Arkansas' offense and defense are competing against each practice this spring to improve for next season, obviously, but one of the fun things Arkansas head coach Chad Morris has implemented to help inspire the players is the competition for the championship belt.

Each day after practice, the belt is awarded to the offensive or defensive coordinator. So far, it has stayed in the defense's corner, and that was also the case during Saturday's scrimmage due to the offense committing three turnovers, including one by the first unit. The factors that weigh into which side wins the belt are things like first down efficiency, sacks, tackles for loss and turnovers. No matter what happens in a practice, if the offense turns the ball over three or more times then the belt goes to the defense.

"Oh yeah, it’s creating competition in practice. They take a lot of pride in it. You do everything you can to make practice fun, but also make it as demanding as you possibly can," Arkansas defensive coordinator John Chavis said after Saturday's scrimmage. "There’s some competitions that he’s got set up. You’re basically graded on the field - first down production, third down production, takeaways and all of those things. He’s got a deal that can easily, once you go through the practice, guys are charting everything that happens in those situations, and he determines it from those numbers, whether it’s the defense or offense. So it wasn’t me, it was our defensive players that got the belt. They just asked me to hold it up, so I did that."

Some of the plays that weighed in the defense's favor were fumble recoveries by freshman cornerback Gregory Brooks Jr. and junior outside linebacker Deon Edwards with the second units. The offense also turned the ball over on a bad snap when the first team was on the field. During the open portion of the scrimmage, safety Myles Mason had a sack and freshman end Eric Gregory had two. Arkansas' quarterbacks have committed turnovers in each of the last three practices but did not have an interception on Saturday.

"The belt, from that standpoint, the defense got it. We got three turnovers, which that trumps everything. When we get those turnovers, you know Chief’s going to get all real happy about it," middle linebacker Grant Morgan said.

"We turned the ball over three times so that kinda hurts, but I felt like for most of the scrimmage on first down we were really good," senior quarterback Ben Hick said. "There was a couple of pre-snap penalties and a snap here and there, but overall we were pretty positive on first down and that kept us out of third and longs. I felt like we only had three or four third and longs and in a long scrimmage like that it's pretty good.

"They were fumbles and a snap," Hicks said. "It was kinda windy today so it was hard with certain things like the snaps. They were kinda knucklers at times because of the wind. It kinda made things hard, but nothing too crazy. We really had a pretty good day. If we can eliminate those I think we get the belt or whatever we're going by now. It was a good day."