When Arkansas joined the SEC they entered The Octagon, where no one should expect to remain on top year after year. Alabama’s inevitable fall will be painful (for them) and incomprehensible. But it will come around sooner or later. Arkansas has a tougher way to compete with some of the other schools, and the lack of success comes through years-long cycles of mismanagement, unfortunately, and takes several years to remedy. But that’s the way of the college football world, so we call the hogs and go on. We won’t know if we’ve pulled Excalibur out of the stone with this one for another year or two.
Happy Belated Birthday young man.
Thanks guys, I sense a flicker and hope it is a bonfire soon.
I regret I didn’t tell you happy birthday when I first posted. Sorry for the delay. Happy birthday, Bob.
That we have 84-year-olds posting on our forums. That is way cool. I tried my best to get my dad to get plugged in to posting here. He was going to do a chat one weekend when I was in Malvern visiting. Then, didn’t have the energy. He was 77. That would have been pretty cool to get him to talk with you guys. But for me, to do visit with an 85-year-old Razorback fan on-line is way cool.
Clay, I remember the first online site of yours that I saw you had articles from your dad and one I remember for sure was about coaches watching recruits in motels to make sure they did not switch schools at the last minute. If I remember correctly you had several of his articles on that site but I think his employer complained and you had to stop printing his articles. When I discovered Hawgs Illustrated I was tickled to get a lot of Hog info.
And I do remember the Little Rock newspapers before internet. My grandparents took the Gazette and my dad took the Democrat.
I am trying to say thanks for you and your dad for many years of Hog news.
Thanks
I don’t think we had his stories on-line at Hawgs Illustrated ever. We had him in the magazine and that was fine. He finally got to the point where he could not do everything. We never had him on-line. Just in print. I do think his stories with Donrey (which became Stephens) were on-line at their websites, just not our website.
I am sure then it was in the magazine but great stories. I have all my old HI’s so I will scan them to see those articles. Until the Hogs got into the SEC it was hard to find anything in the Atlanta papers about the Hogs and the magazine was a great find for me. HI was virtually my entire source of Hog info untill the internet came along.
Clay, thanks for filling me in on you and your dad. I just looked through my copies of HI and found that in 94, 95, 96 97 and I think one issue 98 your Dad had State of the Razorbacks and O’s Notepad. I am going to reread them all.
My copies do not have your Dad after March 98 and you picked up the state of the Hogs. I kept most of the copies I had in those glory years. Glancing at them a few minutes ago I saw one I had forgotten and that was us whipping LSU very soundly at Baton Rouge by running over them literally. Fond memories all around.
Thanks
I wrote State of the Hogs before my dad, but when he became available, he wrote it. He thought it funny that we called it that. He said it was a perfect name for the lead column. Every now and then someone will say something I wrote reminded them of my dad’s work. That is like code to me that I did alright with that one. The challenge is then to do it again. No one could say anything nicer to me than that. I am about one out of 250 on that kind of compliment. That should be read as funny.
What I believe happened, is that several of us would post links here to OH’s columns that were available on the websites of various papers over the years. I can see that, in one’s memory 20 years later, it might conflate into seeing the columns here on HI.
The bottom line is that you - and we - were able to enjoy them for the treasures they were.