We are joined by 4029’s Brandon Evans and Mock Legal Solutions’ Matt Mock! We recap the Ruscin wedding and hear from Big Mike in Waldron.
Pig Trail Nation’s Mike Irwin on why Mike Leach was so great off field
Former coach at MSU and T-Tech was as great when not coaching because football wasn’t only thing in his life.
Eastside Liquor Halftime Podcast: 6-17-24
NBA Finals game 5 tonight, great CWS games over the weekend
Mike Irwin joins!
CLAY HENRY: Ruple feared on the field, gentle giant off
Just weeks after becoming sports editor at the Log Cabin Democrat at age 22, I walked into the athletic department office at Conway High School. It was August of 1976 and I was quaking in my shoes.
There was this mountain of a man rising from the couch. He just kept getting bigger. I’d never seen a more imposing figure.
He stuck out this huge hand. I’d never felt a bigger or stronger hand shake.
“Hi, I’m Ernest Ruple,” he said. “We are going to have a good time this football season. We’ve got a good team. You are going to like being around us.
“Oh, I know your daddy. You come from good stock.”
I knew that the All-SWC offensive tackle for the 1967 Arkansas Razorbacks did know my father really well. They’d done lots of interviews. As a Razorback captain, Ruple was among the most sought after interviews from that team.
We became great friends. I grieved last week when I received notice of his passing last week. His memorial service was Monday in Conway.
Ernest Ruple was an imposing person, but a gentle giant in every way. Interviews with him were delightful. If I screwed up as a young reporter, he never mentioned it or made you feel uncomfortable to come see him. He was the same every day.
Win or lose during that 1976 season, he was great outside the locker room or during the week in his office. He was bigger than life and made me feel special.
You got used to his bigness and a little sarcastic humor that popped in now and then. He could intimidate if you didn’t know his true nature.
There was a scar on the side of his face from a high school car wreck that also lessened his hearing. But Ernest always heard you. He’d turn his head to the other side and make sure there was solid communication.
Those Wampus Cats were good. They went 9-3 on the way to the AAAA-West title. My first year at the Log Cabin Democrat was pretty special. Not only did I get to cover Ruple’s football team, but also Coach Joe Graham’s hoopsters, 36-0 overall state champs.
What a start that provided to a young reporter with only part-time experience at the Arkansas Gazette as a tutorial. Granted, that was a damn good tutorial, but I wasn’t prepared to be a beat writer. Conway readers clamored for every word I could cram into two pages of sports coverage to be about the Cats. I wanted to do right for them and for Ernest Ruple.
Like Graham, Ruple was a tremendous coach. He just didn’t ache to be a ball coach like Graham. They’d both come up from the Conway junior high ranks and were ready to handle the job, but it wasn’t the one Ruple wanted his entire life.
The big man – 6-5 and around 300 those days – really thought of himself as a farmer like his wonderful father. He’d grown up on the grand family farm in the Arkansas River bottoms near Lollie. He’d eventually till the land near Bigelow. That’s where he lived when he passed June 9 at the age of 86.
Yet for a handful of years in the Conway school district, he’d farm kids, develop them into men. He did it the right way, with respect and tough love. He was exactly the kind of coach you’d want for your son.
“Exactly,” said Bobby New, an assistant with Ruple at the junior high and later the high school before getting into school administration that would end with his great run as Fayetteville Schools Superintendent.
I knew Bobby, and brother Mike, during both their Conway and Fayetteville days. Mike helped me find Bobby for a visit about Ruple. My old college roommates, Hal Hunnicutt and Leo Crafton, both pointed to Bobby as my starting point on anything about Ruple.
“I’ve really known him all my life and there are three phases,” Bobby said. “There’s the player, the coach and teacher and these last years as farmer, father and friend.”
We will start with the high school player, a star in football and track. Ruple also set school records in the discus and helped the Cats to a state track title.
“First, you think about all the great athletes who came through Conway, you start with Ruple, the first great big man we had, maybe the best still,” New said. “I was two years behind him and just idolized him.”
New was stunned when Conway head coach Rex Lovell turned him into an inside linebacker. He’d played quarterback and defensive back in junior high but learned linebacker in August camp.
New got busy learning technique after the move from the secondary. He was far down the depth chart and barely made the travel squad for the season opener.
“I think a sophomore kicker made the trip to Forrest City for the first game and maybe three more sophomores,” he said. “I wasn’t going to play. We had a good team, with great seniors, a lot of them. I just stayed away from the coaches and near the back of the bench trying not to be observed.”
Lovell called for New when a senior linebacker went out with a broken arm, done for the season.
“He grabbed my face mask like coaches did back then,” New said. “He said, ‘We are going to flip the linebackers so you can line up behind Ruple. Just follow him around.’ So I started the rest of the season and that’s all I did, just stay behind Ruple.
“We rarely stunted. Ernest took care of the tackle and the guard and he’d usually bring down the ball carrier and I’d just jump on (the pile). Ernest always made the initial hit and my job could not have been easier.”
New said Ruple didn’t say much, but was the “quintessential leader.” You just followed him.
“He was easy to follow,” New said. “First, he looked like a bull elephant on the field, but ran like a deer. I don’t know his 40 speed, but he was fast and quick. He was All-State and he took care of our team.
“Let me just say this simply, he was the best high school tackle that ever existed.”
Whether New was talking about Conway, or everywhere, is unclear, but he was an easy pickup for Arkansas coach Frank Broyles during a time when the Razorbacks were not just grabbing the best talent in state. As the three-time SWC champs, Broyles was plucking good tackles from Texas, too.
Ruple was on the freshman team in 1964 when the Hogs won the national title. It was a time when freshman were not eligible. In ’65, he was a backup, earning a letter and then started his last two seasons. It was a great time at Arkansas with great players and he belonged.
Webb Hubbell, one year behind Ruple, also played tackle for the Razorbacks.
“When I saw him as a freshman, I was frightened,” Hubbell said. “He didn’t fit the mold of what Razorbacks had been for the previous seven or eight years. We had been fast and quick, not big. He was big.
“Ernest was striking in stature. That scar was a feature that you didn’t miss. As far as his body, I think he was probably in the 240s then and bigger than the rest of us, but our coaches got into weight training pretty soon after we got there and he started changing his body.”
The UA coaches went to Green Bay and studied isometrics in 1966.
“They brought back interval weight lifting and isometrics,” Hubbell said. “Ernie was a junior and when he went home to the farm that summer, he built his own equipment along the lines of what the coaches had shown us. He got massive.
“It wasn’t just that he got big, he got strong. It was incredible. When he came back, he just tossed us around.
“He wasn’t just big and strong, though. At 250 pounds – and no one was that big in that era – he could out run all of us. He was really good and also humble.”
It led to high interest from the NFL. Ruple was a second round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Knee injuries limited his time in the NFL. He played two seasons then returned to Conway to teach and coach.
“What we saw at Arkansas was two different guys,” Hubbell said. “On the field, you were scared to line up across from him. In the dorm, he was the nicest man.
“As a player, he finished as the strong side tackle. That’s the open side with a split end. The weakside, you had a tight end and you got double team help. He played the strong, no help.
“I just called him a gentle giant off the field. What I’ll say about him goes for on the field or off the field; whether you were a quarterback or as a person on campus, he was the guy you wanted protecting you.”
That was the man I knew as Conway High School coach, but he was as talented as a coach as he was a player.
“He was,” New said. “I was primarily a defensive coach for Ernest. He ran the offense and was always quick with adjusting the plan against a team that surprised us with something new. During games, he’d come to me and suggest a change on defense, too. He was always right. He could adapt during games.
“His deal was game day coaching. He didn’t like practices. Our practices might last only 30 to 45 minutes. He saved our players for games. And I really don’t think he wanted to coach. He wanted to farm and be in those fields riding a tractor.”
There was little doubt he loved riding a tractor. This part I’m sure about: Ernest Ruple made a big tractor look small.
Bud Light Morning Rush Podcast: 6-17-24
Tye, Tommy and Chuck rehash Bryson DeChambeau’s epic US Open victory, Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese, Razorback recruiting news, and more!
CLAY HENRY: Happy ending for a broken fly rod
This is the story of two matching fly rods, each the prized possession of an old fisherman. It’s how they came together as one. If you fish, you will know this as a happy ending.
First, lets go back to my early days of fly fishing. It was in the late 1990s that I caught the passion for a sport. I got sucked in first with a trip to the Norfork River with Steve Wright, a suite mate in an old Fayetteville law office where we both were publishing magazines or books.
We talked daily about either the Razorbacks or fly fishing. We’d take lunches together on the nearby city square, swapping page proofs. I soon became hooked, as they say.
Steve had written Ozark Trout Tales, the bible for our trout tail waters in north Arkansas. He was working on that book when I took office space next to him. When he presented me with a copy of his book, he signed it, “We will go fishing in 1995.”
I had not fly fished since age 15 but was moving away from golf with intentions of becoming a trout fisherman.
I didn’t own a rod, but soon bought a beginner’s outfit, a $180 rig that included a St. Croix fly rod, reel and fly line. It served me well for about eight years.
It was a six weight for 9-foot rod, a good starting point. You really can do about anything in our area with that rod, including fish for trout or smallmouth bass.
But as I learned more about fly fishing with almost daily trips to Bill Tennison’s Orvis shop in Fayetteville, there was this burning desire to own a top of the line fly rod. Specifically, I wanted an Orvis T3, a rod that retailed for $585, pricey for a man with two daughters in college.
Bill let me test cast the various T3 rods that come in different flexes, lengths and weights. I settled on a gorgeous olive green rod, a 5 weight for 8.5 foot. As I learned everyone says in this sport, it spoke to my core. I added distance and feel, just as Bill predicted.
The price was the problem. Orvis fly rods are expensive. I eventually decided to do it on layaway. Every few months when my fortunes improved in the early days as publisher at Hawgs Illustrated magazine, I’d take $100 to Bill. That started in the late fall and my goal was to have Bill order the rod sometime in the early summer.
When the total owed dipped under $100, I went to see Bill with a wad of cash to complete the deal. He could order that rod. When I walked in, he was grinning from ear to ear. He reached under the counter and handed me a gorgeous olive tube with a new rod.
“It’s paid for,” he said. “One of your friends came in last week so I ordered it. Here is your rod and he said not to tell you his name.”
I knew immediately who did it. I’d started Louis Campbell in fly fishing the previous summer. My coaching buddy loved the sport tremendously. We still fish together. He was on Houston Nutt’s football coaching staff at Arkansas and decided some extra camp money would be used to help his fishing mentor.
Louis denied it for a few weeks, but Bill finally came clean and it was confirmed. Louis had heard me talk about that rod on several fishing trips and beat me to the final payment.
That was my go-to rod for about 10 years and served me well. But as Wright and others heavily into fly fishing had predicted, there would be more rod purchases. I’d need a smaller creek rod for pan fish, a stouter rod for windy days and so on. Don’t ask me to count my rods now. I own classic split cane bamboo rods and have graphite rods from most of the top makers.
Now comes the sad ending for my Orvis T3. It slipped from my rod vault atop my truck, bounced along the road for maybe a mile and the butt section wiggled free and was lost, along with a reel.
Left were the other three sections of the rod, none with a scratch. I learned that the Orvis warranty covers broken sections, but not a lost section. Basically, I was left with nothing. No company keeps parts for a 20-year-old rod.
There was one hope, maybe there was another angler with a T3 that had a broken tip section, the most common issue with old rods. He can’t get that replaced, either. Maybe he’d part with the butt section?
So I wrote a note on a national message board, The Fly Fishing Forum. That was almost two years ago.
There were several offers of help, but none had the right T3, a rod no longer in the Orvis line. The most common flex is a fast action rod and that’s what showed up, or a 9-footer butt section. No one had my exact rod butt section made with a softer action. I forgot about it.
I thought my fortunes had finally changed last month. There was a reply to my post with a similar problem. Paul Dieter had a broken tip section of the same T3 mid flex in the right length. He was on a Colorado trip and was sick about breaking his favorite rod of over two decades.
Here’s the twist; he wanted my tip section. There was no offer of sending the butt section.
“I can make your rod whole, or you can make mine whole,” he wrote.
I decided it’s better to give than to receive. I asked for his Seattle address and shipped all three of my remaining sections the next morning. I didn’t ask for anything in return. I just kept the tube that would be used for a rod that did not come with one.
The sections almost beat him back to Seattle. Immediately, Paul wrote me a wonderful note and a check for $200, something I didn’t ask or expect.
Paul’s glorious one-page thank you note is now framed in my office. He wrote that the tip fits perfectly and he’s “amazed” at his good fortune.
I’m delighted at the outcome, although clearly I’d hoped that I’d be the one getting a tip section for a rod that has much sentimental value. After reading Paul’s letter, the ending was perfect.
Paul wrote about many positive experiences from his time on the on-line fly fishing forum, including finding a rod in Colorado’s Cheesman Canyon and returning it to the owner. I once found a Sage rod and a Galvan reel on an island on the Norfork River and hunted down the owner in Oklahoma City.
“Now this … I break a favorite rod no longer made and that same night locate and arrange for a replacement,” Paul wrote. “Just amazing.”
There was also “hope” that his check was satisfactory reward.
“The value is incalculable in many ways,” he wrote. “It’s certainly less than what a whole new rod was going to cost me. I hope it helps for you to know it will be in a cherished spot in my modest quiver of rods.”
Oh, the letter would have been sufficient payment. You now can spend well over $1,000 for a top end fly rod from Orvis, but they won’t have this kind of history.
It’s cool that yet another person will fish parts of my old T3. Most of the last 15 years it’s been a loaner or guest rod, always tucked away in the rod vault atop my truck. It also was fished by dozens of kids at our 15-and-under jewel in Norfork, Dry Run Creek. There is no telling how many caught their first trout with that T3.
There is hope from both of us that we will eventually fish together, probably in Colorado. We both hit many of the same rivers each summer. I’ll make sure that I have a nice rod in that T3 tube that provided a great home for the pieces that Paul now owns.
Who knows, maybe Louis Campbell will join us on that trip? The three of us would fit together perfectly, just like the T3 tip section that went to Paul Dieter.
Former Razorback Isaiah Joe on playing in NBA, his dad’s influence
Playing for his father in AAU basketball grounded him really well, prepared him for NBA career, now in Oklahoma City.
Eastside Liquor Halftime Podcast: 6-14-24
Phil, Matt and C-Unit talk NBA, the naming rights of the Big 12 and more!
Aaron Torres and Neal Atkinson join!
Razorbacks’ women’s coach on winning SEC, national outdoor titles
All of pieces coming together and managing multiple things to win more national crowns in first year as coach.
