Arkansas beat Southern Miss, 24-3, on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013, to move to 3-0 under first-year head coach Bret Bielema. About 10 hours later, Bielema's former team, Wisconsin, fell to 2-1 after the officials stole a game from them at Arizona State.
"#karma," Bielema's wife, Jen, tweeted.
That was a poor idea.
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Arkansas lost to Rutgers a week later, the same day Wisconsin obliterated Purdue. The Razorbacks did not win another game the remainder of the season. Wisconsin won six. As noted by Brett McMurphy, since Jen Bielema's tweet, Arkansas is 23-27.
Wisconsin is 41-12.
Bielema went 68-24 in seven seasons as Badgers' head coach. He had four seasons with at least 10 wins, won three conference titles and only once lost more than four conference games once.
Following Arkansas' 21-point home loss to TCU last week, Bielema is now 26-27 since abruptly leaving Madison for Fayetteville in December 2012. He hasn't won more than eight games in a season and has lost at least five conference games in three of his first four full seasons.
Wisconsin, meanwhile, has remained an annual Big Ten title contender, recorded three double-digit-win seasons and has fewer losses (13) in four-plus seasons than Bielema had in his first two seasons (15).
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Bielema cited Wisconsin's inability to pay his assistant coaches competitive salaries as his main reason for leaving, saying, "Wisconsin isn’t wired to do that at this point." His successor, Gary Andersen, left after two years because of his issues with the school's admissions office.
"It's been well [documented] there were some kids I couldn't get in school," Andersen said after bailing for Oregon State. "That was highly frustrating to me. I lost some guys, and I told them I wasn't going to lose them."
Though both departures were bizarre, highly unexpected and — at first — frustrating for Wisconsin fans, all is well now. Bielema and Andersen are losing at record paces, and third-year head coach Paul Chryst is 23-6 in two-plus seasons.
So maybe Jen Bielema was actually right. There's been karma since Week 3 of the 2013 season.
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