Flip channels if UA games fail to entice
If you’ve become Rip Van Winkle-weary of Razorback athletics — if you’re in Howard Beale country, which is to say “mad as hell” about football and basketball, the socalled money sports — may we offer a suggestion or two.
Beale, the mad prophet in “Network,” a 1976 black comedy about the TV industry that won Peter Finch an Oscar, called it “mass madness,” that “you people are the real thing! We are the illusion!”
To that end, he begged viewers to “turn off your television sets … turn them off and leave them off.”
If not already, make University of Arkansas sports a lesser part of your life. Seek out alternative programming; take your family to the movies, even if it’s only catching up on taped shows.
If you like basketball, to which I can relate, other games are more watchable than those involving a team coached by Eric Musselman or Mike Neighbors. May we suggest National Park College, the Nighthawks gaining fans by the minute. Keep that entertainment dollar at home.
Neighbors’ artists formerly known as Lady Razorbacks can’t shoot straight some nights, trying to turn each outing into a game of H-OR-S-E from behind the threepoint circle. An 86-70 home loss to Alabama Thursday night was especially troubling. The Feb. 29 Bud Walton Arena game with No. 1 South Carolina might become a wrestling match between Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley and her conscience.
Musselman’s team on Saturday squandered whatever good will it accrued from Wednesday night’s road win over Missouri. LSU, without Shaquille O’Neal or Chris Jackson in uniform, took apart the visiting team, 95-74 in Maravich Assembly Center.
Fortunately, a 12-race card at Oaklawn (four stakes included) distracted me from watching that affair, which with an 11 a.m. start represented a sea change in atmosphere from the previous Saturday’s ESPN GameDay visit to Fayetteville with Kentucky in town
The score from Baton Rouge scrawled across the bottom of TV screens carrying Houston vs. Kansas and soon to feature Duke vs. North Carolina and Kentucky vs. Tennessee. A Nolan Richardson-Dale Brown coaching matchup might have quickened the pulse in ways that neither team could.
With that in the books, Arkansas is 11-11 overall and 2-7 in the SEC with upcoming opponents including Tennessee, Kentucky (rematch at Rupp Arena) and Alabama.
This team, as we have seen, can beat Duke on its home floor and lose to North Carolina-Greensboro.
Auburn, in the conference opener Jan. 6, exposed this team like few Walton Arena visitors. South Carolina followed the same script. A 26-point road loss to Ole Miss came without scoring leader Tramon Mark, the only Razorback some fans might choose in a three-on-three game. It became inevitable that a close loss to Kentucky would be regarded by some as a moral victory.
That kind of mindset pervaded a 4-8 Razorback football season, in which the Hogs played some gruesome games on campus. Waving the ivy after a closer-than-expected loss to Alabama, Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek said he was “damn proud” of Sam Pittman’s team. That wave of emotion subsided quickly with hideous Fayetteville defeats to Auburn, Mississippi State and Missouri.
One hears from a Fayetteville source, who does not swig Razorback Kool-aid, that Yurachek is drumming up financial support to help UA athletics become more relevant in the NIL era of college sports. With Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC, he has no choice. The fan base is getting older and becoming less Razorback conscious not to mention increasingly cynical.
Someone suggested that Arkansas can save money by hiring LSU’s Kim Mulkey to coach both the men’s and women’s basketball teams. If that doesn’t work, give away home appliances at the remaining Fayetteville games. For those sick of it all, take Howard Beale’s advice and turn off your television sets.