Hello, everyone. It has been a minute. Since our last update, Sam Pittman was hired as coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks football team. Chad Morris bizarrely had to be talked out of quitting football altogether by his son? And our man, Coach Bobby Petrino, was hired at Missouri State. Yes, that Missouri State just a few miles up the road from Fayetteville.
We did want to sort of put a button on this thing, but what really led us to make another update was a recent column by Wally Hall. (someone we are not always on the same page with) But he had a good piece this past week about the diminishing emphasis on having Razorback games actually played in Little Rock. We’ll get to that in a second.
Firstly, thanks to the 14,000 of you that mobilized to bring Coach Petrino back to Arkansas. All of you that shared stories, emailed the brass at the UofA, relentlessly called the radio shows, and more— you are amazing.
We have real questions about hiring someone to be head coach that has little-to-no head coaching experience to speak of, save a couple years at a junior college in the Eighties. Game planning and strategizing are a different degree of difficulty. It might sting for some of you, but all we can do now is get behind Pittman and our Razorbacks, and give him every chance and encouragement to be successful. We wish him the best!
Congrats to Coach Petrino on the Missouri State job— we anticipate he will turn that program around almost immediately. That’s what he does. Teams better watch out for the Missouri State Bears. (Hey, they play UCA in 2021. Try to catch that one.)
By the way, if you want to follow him, the Stone Cold Maestro from Montana has a new Twitter account now. Give the coach a shout!
https://twitter.com/coachbpetrino
Back to the Wally Hall article, he made some really prescient warnings about the abandonment of games played at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. How did we get here? In the Nineties, the Hogs were playing four games a season in Little Rock. In recent years, those games have been methodically taken away from fans in Central Arkansas, and the games that are played at War Memorial have largely been against less important teams. Meanwhile, multi-million dollar end-zone projects have been green lit for the Fayetteville stadium that sit with empty seats rusting in the sun.
I shutter to think of what Paul Eells would say about the current state of the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The Little Rock games bring the state together in a special way. This has been discounted by people in power who have no clue what it means to be a Razorback, or what it means to people from El Dorado to West Memphis. We need Jon Fagg and Hunter Yurachek to fight to keep those football games in Little Rock. Any perceived short-term gain or profit will only harm the program in the long term.
It’s sad. Just a few short years ago we had an exciting yearly last-game-of-the-year rivalry game with the LSU Tigers. Now we have a manufactured rivalry game with Missouri that yearly plays to half empty stadiums.
But chin up. Keep up the pressure to return the Razorbacks to greatness! You are a crucial part of the fabric of Hog Nation.
It is time to unite around Coach Sam Pittman.
But if it is anything like the last 8 years, we will be back in full force tenfold holding the program accountable. Silence from Razorback fans has led to mediocrity and burned traditions. So we’ll just leave this petition here for right now.
Woo Pig Sooie!
Here’s to more great years like no other for the Arkansas Razorbacks and their fiercely loyal fans.