Should Bielema Have Watched The 2012 Tapes Like Nick Saban Watched Bama's 2006 Tapes?

It is a sad state of affairs that you can say you had a good football weekend, and a large part of that was due to the Hogs being off. The teams I pulled for generally won. Vanderbilt over Kentucky. Oklahoma State over Texas. The Saints over the Niners. If the Hogs had played this weekend? Well, they didn't. Which makes the poll question for the week a bit harder to come up with. But I think I have something in mind we can ponder and click on.

Bielema's approach to his new job was to say that he wasn't even going to watch the tapes from last year. I suppose he wanted to create an aura of a fresh start for everybody. I can see some reason in that. But I also wonder if it might also have been a big mistake not to look at how the Hogs performed in 2012 and adjust his spring and fall camps accordingly. I don't imagine as the head coach of Wisconsin he had all that much time to even catch the Hogs on television in 2012. Take also into consideration that we were on quite a few regional broadcasts, those 11:30 games, last year.

So what did Bielema think he was inheriting here at Arkansas? He knew it was a 4-8 team. We can say that much. He knew that Dennis Johnson, Tyler Wilson, and Cobi Hamilton weren't going to be on the team. But what else? Another approach, as I learned on a recent 60 minutes broadcast, was the one Nick Saban took. His wife said that on the plane from Miami to Tuscaloosa, after he had accepted the job, her husband was looking at tape of the team he was about to inherit. The Tide previously had not had a great year either, but Saban's approach was to take a look. His team still was not gang-busters, losing to ULM the following fall and just making a bowl game, but he didn't see any need for fresh judgments to be made during spring ball.

So I ask you, if you had been in Coach Bielema's place, would you have gotten out the film from the 2012 season and studied it before starting spring practice? And should Nixon have burned the tapes? Oh, wait, that is for another discussion entirely, haha. If it had been me, coming into a new place, a new conference, I would have watched the 2012 season over and over to have a baseline to see how my players were developing during spring or not developing. Now, I don't know if the current assistants watched the tapes of 2012. I don't know that, but I think I would have had my assistants study them as well. How can you really plot a course if you don't really know where you are at, at the moment?

So tell us what you think in the poll and comments below. And I hope you had a good bye week with the other teams you pulled for. We can all agree on one thing, it is always good to see Texas fail - at anything, but especially football. Good job, Pokes!