Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

As much as John L. Smith went on Monday about how much he liked Arkansas running back Dennis Johnson, in a pre-luncheon press conference and during his address to the Little Rock Touchdown Club, we find ourselves feeling that way about the Razorback head coach these days.

It’s easy to like him as a person. Feel free to scratch your head about the way he coaches or what comes out of his mouth.

Going on in a preamble of telling an already tense, overflow crowd at the Embassy Suites that the 1-3 Razorbacks would not splinter or point fingers at one another and would bind and work together — “battle and battle and battle and get better until we play good enough to win,” Smith said this:

“But, I’m asking you as fans, don’t give up on those players, don't give up on us. It’s our program, it’s a state of Alabama program. It’s not one individual's program, so hang in there, we’re all part of it."

Later, club president David Bazzel pointed out to Smith that he’d said Alabama, instead of Arkansas.

“I did?” Smith asked incredulously. “Where did that come from?” And then he chuckled and said, “I’ve never heard of Alabama.”

And that’s Arkansas' likeable coach, if not doddering old uncle, John L. Smith.

Hog fans may want him returned to Utah yesterday, but one can’t help but laugh with him or at him, or both. Or maybe cry for him.

Heck, I was feeling empathetic and almost tearing up in the Fayetteville interview room Saturday night after the team’s third-straight loss, 35-26 to Rutgers. The guy, who last week was reportedly nearly $26 million in arrears, had just lost his younger brother earlier that week and attended his funeral in Idaho on Friday.

Good sport that he was on Monday, and as if life were no different today than the day he took the job to replace the fired Bobby Petrino, Smith answered every question for almost 30 minutes. He even answered ones he shouldn’t have.

One questioner, cracking wise in asking what Smith thought Petrino’s next coaching destination might be, threw in “Kentucky or Auburn?”

Smith chortled. He should have let that one go. He didn’t.