Arkansas Football: 3 best potential replacements for Bret Bielema

2. Mike Norvell

Mike Norvell is the hot new name being thrown around all over the country for jobs from the Florida Gators to the Tennessee Volunteers, to even this Arkansas Razorbacks opening. Norvell is a fast riser with in-state connections. Norvell, from Texas, played football at Central Arkansas and served as a graduate assistant there. He’s also coached at Tulsa and Arizona State before becoming the head football coach at Memphis.

Memphis and Arkansas, as well as Tulsa and Arizona State, all recruit the same talent pools. Norvell has experience recruiting places like Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana which are hotbeds for college football talent.

Norvell makes sense, too, because he’s young. Arkansas has gone for the experienced and grey approach with their last few head coaches but could use a new approach after the current Bielema failure.

Coach Norvell has followed Justin Fuente to two great seasons having gone 8-5 a year ago and sitting at 8-1 now with their only loss to the undefeated UCF Knights (as of publishing this). Norvell, who is only 36 years old, can use his youth and energy to pull kids much in the way Texas went with Tom Herman.

The question is does Jerry Jones like Norvell? I think Jones will have a huge hand in the selection of the next Arkansas Razorbacks head football coach and hopefully for Norvell he has a tie to Jones.

Memphis sits currently at 30th in the S&P+ rankings while Arkansas is the 99th-ranked team. Is Arkansas only an upgrade in terms of salary? Memphis is paying Norvell $1.8 million while Arkansas is paying Bielema $4.2 million a year. While $1.8 million is a lot of money doesn’t four just have a nice solid sound to it?