Another good cast for Baz and LRTDC
Although playing no games there this season, the Arkansas Razorbacks indirectly put War Memorial Stadium to good use on Tuesday
David Bazzel chose that venue, on which as a UA linebacker for Lou Holtz he labored before becoming a most visual ex-player, to announce this year’s speakers for the Little Rock Touchdown Club.
The native Floridian has worn many hats in his adopted state, taking a periodic turn on local television in central Arkansas. A loved one, who did not see Bazzel play but saw or heard him often, asked me one day exactly what his chosen field was. “He’s an ex-Razorback,” I responded. “That pays pretty well.”
Bazzel’s greatest Arkansas feats include spearheading the Frank Broyles Award, named for the Razorbacks’ former football coach and athletic director and honoring the most outstanding assistant college-football coach that season.
It has been 17 years since David (many know him as “Baz”) launched the Little Rock Touchdown Club, which meets each Monday of football season at a downtown hotel. For the price of lunch with like-minded types, one sits through a review of the past week’s games, longtime moderator Rex Nelson (like gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders a Ouachita Baptist alum) known to toss zingers, before a featured speaker steps forward.
A most memorable moment at the LRTDC occurred when Bobby Petrino addressed the group a few years back. As if to thank the coach for his work in Fayetteville and to put aside ill will regarding his hasty exit, Petrino received a standing ovation. We shall see what greeting he gets when he brings Missouri State in for a Sept. 17 game at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
Another time, a soon-to-be departing UA athletic director buried the lead, as reporters say, on a Monday visit. Instead of dwelling upon the previous week’s loss to TCU before a big Fayetteville crowd, Jeff Long quoted graduation rates. His moment on that stage proved mercifully brief.
Long was fired later in 2017 mainly because, as the man who brought the coach to Arkansas from Wisconsin, he was loath to fire Bret Bielema. That most “uncommon” man was cut loose after a Thanksgiving Friday Fayetteville loss to Missouri in a news conference that one Julie Cromer Peoples, then a UA athletic official thrust into duty as an AD when the school lacked one, thoroughly botched. Coach Julie, as I called her then, wears the dunce cap for hiring Chad Morris as Bielema’s successor, leading to two seasons (22 games actually) that UA football cratered.
Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, who for the sake of his legacy arrived on campus a few days after Cromer Peoples, is among the speakers Bazzel has signed up this year. Not many in that role have come off a better summer-to-summer stretch than Yurachek, whose football and men’s basketball programs are sound again following key hires and whose baseball team returned to the College World Series in June.
With Razorback and SEC football sure to be hot topics, Bazzel brings in big names including ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit and the SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum along with multi-media star Tim Brando. Providing an in-state touch are Arkansas coach Sam Pittman, who goes first on Aug. 15, Arkansas State coach Butch Jones and UAPB coach Doc Gamble.
UAPB’s Golden Lions provided Arkansas’ opponent last year in the first Razorback football game at War Memorial Stadium in two years. A-State’s Red Wolves are the next such designated foe in 2025, Jones having spoken to the LRTDC last year in his first season in Jonesboro.
One name of note on Bazzel’s list is Houston Dale Nutt, who played (first for Central High) and coached (the Razorbacks) at WMS. He has not patrolled a sideline since Ole Miss, his next stop after leaving Arkansas, cut him loose after the 2011 season. Nutt, it is said, has been linked with more coaching jobs for which he was not seriously considered than anyone.
A football Razorback for Holtz who also saw minutes for Eddie Sutton in basketball, Nutt is now seen mostly in a CBS studio on game day. If the Little Rock crowd treated Petrino kindly, surely they will do the same for a native son.