Bullet Dodged

Those of you who haven't blocked out the exciting, "who will we offer the job to next" coaching search that followed Houston Nutt's "resignation" way back in December 2007 probably recall that Clemson's Tommy Bowden was among the many candidates who used Arkansas' interest to garner a sweet raise at their current position.

In a rare case of the Expats being right about anything, we were distinctly nonplussed about this at the time...as you might gather from blog posts with titles like "Color Us Not Terribly Excited" and "Trying (and Failing) to Fight That Sinking Feeling". But how close did the Hogs come to actually being saddled with T-Bow as their Chizik-esque head coach?

According to Bobby Bowden, who certainly has reason to know, we came really close: he recently divulged that Tommy was offered the Arkansas job but stayed because he was offered more money he wanted to be "with those kids".

*shudder*

Although that scenario would have spared Razorback fans approximately eight billion hilarious "Petrino is gonna take a new job at halftime hahaha" jokes, I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of us are glad that fate twisted the way it did. Consider this a bullet dodged, for sure.