Big Expectations: Winners Like It, Losers Complain About Disappointment

Anybody expecting fans to have any sort of "realistic" expectations for Arkansas in any sport is absolutely wrong. That's a big part of how the Razorbacks find themselves in this annual hole every single year. Disappointment at end of the year is overwhelmingly the result at the end of every season.

That's in every sports at every level. In college football there were over 100 schools disappointed when Michigan won and nobody else did. When Kansas City won the Super Bowl last weekend, there were 31 fan bases disappointed. The expectation should be for championships.

Otherwise a mindset of accepting anything less becomes okay. If the Hogs win 9 games this year in football and you're fine with that it's your decision. The question should be every year a championship doesn't happen should be "what are you doing to fix it?" There was a time when around Arkansas the expectation every single year was a championship. Frank Broyles had to answer the questions of how a one-loss season was going to be fixed.

It was Lou Holtz that said one time right after taking the Razorbacks' job in 1976 after Broyles' .500 last team, "people usually live up to or down to your expectations." Like a lot of those things Lou said, it turned out to be prophetic for nearly every phase of life.

Football in particular for the Hogs has fallen to the level that many of the media that make excuses for failure are drawing on games the last decade they've "gotten close" to beating the top tier teams. For a program that's never won a national championship where they got the trophy, apparently now some people are telling fans they really shouldn't expect it.

Baseball's now in those crosshairs of that conversation. Razorbacks coach Dave Van Horn is probably glad to have those expectations. It's a theme you tend to hear among championship-level people. On paper right now, the Hogs should have a decent shot at getting to Omaha, which is about the best expectation anyone can have. Since nobody knows how injuries will play out or the weather will be in Omaha this year for the College World Series.

But until everybody starts having those "unrealistic" expectations, nothing's going to change. It's pretty easy to get comfortable with being mediocre. Winners don't question high expectations, losers complain they are disappointed every year.