Jay Silveria takes Purdue job, keeps Arkansas review

The vote came down Thursday afternoon in West Lafayette, and it pulled the guy holding Arkansas athletics' future in his hands right out of Fayetteville.

Purdue is getting a résumé with some heft. Silveria is a former Air Force lieutenant general and fighter pilot who was superintendent of the Air Force Academy before taking over the UA System. Purdue paid up for him, too.

Purdue's board made sports part of the job description from the start. Board chair Gary Lehman said 1 of the 3 things the search committee wanted was someone who could "succeed in today's college athletics atmosphere." Silveria isn't waiting until February to get to work on that. Lehman said he'll sit down with AD Tommy McClelland and the main coaches at Mackey Arena on Friday morning. McClelland only just got there himself: Purdue introduced him in August, paid his $980,000 buyout from Rice, and has him taking over from Mike Bobinski, who steps down at the end of the year.

This is where it gets messy for Arkansas. On September 18 the UA Board of Trustees handed Silveria a review of "the state of competitiveness of Razorback Athletics," with football the clear focus. The Hogs are 3-5 and 1-4 in the SEC under Ryan Silverfield, and fans are checked out. So the obvious question hit right away: does the review leave with him? The UA System's answer was no.

So Silveria keeps a lame-duck job with a very live assignment attached. According to WholeHogSports, the board talked athletics in executive sessions on October 1 and 15 without taking any public action. By late October, Silveria said money had been found to put more into football in the short term, and the long-term planning was still being worked out. Board chairman Randy Lawson has pointed to the January transfer portal as the real deadline and said he wants this done "sooner rather than later."

That's the part to watch. Whatever Silveria recommends, he won't be around to deal with what comes after. The Razorbacks need answers on football resources before the portal opens in January. Silveria starts at Purdue on February 1, and by then his own Boilermakers coaches will want his attention too. If Arkansas wants the guy who ran the review to own the result, the window closes in less than 3 months.