Broyles remembrance requires big-time treatment

FAYETTEVILLE — Certainly it can and has been said that college athletics is overemphasized. That it’s the tail wagging the dog. But there is a big-time rebuttal on big-time athletics’ behalf.

It rebutted big-time this last weekend at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

The celebrations of Frank Broyles’ life with Friday’s reception at Fayetteville’s Central United Methodist Church and Saturday’s public celebration at Bud Walton Arena exemplified the greatness and, more importantly, the goodness that can and often does accompany big-time athletics.

Broyles, who was the Razorbacks head football coach from 1958-76, athletic director from 19732007 and athletics director emeritus thereafter, died Aug. 14 at 92.

Broyles impacted Arkansas big time deriving big-time attention.

Naturally it spawned some ivory-towered perceptions clashing academics vs. athletics.

Actually, they didn’t clash but combined, asserted Dan Ferritor, the scholarly former UA chancellor.

Broyles’ work co-chairing the Campaign for Books adding “more than 100,000 books” to the UA Library, assisting the $1 billion 21st Century fundraising project and the campaign rescuing Old Main — the UA’s hallowed but then crumbling academic symbol — were essential, Ferritor said.

“For Old Main, we made calls that Dan Ferritor and Coach Broyles would like to see you,” Ferritor said. “We never got a refusal, and I don’t think it was because they wanted to see Dan Ferritor. Old Main would not be there today without Frank Broyles.”

The Razorbacks’ love for their teammates and coaches and the joy athletics wrought them manifested big-time all weekend.

Something else came to light plain as black and white.

Big-time athletics, especially with Jackie Robinson integrating Major League Baseball, probably has done more to promote racial understanding and teamwork in our country than any segment of society.

The same is true within Arkansas, the weekend showed again.

It obviously stood out that Nolan Richardson attended and exuded respect for the athletic director who hired him as the first major university black head coach in the South even with Broyles firing him after 17 years.

So did Ken Hatfield-era All-Southwest Conference quarterback Quinn Grovey. Recalling growing up in Duncan, Okla., impacted by Broyles’ Georgia accent when Broyles was the color analyst with Keith Jackson on ABC’s College Football Game of the Week, Grovey joked about “being the boy in the ’hood with a fake Southern accent trying to sound like Frank Broyles.”

He then spoke movingly of the Broyles-authored Alzheimer’s Playbook, based on Broyles’ caregiving for his late wife, Barbara, because it so helped Grovey care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother.

Attending the ceremonies were Razorbacks Dennis Winston, Ivan Jordan, Ike Forte, Brison Manor, Jimmy Walker, Muskie Harris and William Watkins among others that Broyles signed, thoroughly integrating his football teams in the 1970s.

They didn’t return as black Razorbacks any more than 1970s Razorbacks teammates such as Scott Bull, Mike Kirkland and Mark Miller returned as white Razorbacks.

All returned as one, as Razorbacks.

In today’s worldwide disharmony, that puts them all ahead of the game for having played their games.

“For Old Main, we made calls that Dan Ferritor and Coach Broyles would like to see you. We never got a refusal, and I don’t think it was because they wanted to see Dan Ferritor. Old Main would not be there today without Frank Broyles.”

— Former UA chancellor Dan Ferritor