Arkansas State will start its football season at Oregon, travel to Nebraska on Sept. 15 and play at fellow Sun Belt Conference bowl participants Florida International and Louisiana in October.
For a team coming off its first 10-win season in 25 years, it was worth asking first-year Red Wolves coach Gus Malzahn — who enjoyed an unbeaten season at Auburn in 2010 — what record he thinks his team will have.
“All we’re going to be is as good as we can be,” Malzahn said Thursday. “I’ve never been a predictor of anything like that, but our kids are hungry and we have young guys coming in. I’m sure we’ll experience some growing pains the first year, but the future looks very bright.”
Malzahn has plenty to look forward to with a team defending its Sun Belt Conference championship and a quarterback with 3,588 passing yards and a 133.6 quarterback rating in senior-to-be Ryan Aplin. He’ll also have former Auburn standout and 2010 BCS national championship game MVP Michael Dyer suited up this fall if he doesn’t have to sit out a season due to NCAA transfer rules. Malzahn said he should know Dyer’s status by next month.
The coach wound down his three-day, 15-stop “Head of State Road Tour” across Arkansas on Thursday with Harbor Oaks as one of his last destinations. He and A-State athletic director Dean Lee pulled into Pine Bluff from Bryant and also paid visits to El Dorado, Fordyce and Hot Springs for the day.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
They stopped in four places north of Little Rock on Tuesday and in six locations Wednesday — including a church and bank both in Springdale, where Malzahn coached at Shiloh Christian and Springdale high schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“It is grueling,” Lee said with a smile. “It is tiring. But the thing is, each and every stop, we see the energy, the excitement, and we’re inspired by our fan base. It keeps us going and we’re living off the adrenaline that they bring to us.”
About 50 fans visited Harbor Oaks’ restaurant to listen to Lee and Malzahn. Four of Malzahn’s players from the area, sophomores Kelsey Collins (Pine Bluff High) and Kyle Coleman (Watson Chapel) and redshirt freshmen Booker Mays III and Charleston Girley of Dollarway, were among the crowd.
Two Rison seniors, Quanterio Heath and Marquis Walker, signed with A-State in February.
“Starting out as a high school coach in eastern Arkansas at Hughes High School, I know all about Pine Bluff and the type of players that have come out of here,” Malzahn said. In 1994, his Hughes team stunned two-time defending state champion Dollarway in the Class AA semifinals.
The purpose of the tour — as with his recent “A-State Ambush” recruiting project to visit every football-playing high school in the state — was to promote the Red Wolves as a statewide program. Yet, Lee said the national media attention on the team has grown since Malzahn was hired in December.
CBSSports.com ranked the hire as the fourth-best in the country.
“We think we have the No. 1, but we’re very pleased with the hire,” Lee said. “One of the rankings gave us an A-plus with the hire, and obviously, that’s the ultimate, and we’re very thrilled with it.”
During his speech, Malzahn didn’t hide his plan for the program when talking about some of his newcomers: “Shock the college football world and be a consistent top-25 team.”
He didn’t say whether in-state recruiting has improved for his team in the wake of a scandal at Arkansas that cost coach Bobby Petrino his job.
“We’re not worried about anybody else,” Malzahn said. “We’re going to sell our product, and we think we have a lot to sell. The fact that our foundation of our program will be with Arkansas players, that says it all.”
Lee confirmed A-State and Arkansas-Pine Bluff have talked about a potential meeting in football. Football Championship Subdivision teams can play as many as 12 games starting in 2013, which gives UAPB, coached by Coleman’s father Monte, a chance to schedule another nonconference opponent. A-State has no in-state opponents for 2012.
“We have had dialogue in the past, and that’s something we would look at,” Lee said. “We want to be a good neighbor. We have played the University of Central Arkansas last year. If the opportunity comes up with UAPB, we would entertain that.”