There has been some message board chatter lately that a few football Razorbacks have quickly grown tired of the intense, and early, off-season workouts they're going through under new coach Bobby Petrino. Some of the speculation had returning cornerback Jerell Norton, a rising junior and one of the more experienced returning corners, departing.

Then we recalled Lorenzo Ward, the new UA cornerbacks coach, not mentioning Norton on Monday night at the Little Rock Razorback Club meeting in his rundown of corners for next season, adding a little fuel to the speculation.

Rest easy, we're told: Jerell Norton is still a Razorback and still at cornerback too, this according to Kevin Trainor, the UA sports information director. No, he hasn't been moved to another position -- there was some talk late last year that Norton wanted to switch over to offense and didn't think cornerback was his strong suit.

Petrino on Monday, though, hinted that while he'd love for every Hog he's inherited from the Houston Nutt regime to bond together with their teammates, develop a trust with one another and stick with the new program through what promises to be a strenuous off-season, "we may lose one or two along the way."

This should be natural in a transition from one staff to another. We recall when Ken Hatfield took over in 1984, as many as 10 Hogs left the program between the end of Lou Holtz' tenure and the Razorbacks' first game under Hatfield. The UA didn't seem to be returning a whole lot for Hatfield to work with anyway, but the new coach fashioned a pretty competitive team out of that bunch to go 7-4-1.