From the Bench

Five Years Later, Mustain Out of Football

Robert Shields

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Those famous words from F. Scott Fitzgerald sum up the football career of Mitch Mustain better than any sentence anyone could write.

Mustain came to prominence as the hero of a much-celebrated Springdale High School team, but those high expectations from his high school days played a big role in plummeting his success in college.

It’s only been five years since Mustain chose to go to the University of Arkansas amid so much drama, but that time period of Razorback athletics and all that came with it seems so much farther away.

Regardless, the end of Mustain’s football career has arrived after not being selected in the NFL draft.

Where did it all start? The kid was all-everything. He was Parade All-American, Gatorade player of the year, and the USA Today player of the year sweeping all those honors. He was one of the most heralded players ever to come out of high school in Arkansas and graduated early to enroll at the UA.

He was part of what some in the northwest corner of the state claim was the best team in Arkansas high school history. And it was with that hubris people expected to be handed the keys to run Razorback football that Mustain’s demise began.

The Mustain-Gus Malzahn era in Springdale was a great team, but not the best because that same group lost to a team from Little Rock Central that had won back-to-back state championships -- and that Central team was not even close to being the best team ever in the state.

Nonetheless, Mustain was a great high school quarterback. He came with the other sought-after Springdale athletes who merged to form a single team from two schools. He came with his coach, Malzahn, who was to become the new offensive coordinator and play caller for the Razorbacks.

Someone that popular will always have detractors. The whispers started early in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl Star when he had a very poor performance and was out-shown by Tim Tebow. That led some doubters to say he was a system quarterback.

Mustain seemed certain to redshirt at Arkansas with Casey Dick in front of him having won a few games and having a lead in experience. Unfortunately, Dick was hammered by a linebacker that severely injured his back. Some argued this was an example of the lack of love between the offensive and defensive coordinators, which was a clash of the old guard against an upstart high-school coordinator with new ideas.

Mustain was forced into a more prominent role. In the offseason, Darren McFadden kicked off his toe and the burden on the new offense grew all the more. Dick healed slowly making the playing of Mustain compulsory.

The Hogs opened the season with high hopes against perennial power USC in Fayetteville. A complete shellacking then occurred. Mustain was inserted late into the game as the devastation mounted under quarterback Robert Johnson. A press conference was held the next day with a beleaguered-looking Houston Nutt explaining there would be a change at quarterback.

Mustain took the Hogs on an eight-game winning streak at quarterback with his play ugly at times but the team still finding a way to win. He threw several interceptions in the overtime win against Alabama, but most importantly he threw the game-winning touchdown to Springdale buddy Ben Cleveland.

A book was published about the Springdale football season the previous year with quotes from Mustain included in the book. The quotes sometimes were less than flattering of his current head coach, and some point to this as his demise as the Razorback quarterback. He did not start again after the South Carolina game when he was pulled early in the contest.

Mustain saw little playing time from that point on for the Razorbacks. His offensive coordinator took a job at Tulsa and his primary Springdale receiver transferred to USC. Mustain was not far behind him.

At USC, Mustain saw relatively little action. His last start for USC was at Notre Dame in a loss. The cruel irony was that when Mustain was in high school, Notre Dame was one of his top choices.

So five years later, we are left to wonder what if? What if his mom had not met with Frank Broyles? What if Mustain had stayed at the University of Arkansas where he most certainly would have ended up as the starter the next year? What if so many adults hadn’t put so much pressure on the kid’s shoulders so early in life?

I left out all the details of emails, Little League parents meetings, and all that stuff. In a cheap pandering moment, you can read the details as I saw them in my book, “Scarlet Fever: A Razorback House Divided.” It’s available at Amazon for the Kindle, nook, and soon to be on Apple’s iBookstore.

I end with wishing him the best and a second chance at a pro career. Everybody loves a comeback story.


Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/rsfromthebench or send your thoughts on what might have been to fromthebench@yahoo.com.

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