Bret Bielema image

Well, how about that? Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema will be the next coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, ESPN and Yahoo are reporting.

Jim Harris found a jet currently heading to Madison, Wisconsin from Fayetteville.

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Here is pronunciation help.

Bielema, 42, has been head coach of Wisconsin since 2006. His record is 60-19 and he’s taken the Badgers to three straight Rose Bowls. In his first season as head coach of Wisconsin, he beat the Hogs in the Capital One Bowl.

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A prediction of what you’re going to hear on sport talk radio: He may’ve done well in the Big Ten, but the SEC ain’t the same ball game.

UPDATE: Name corrected. Also, our Hogs columnist Beau Wilcox weighs in on the hire with a special web-only column:

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Jeff Long has now gone against the grain both times he has had to fill the head coaching vacancy. Bobby Petrino was an NFL coach in his first year, with three games left, and Long willingly embraced Petrino’s overtures to leave Atlanta. This time, Bielema’s name had never been so much as whispered when likely candidates were being bandied about. This was especially true given that Bielema’s brand of football sets those of other would-be candidates in stark relief: the Malzahns, Petersens, Gundys of the college football world are seen as offensive innovators whereas Bielema is commonly known as a guy who has never met a trap or draw play he didn’t like.

Arkansas fans took to the Petrino pro-style offense like a raccoon to a dumpster, and appropriately enough, seemed to be okay with it even when things didn’t exactly click. Petrino’s 21-5 record over 2010-11 on the surface was outstanding and it remains commendable to this day, but there were deficiencies along the way, namely the fact that the defense was often bewilderingly helpless. Bielema’s Wisconsin teams have been not only prolific on that side of the ball over the years, but in many instances, have bailed the offense out.

And that’s where the concern comes in. Bielema was Barry Alvarez’s hand-picked successor in Madison, where Alvarez sculpted that program almost entirely from scratch and made it, at varying times, the class of the Big Ten. Bielema could have been the ill-suited greenhorn who frittered the chance away; instead, he won 10 or more games four times in his seven seasons and never had a losing season. His bowl missteps notwithstanding, Bielema kept Wisconsin pecking around the sport’s upper crust even when excessively modest recruiting rankings should have set the Badgers up to falter.

UPDATE II: UA makes it official. Full release on the jump.

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