Team Speed Kills’ College Football Facts Countdown Series: Day 93—Bielema Fest

College football season is well within reach!

With less than 100 days until kickoff, we here at Team Speed Kills are introducing a brand-new, quotidian countdown series to help you prepare for the first slate of college football action on August 26th.

In this series, we will post a daily SEC-related fact and/or story that corresponds to the number of the day in the countdown. Hopefully, you’ll find this series enlightening and entertaining. If you do, click that ‘share’ button we all know and love. If you do not, quit lying to yourself.

93: Bret Bielema’s career wins

I’m sure most fans would be surprised to learn that coach everyone across the South and the nation know affectionately as “BERT!” (the amount of exclamation points is up to the poster’s discretion) is not only a quote machine, but he’s also the third-winningest active SEC head coach.

Yeah; that’s right. The guy who talked about “hopping on his wife” after beating Ole Miss has more wins than Kevin Sumlin. The guy who spoke licentiously of his feelings post-Texas beatdown has more wins than Hugh Freeze and Butch Jones. This being true is proof that beautiful forces are at work in this universe that we couldn’t possibly understand but must simply enjoy.

Now, I’m of course talking about career wins here. We all know that Arkansas has had trouble winning close ballgames in the past few seasons, putting Bret one game under .500 in terms of wins while in Fayetteville.

Still, one can’t overlook the fact that Bret took Wisconsin to three straight Rose Bowls at the end of his tenure, with him losing two (I’m just gonna blame Barry Alvarez for that third one because I can). And we certainly can’t overlook the fact that his 2012 Wisconsin team won the Big Ten with a 7-5 regular season record due to Ohio State and Penn State’s sanctions. These are all marvelous examples of the B1G Strength™ that we all know and love.

Listen, when Bielema was at Wisconsin, that team was fantastic and continually churned out dominant, powerful running backs like Montee Ball and Melvin Gordon like it was nobody’s business. They were also good at simply getting great players to come to Wisconsin, a place where the snowy owl population is declining while the amount of snow that people have to scrape off their cars in the morning is piling up. This ratio of snowy owls to snowy cars is horribly flawed. I can only speak for myself, but I would not want to live someplace where there is a beautiful avian species on the decline.

YEAH I GOOGLED IT

Regardless of his success and recent slip-ups at Arkansas, people still have fond memories of Bret Bielema. For that reason I decided to compile a record of those special moments from those willing to participate. Hopefully this will serve as a time capsule for future generations to unearth in order to rediscover how great college football coaches in this era are/how much free time we, their ancestors, wasted while we could have been saving the environment or doing something noble like that.

Essentially, this post is the college football version of the Voyager Golden Record, and I say that fully understanding the gravity of that charge. Now, does anyone want to help me start a petition to send a transcript of this post on the next capsule launched into deep space?

Of course, a slight disclaimer before I begin: Most of the negative memories are from Wisconsin fans. I actually love Bret, for what it’s worth.

BERT MEMORIES

An oldie but goodie

BRET SENT AN APOLOGY VIA WESTERN UNION

This next one is a bit hard to confirm, but I can’t say I’d blame him if he did

“Team from Ohio” sounds like a Brady Hoke quote, but 16-12 is peak field goal action.

This is an angry surrender cobra if the cobra is able to retract its flaps like the dinosaur that ate Newman in Jurassic Park.

As an avid Ina Garten fan/viewer/reader/aficianado and the biggest Bret fan who isn’t an Arkansas fan, I can say that this tweet has it all. I can also say stay tuned for the inevitable “Food Network Stars as SEC Head Coaches” post coming to Team Speed Kills this offseason.

And finally, the crème de la crème of Bret memories:

Seriously though, Bret is a very underrated coach who probably doesn’t get the credit he deserves for the success he has had because his Arkansas teams have had some sort of 4th quarter hex placed on them. Regardless, even if he hasn’t seen the greatest success and his teams do have trouble winning double overtime SEC West matchups, his 2014 team beat Texas 31-7. That fact alone makes him a star in my book.