FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – In the good old days, when he was winning football games and making friends at the University of Louisville, John L. Smith gathered his assistant coaches for breakfast every Friday morning at Wagner's Pharmacy on Central Avenue. Nobody made Fridays more fun.
In Smith's season of pain, this is where he was Friday as his Arkansas football team prepared to play the University of Kentucky Saturday night:
Appearing with his wife, Diana and attorney in front of a judge in U.S. Bankruptcy court, trying to argue that a computer error is what pushed his crushing list of liabilities to $40.7 million, $15 million more than he claimed when Smith made his original Chapter 7 filing in September.
Smith is dealing with fractured friendships and cranky creditors, many involved in land and development deals that went upside down when the housing market sagged in suburban Louisville. The heavenly home with acreage with a pond that Smith bought in Oldham County after he was fired at Michigan State in 2006 has been sold, erasing the story that Louisville is where he would retire.
Smith is dealing with the added embarrassment of a report that he restructured his Arkansas contract so he will be paid $600,000 of his $850,000 salary on Dec. 31 and Feb. 23, after his bankruptcy case is settled.
His Razorbacks' team, ranked eighth nationally a week into the season, has lost four of six. Arkansas isn't even the eighth best team in the Southeastern Conference.
Even his alma mater has to be wondering about Smith, considering he walked out on Weber State last April, 4 ½ months after he took the job. That U-turn was more awkward than his clumsy departure from U of L a decade ago, when the news that he was leaving for Michigan State began to leak in the middle of the Cards' GMAC bowl appearance in Alabama.
Strike one, strike two, strike three, strike four, strike …
Smith will be 64 when his Arkansas career concludes at the end of next month. His time as an FBS coach will be done. Don't look for confetti or pep bands. No matter how many times that Smith yells, "Smile," he's got going to get another FBS head coaching opportunity.
"You wished for the storybook ending," said Dave Ragone, who played quarterback for Smith at U of L and still considers him a father figure. "You wished for the undefeated season, the chance to play for it all.
"Obviously being a public figure and having all this stuff play out in public is not what you want."
Do not mention his name at popular spots around the Arkansas campus, like the Whole Hog Café or Starbucks. Folks wearing Razorbacks' gear crinkle their noses and tell you what a mess that two former U of L coaches – Smith and Bobby Petrino – have made of their beloved program. One fan told me he was eating his tickets for the UK game to attend a high school game instead.
"He has no control of the team," Arkansas student Ty Fuller said. "It's been terrible. We're ready for a new coach."
What do you expect people to say when your team was beaten by Louisiana-Monroe and Rutgers – and outscored by Alabama and Texas A&M, 110-10?
That you're the next Frank Broyles? That you're going to be invited to stay beyond the 10-month deal you signed to serve as the interim coach after Petrino lied about the circumstances around his motorcycle crash with his girlfriend aboard and then was dismissed last April?
Petrino still lives in the Fayetteville area. He is trying to keep his family together. Word is he is also trying to stay sharp by watching wall-to-wall college football on TV, hoping somebody will offer a job at the end of this season.
Believe it or not, Smith's career is in worse shape, considering the unsettling financial news percolating around him. Friends wonder if Smith's only game plan to get another college job is to A) hope somebody hires Petrino and B) Petrino bring him as an assistant.
This week, with Kentucky coming to Reynolds Razorback Stadium, Smith tried to enjoy his final run, carrying on as if the end was not near. He joked about the Wildcats the way he did when he coached U of L, losing to Tim Couch and friends, 68-34, in the opening game at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium and then beating UK three of four.
"The first year there, they beat us badly," Smith said. "They got after us real good."
Smith's eyes narrowed. He reached out with his right hand and turned an imaginary dial. Vintage John L.
"Then we turned things around," he said, "which was real good."
John L. Smith might beat Kentucky Saturday, but things will not turn around here. This won't be the storybook ending that he came to Arkansas to enjoy.
Copyright 2012 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved.
The end of John L. Smith's is not the storybook that he planned.
