spiderpig

DBU gave the Hogs all they wanted at Fayetteville in the regional final (4-3 win) last year. They're tough.

Arkansas:

Baseball -- numerous CWS appearances, one natty runner-up. At some point I'd have to think DVH will win one. Just have to get to Omaha and then get hot (see Virginia last year).

Women's Cross Country -- Have finished 2nd at NCAAs four different times. Just have to have it come together for one day.

Golf (either gender) -- Recent natty runner-up on the men's side, women have been top 5 in past, both generally nationally competitive. Another case where you'd just have to get hot for a week.

Gymnastics -- two Super Six appearances, national top 10 now. In that case you just have get to the SS and then get hot for one night.

Women's hoops -- one Final Four, but it's gonna be hard for anyone other than UConn or Notre Dame to win one any time soon.

Volleyball -- occasional NCAA team; not holding my breath.

Tennis (either gender) -- not bloody likely.

W Swimming/Diving -- ditto.

Don't play any of those goofy sports like equestrian or lacrosse :cheeky:

Thanksgiving dinner in Arkansas: Turkey and dressing.

Black Friday snack: Mauk on a platter. I'm thinking about three picks and four sacks. Kinda like the Georgia game.

There are three reasons we keep playing LSU in Little Rock.

1. As noted above, big-bucks boosters in Little Rock like Warren Stephens, who threatened to completely cut ties with UA if games were pulled out of WMS.

2. Whiny fans, not only in Little Rock but in areas south and east of LR, who pitched a huge fit in 1999 when Frank Broyles mentioned the possibility of moving all games to Fayetteville: "They're going to take our team away." Evidently it's not enough of their team to consider actually seeing them play, like, on campus?

3. And I'm serious about this. They are seriously concerned that if we play LSU on Thanksgiving weekend on campus, there will be thousands of empty seats because the students are gone and because people won't interrupt their holiday weekend to drive up for a football game (never mind that they interrupt their holiday weekend now to drive to Little Rock). Maybe that was the case 20 years ago, when Arkansas and LSU both stunk (I remember seeing a lot of empty seats in Little Rock for an Arkansas-LSU game back then too), but I doubt it would be the case now.

I think at the very least, even if we continue playing in LR, the LSU game should rotate to Fayetteville occasionally. Play Ole Miss in LR in even-numbered years to give them their SEC game as specified in the contract. I've made that suggestion to Jeff Long in an e-mail; his response was that many considerations have to be taken into account in making that decision (like whiny boosters, whiny fans and the fear that people won't show up).

That contract to play in Little Rock expires after the 2016 season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be renewed, since we leave $1.5 million on the table in tickets/skyboxes that aren't sold every time we play a game in Little Rock instead of Fayetteville. I'm not sure those boosters are giving enough money to make up that kind of forfeited income.

I understand that things were different decades ago. Little Rock to Fayetteville used to be a bad drive any time, and on game day might be 6 hours, and there weren't nearly enough hotel rooms. I remember sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the mountain 40 miles south of campus on game day. But there's a freeway now, you can get from downtown LR to the stadium in 3 hours, and there are actually places to stay now when you get to Fayetteville.

FWIW, Stewart Mandel of SI.com, who generally seems to have good info on this stuff, projects MissSt to the Chick-Fil-A. He's got Arkansas in the Sugar, USCe in the Outback, Florida in the Gator, Georgia in the Liberty, Tennessee in Music City and Kentucky in Birmingham. But he also has LSU in the Cap One and Bama in the Cotton; it seems clear now that those will be flipped.

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Broyles, Defender of Arkansas Virtue, felt Holtz had to go after the coach said "Arkansas isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here" on the Johnny Carson Show.

Forget the fact that Holtz was the most successful coach the Hogs ever had

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Unfortunately, Holtz needed to be fired at that point. He spent a lot more time being a celebrity than recruiting for about his last three seasons, and our talent level went down the crapper as a result. Hatfield was thus the perfect hire at that time -- a coach who was used to winning with inferior talent at Air Force.

I don't know about prestige, but IMO Cotton is more desirable as a destination playing in JerryWorld (and I've frozen my arse off in the old place on Jan. 1 more than once). If they ever add a fifth BCS bowl, I think Cotton would be a better candidate than Cap One or any other bowl. Then again, Cotton probably would have been a BCS bowl to begin with (in place of Fiesta IMO) if its conference tie-in hadn't disappeared with the demise of the SWC. Remember in the old days, the big four bowls were Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange.

Most of us are just afraid Les will leave and LSU will hire someone who can actually coach. Kinda like Mike Archer.

Nice story about the hospital visit, though.

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See... the thing about this whole Cam affair is you guys will quote some rule that was "violated", be shown that it was no violation, and then morph it to something else and claim YET AGAIN it was violated.

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Ah, further proof that denial is more than a river in Egypt. I hope you enjoy that 0-14 when the hammer falls, dickwad.

LOL. Sally learned the art of smart-arse sportswriting very well from her dad, Dan Jenkins.