Embattled Arkansas Coach John L. Smith Demands Reporters Smile In Creepiest Way Possible

by Glenn Davis | 1:47 pm, September 18th, 2012

Can you blame John L. Smith for wanting to be surrounded by smiling faces? It’s not like he’s got much reason to smile himself. Arkansas hasn’t fired him yet, but his preseason top 10 team is 1-2 with a loss to Louisiana-Monroe and a complete humiliation at the hands of Alabama to its credit, and a game against Rutgers on Saturday that looks a lot more lose-able (and therefore pretty damn exciting to Rutgers fans like yours truly) than it did a few weeks ago.

And if Smith can’t smile, he’s going to make damn sure he can at least look at other people smiling. When he headed into his week-opening press conference yesterday, the faces that greeted him failed to sufficiently brighten his day. And so he opened the Q&A session with an emphatic attempt to bludgeon grim on-field reality with big, toothy grins. Only issue is, it was impossible to listen to/watch his instructions and actually want to smile:

Let’s take a closer look at a couple of the faces Smith makes while exhorting media members to smile and be happy, dammit:

If someone wore facial expressions like these as they were saying the word “smile,” would you obey? Actually, yes, probably, since you would fear death if you failed to give the person what they wanted.

See? But don’t worry, he’s just kidding… right?

Nice try, John. Now I’ll never trust a smile again. Remember how I included him on my personal shortlist of college football coaches you wouldn’t pick a fight with, because they’d be terrifyingly unpredictable? Well… yeah.

[SB Nation]

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