Petrino, Nutt dot LRTC slate
Say this much for the Little Rock Touchdown Club: It doesn’t hold any grudges and allows all points of view.
How else can a lineup of speakers including Bobby Petrino and Houston Nutt be explained? Or with a University of Arkansas athletic director and an Arkansas State football coach?
How about Bill Montgomery, the losing quarterback in the Big Shootout of 1969, going into detail about that fourth-quarter pass into the end zone intended for Chuck Dicus and intercepted by Texas’ Danny Lester? (Bill slightly underthrew a pass that, with Arkansas leading 14-8 and well within Bill McClard’s field-goal range, perhaps should not have been attempted. Frank Broyles, who claimed never to have watched the game film, went for the kill, and failed, one time in his coaching career that a more conservative approach might have been best. Texas 15, Arkansas 14, a score that never changes.) Montgomery, who came so close to general recognition as Arkansas’ greatest quarterback, addresses the club Oct. 14.
Petrino (Sept. 9) and Nutt (Oct.
21), both appearing on a Monday after a Razorback game, generated the most attention on this radar screen when LRTC dates were announced Tuesday. It will mark the first public appearance in Arkansas for Petrino since his April 2012 firing after an infamous motorcycle accident and subsequent revelation that he had hired his mistress to a position on the football support staff. Following back-to-back top-10 finishes under Petrino in 2010 and 2011, the dark ages of Razorback football were about to begin.
Nutt, still the only coach I can name who left a school after a conquest of the nation’s No. 1 team (LSU in 2011), is an Arkansan by birth, unlike Petrino, and sensitive to his home state’s peculiarities. To his credit, Houston has mended some fences back home after a decade at UA that he started as a conquering hero (or close to it) and ended as a polarizing factor. Still, I have never heard booing for an Arkansas game to equal that when Nutt, in his first year at Ole Miss, stepped on the field at Razorback Stadium before a 2008 matchup.
Petrino, for whom a second hitch at Louisville did not end nicely, and Nutt, who may hold the record for links to coaching jobs that he was not a serious candidate, will not take away from game-planning to speak in Little Rock. Both are on the list of speakers at Embassy Suites in west Little Rock with the series starting with current Razorback coach Chad Morris Tuesday, Aug. 20 at Statehouse Convention Center downtown.
Morris comes to town 11 days before officially launching his second season at Arkansas with a Fayetteville date against Portland State. Petrino follows two days after the Hogs face Ole Miss at Oxford in the Southeastern Conference opener for both teams. Nutt’s turn comes after a road game with Kentucky in an October that Morris’ team also plays Auburn at home and against Alabama.
UA athletic director Hunter Yurachek arrives Sept. 23 after a home game with San Jose State. Yurachek seems to understand the need for transparency in his program, something that predecessor Jeff Long couldn’t quite grasp. Long, whose string of disastrous hires contributed to his firing in
2017, made two forgettable LRTC appearances; once, he stumbled over the Great Stadium Debate and another time led off his remarks, two days after a Fayetteville loss to TCU before a sellout crowd, with UA graduation rates. (Long, let go at UA mainly out of concern that he wouldn’t fire Bret Bielema, is now athletic director at Kansas, waiting to take credit for hiring Les Miles in football if that move is successful or reviewing KU’s graduation rates if not.)
Yurachek could steal the thunder from Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson’s Nov. 4 appearance by announcing a football series between the Razorbacks and Red Wolves.
As has been wished here for decades, Yurachek is looking at Arkansas’ long-standing policy of
not scheduling intrastate opponents with fresh eyes. Baseball series with UA branches in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, plus a 2021 Fayetteville football visit by UAPB, are steps in the right direction. Talk of an Arkansas vs. Little Rock women’s basketball game is in the air.
Nothing would move the needle more than a Razorback-Red Wolf football game. Arkansas State is No. 2 in college football in this state and trying harder, but finishing a decade of excellence, and needs the cachet that scheduling an SEC team, especially that SEC team, would bring.
Yurachek and Arkansas State athletic director Terry Mohajir could calm the seas regarding UA’s continued football presence in Little Rock. Playing, say, a season opener against Arkansas State at War Memorial Stadium would do more to promote good will than alternating the Red-White game between Fayetteville and Little Rock. And building up to a late August or early September game with an in-state rival would keep both programs in the headlines.
Pie in the sky? Let’s hope not. Yurachek’s early efforts are refreshing compared to the head-in-sand approach adopted by Long, Broyles and their predecessors.
In April, Yurachek told 103.7 The Buzz’s David Bazzel about playing Arkansas State: “I’m not going to say that it’s never going to happen, but what I’m going to say right now is we’re just taking a step. And that step is to open that up to schools within the system, and that’s what I felt comfortable with. You know we just weren’t ready to rip off the Band-Aid.”
Just the same, says ASU’s Mohajir, “I’m not sitting by the phone waiting for Hunter to call, biting my fingernails.”
Even if times are changing. How else to explain Bobby Petrino addressing the Little Rock Touchdown Club?