Men's Basketball
A dozen things you may – or may not – have known about Eddie Sutton
Eddie Sutton in later years regretted leaving Arkansas but really wished he hadn’t made the “dumb comment” about crawling to Lexington.
Former Arkansas coach Eddie Sutton passed away peacefully at his home in Tulsa on Saturday of natural causes and comments have flowed through the night and into Sunday morning about the former coach.
Over at Inside Fort Smith, they have a dozen items you may not be aware of from former Tulsa radio host John Erling, who runs a non-profit organization that has interviews and documentaries on prominent Oklahomans.
Erling put together a collection including some of the state’s biggest names including Sutton, who played and coached at Oklahoma State, including a pair of Final Four trips.
Maybe the one that will interest Razorback fans the most is his regret over his comment about “crawling” to Kentucky for the job coaching the Wildcats.
Sutton never intended to knock the fans or the university in his comments … but it came off that way to a lot of them.
“All my life I have made some dumb comments, but that was the worst,” Sutton said in the interview with Erling. “When I made that comment it wasn’t about the fans because Arkansas fans are the best. There are none better than those people because they are very loyal and they had been certainly good to be.
“When I made that comment it was directed at Frank (Broyles), and it was misinterpreted by a lot of Arkansans. I have lived that down because every chance I’ve ever had I’ve tried to correct that because it was a very uncalled for react.”
Things didn’t work out well with the Wildcats and Sutton regretted it later, despite patching things up with Frank Broyles.
“Knowing everything I know, I probably would have never left Arkansas,” Sutton told Erling.