michigan (Big 10)

·        2007 June Jones: Hawai’I (Mountain West) for SMU (Conference USA)

·        2004 Urban Meyer: Utah (Mountain West) for Florida (SEC)

·        2004 Walt Harris: Pitt (Big East) for Stanford (Pac10)

·        2002 Mike Price: Washington State (Pac10) for Alabama (SEC)

Nice work, Jeff Long