Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Justin Smith a Hog, Tom Murphy and more!
Tye & Tommy on Justin Smith choosing Arkansas, Tom Murphy joins, plus Sam Pittman on Finebaum!
Proposal by NCAA would give college football teams extra practice time
It is becoming apparent with every passing day everyone is pushing full speed ahead towards football as the NCAA is proposing starting with coaches the second week of July.
It’s not really where it should be, but it is a step forward, according to published reports.
Last week, Hogs coach Sam Pittman hinted at this but didn’t let any details get out but now his comments have some additional context.
“We’ve talked about it and we’re prepared for it,” Pittman said. “It just depends on what the hours situation is.”
Since spring training was disrupted so drastically with many teams not getting a single practice this is a critical window.
“We need on-the-field movement,” he added.
The story was first reported at Sports Illustrated on Monday.
Under the proposal, expected to be approved by a vote from the D-I Council on June 17, would let football coaches begin interacting with their players as soon as the second week of July and by mid-July, conducting walk-through practices with a ball.
That probably should be backed up to the first of June but the NCAA has never exactly moved fast with a lot of forethought.
A draft of the plan below has been circulated to conference offices and athletic departments for feedback.
Apparently, though, the vote is going to be a mere formality, according to the story:
“We’re 90% there,” Shane Lyons, the West Virginia athletic director and chair of the Oversight Committee, told Sports Illustrated in an interview Monday.
Here is the summary of the proposal:
• Voluntary workouts: June 1-25 (virtual instruction 8 hours per week)
• Mandatory workouts: July 13, 25 days before first permissible preseason practice date
• Walk-throughs and meetings: July 24, 14 days before first preseason practice date (8 hours weight training, 6 hours walk-through with football, 6 hours for meetings)
• Preseason practices: Aug. 7, 29 days before first game (20 hours per week)
Van Horn reportedly adds games against ASU, UCA on Hogs’ schedule
Considering Dave Van Horn has been one of the biggest proponents to opening Arkansas’ schedule to include games against in-state schools the report Monday that’s happened isn’t surprising.
WholeHogSports.com reportedly had the Razorbacks adding Arkansas State and Central Arkansas to a schedule that already included Arkansas-Little Rock and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Van Horn has repeatedly said he thought it would be a good idea for the Hogs to schedule games against in-state schools and did play Little Rock and UAPB last season.
According to reports, all four games will be played at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Before the covid-19 shutdown of the baseball season this past spring, the Hogs were scheduled to play a solo game against Little Rock in addition to a pair of games with UAPB.
Musselman lands Indiana grad transfer, putting Hogs over scholarship numbers
Either Isaiah Joe is definitely leaving for pro basketball or a player currently on the roster is leaving are about the only possible explanations for the announcement of Justin Smith signing with Arkansas as a graduate transfer.
Eric Musselman probably knows, but he isn’t really saying anything right now.
The Razorbacks now have 14 players after landing the 6-7 Smith, who started all 32 games for Indiana last year, and the NCAA only allows 13.
Joe declared for the draft but there is nothing but rumor and guesses about whether he’s going pro or coming back to college.
The original date for collegiate athletes to withdraw and remain eligible was set for June 3, but that’s been backed up to Aug. 3 or 10 days after the NBA Combine, whichever comes first.
And there hasn’t been a date set for the combine yet.
Smith averaged 10.4 points a game and 5.4 rebounds but maybe the most interesting part for Musselman was the number of positions he can defend against.
He is the third grad transfer to sign with the Hogs after Jalen Tate and Vance Jackson.
Campbell on Halftime talking about not throwing pitch in live game for a year
Former Arkansas pitcher Isaiah Campbell’s last time on the mound in a game was a year ago in the College World Series against Florida State and he talked about that Monday afternoon with Phil Elson, Matt Jenkins and Matt Travis (Halftime) on ESPN Arkansas.
Governor’s press conference Monday on numbers with Covid-19 over weekend
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson delivering the numbers from a weekend where cases increased in the state after a large number of tests.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Playing ASU/UCA, games in LR, and more!
Tye & Tommy on the policy change playing ASU/UCA, games in War Memorial, and more!
Players coming back in worries some, but sign of progress for most Hogs’ fans
In a year unlike any other, players in fall sports return to campus Monday for the “voluntary” workouts that tend to have 100% participation and it’s dual feelings for some.
With Covid-19 positive results still climbing in Arkansas some worry. With testing increasing rapidly, the overall positive numbers are going to go up proportionately.
Arkansas feels it has a plan in place to effectively manage positive tests, which is also probably going to be an ongoing process for a few more months.
This is the first phase of sports resuming as I pretty much suspected it would all along. It’s too large of a business to not resume and with online education becoming increasingly popular through the pandemic things may never return to what was normal before March.
But there will be sports.
For the majority of Razorback fans, players starting conditioning drills is a huge sign of progress. Sports fans have agonized through the premature ending to basketball season and wiping out what was likely to be a big year in baseball.
Let’s face it, many of us were expecting the Hogs to still be getting ready to go back to Omaha right about now.
Instead, everyone is talking about players reporting back to campus for conditioning drills.
The coaches, though, can finally return to being coaches.
“It’s hard to coach when there is nobody to coach,” Sam Pittman said on a Zoom teleconference last week. “That’s our whole life and we need these kids back. Hopefully they need us.”
He may be peeking out windows and finding excuses to wander around the football center a little more. His office is on the other side of the building from the weight room.
“You still have issues of getting in the building and there’s one entrance to the building,” he said. “The bottom line is that entrance is not over here by my door, and we’re not able to go into the weight room.”
The coaches don’t have to duck into a closet when they see the players but can’t really talk much football. All of that is due to previously archaic rules that haven’t been updated to deal with modern sports.
Maybe this situation will force changes that should have come about long ago to allow something similar to the OTA-type workouts pro leagues in various sports have.
While still labeled “voluntary,” players know they’ll get behind if they don’t show up ready to work.
Pro coaches have embraced them for years because it cuts down on players disappearing at the end of the season and showing back up for training camp. That’s needed far more at the collegiate level.
“The greatest thing is to know exactly where they are, that they’re here and that they’re able to get in conditioning,” Pittman said.
What he didn’t say is it’s easier for them to be assured of getting square meals, too. The Jones Center will be open and they will be fixing meals in accordance with state safety guidelines.
For some players that is important.
The NCAA and the conferences should allow OTA-style workouts to be held starting in June. Go ahead and call it voluntary if it makes you feel better, but players should be allowed to work out with a ball and actually be coached.
“A big part of injuries is not knowing what you’re doing, going the wrong direction, not fitting the right gap,” Pittman said. “There’s conditioning, there’s strength, then there’s knowing what you’re doing.”
Nobody’s saying they should put the pads on in June and get after it. Just walk-throughs, passing skeletons..
“We need terminology on the field, we need technique on the field, we need all of those things that we didn’t have the opportunity to get in spring ball,” Pittman said. “We need to be able to do it, and it doesn’t have to be a tackle situation or anything like that. We’re just trying to learn.”
It should be more than a one-year thing. It would benefit players in all of the sports to be able to have these style practices.
“We’ve talked about it and we’re prepared for it,” Pittman said. “It just depends on what the hours situation is, to be honest with you, how much they’re going to give us, eight or 10 hours .. if they go to 12, if they go to 20, whatever the hours are, but we need on-the-field movement. We need walk-throughs, things of that nature that we didn’t get a chance to get to.”
Playing in-state schools long overdue … as long as games played in Fayetteville
When Hunter Yurachek opened the schedule last week to include games against the community college in Jonesboro along with UCA and UAPB, everybody’s thought leaped to football.
Hold on, was the initial reaction. Those football schedules are set six years in advance.
Yeah, right. Contracts in college sports these days are simply the starting point in negotiations to break them. Arkansas got into a soft schedule the last couple of seasons because Michigan bailed out of a two-game series. A coach got fired because he couldn’t win all of the four games that should have been blowouts.
It can be done and the whole current Covid-19 situation is likely going to have an economic impact that forces things to move a little quicker than anyone can see right now. For other sports it will probably start happening this school year.
This could be the opportunity for Yurachek to get some things straightened out with football scheduling. It’s not exactly a secret neither Texas A&M or the Hogs really want to renew their game in Arlington.
Both sides want it on campus every other year.
For the other games, the future schedules show some interesting matchups (Missouri State and former coach Bobby Petrino in 2022, if he stays there that long). But some rent-a-wins could be dumped for a song and dance. There will be some that want to bail out because of the impact of the current pandemic.
There’s a way to squeeze in Arkansas State or UCA. UAPB is already on the future schedule for 2021 and a few other years. Somebody will want out of a game for whatever reason and that’s when some juggling will start.
But the football games should never be played in Little Rock. There is not one viable reason to play there other than for a nostalgic kumbaya for some folks more interested in looking in the rearview mirror than the windshield.
There is not a single financial reason or logical reason to play football games in Little Rock, but here are still some myths out there. There are sone political reasons people throw out there to sound like it is going to do something magical. It won’t.
The overwhelming number of Arkansas Razorback fans have never set foot on campus or in a stadium anywhere. It’s become expensive, uncomfortable and inconvenient.
Attendance levels in the SEC were at the lowest level since 2021 last season. If you took that number after halftime it would be a bigger drop-off.
That’s at Alabama, too, where Nick Saban scolded the students for leaving at halftime. At Florida, attendance is off over 10% … even when they are winning games.
That’s going to continue and the numbers across the nation show it really doesn’t matter how many games a team is winning.
As more people spend significant amounts of money building their viewing theaters at home, they aren’t really interested in paying a bunch of money to sit on metal bleachers after walking uphill, then having to pay for concessions.
The only reason to play any football games in Little Rock would have been for recruiting but that’s not even allowed now. The Hogs can’t host recruits at War Memorial Stadium, which is huge in football.
Playing games there is literally a road trip where the only people enjoying anything are sitting in what passes for the premium seating in War Memorial. They spend most of the game telling each other how great they are.
Some boosters like to talk about withholding their donation if games aren’t played in Little Rock and that’s even more humorous. Ego won’t prevent them from writing the checks.
Playing Arkansas State, UCA or any other state school in Little Rock is ridiculously bad idea that makes absolutely zero sense in any shape, form or fashion.
It is the politically correct thing everybody has to say is they all want to the Hogs playing games there, especially if the Red Wolves are now in the equation. It will be a huge crowd because ASU fans will buy every ticket they can on the secondary market in addition to the usual allotment for visiting teams.
But those games should be played in Fayetteville. There isn’t a valid reason to play anywhere else unless it’s a high-profile road game like Notre Dam in September.
Let our fond memories of games at War Memorial remain memories. It’s not going to unite anybody because it hasn’t been like the “good ol’ days” since that time.
Let it go and finally play those in-state schools in football that have wanted at shot at the Hogs.
Just do it in Fayetteville.
