Games they play

And games they don’t

“After review of information provided by the institution, the institution’s request is hereby denied due to a lack of extenuating circumstances which warrant relief from the normal application of the Conference’s on-campus practice requirements.”

WE WILL translate the comments above: No. The commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, Greg Sankey, canceled the Arkansas Razorbacks’ spring football game in Little Rock this year in a very commissioner-like way.

If lawyers write to be legal, not necessarily understood, then commissioners of athletic leagues must write to keep attorneys happy.

But as professional as the denial sounds, many fans are still unsatisfied. We’d hope that somebody could answer this question: Why?

Many folks in central (and south, east and near-west) Arkansas grew up going to Arkansas Razorback football games in Little Rock. Games have been played there since, oh, about 1931. As recently as the 1990s, there were multiple games at War Memorial every year. Some of us looked forward to pounding LSU on frequent occasion and celebrating on Markham.

Then the games became fewer and fewer as officials at the UofA—or former officials—began counting beans and scheduling more home games in Fayetteville. (A troublemaker might ask how many people attended those last few games in Fayetteville during the recent 2-10 seasons, but we won’t go there. At all.)

Apparently there’s some bylaw in some subsection under some article in the rules that can’t be bent. According to the paper: “SEC bylaw 17.1.9(d) (2) states that all football practices, including intrasquad scrimmages such as spring games, must be held on campus, except for ones that are held in a facility that is used twice each year for regular-season games.”

Okay. But is the SEC championship game still played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta? How did that venue get a waiver?

We think the university’s letter to the SEC put it best: “War Memorial is not merely a ‘facility’ used by the university, as the applicable bylaw addresses. It is a home stadium and we feel it should be treated as part of our campus.”

Football fans in Arkansas certainly think of Little Rock as a home game.

Besides, what harm could it do? NB: The Missouri game every other year is still on. The Razorbacks will take on Mizzou in the fall next year—at War Memorial Stadium. What the SEC has done is cancel a spring game. A practice. A scrimmage. How, one wonders, does Arkansas get some sort of unfair advantage, athletically or otherwise, by holding a spring game in Little Rock? The whole thing was a douceur for the largest city in the state, which has already been deprived of a number of football games over the years.

Besides, it was fun.

For those keeping score, and just about everybody in Arkansas is, count it Bureaucracy 1, Fun 0.