Hogs coach Sam Pittman told Derek Ruscin on Ruscin & Zach how covid really affected team in November.
Halftime Pod Presented by Eastside Liquor: Torres, Cunningham, Morgan, Holt
Hogs picked 6th in West; Burks First Team Preseason; Halftime Homework
Guests- Aaron Torres, Myron Cunningham, Grant Morgan & Bob Holt
SEC MEDIA DAYS 2021: Morgan always told himself he could do what he’s doing
As a former walk-on, Hogs linebacker Grant Morgan never doubted himself, he told Phil Elson, Drew Barrett and Matt Travis.
SEC MEDIA DAYS 2021: Cunningham on Halftime about Hogs’ offense
Arkansas offensive tackle Myron Cunningham with Phil Elson, Drew Barrett and Matt Travis on ESPN Arkansas.
Burks on first team, four others get All-SEC recognition from media
Five Arkansas standouts, led by wide receiver Treylon Burks, have picked up preseason All-SEC recognition.
Burks was the Hogs’ lone first-team representative, while Ricky Stromberg, Grant Morgan and Jalen Catalon earned second-team honors at center, linebacker and defensive back, respectively.
Offensive lineman Myron Cunningham, meanwhile, grabbed third-team recognition.
The Razorbacks were predicted to finish sixth in the SEC West and received one first-place vote in the media poll, which was released Friday morning along with the preseason All-SEC teams.
Burks has racked up numerous accolades this preseason, including spots on the watch lists for the Maxwell Award and Biletnikoff Award. The wideout led the Razorbacks in catches last season, hauling in 51 passes for 820 yards and seven touchdowns.
He finished third in the SEC in receiving yards per game (91.1) and fifth in total receiving yards, logging six games of 90+ receiving yards and four games of 100+ receiving yards as a true sophomore.
The Warren native, who earned second-team All-SEC honors after the 2020 campaign, was one of only two FBS receivers to log 800+ receiving yards and 70+ rushing yards on the year.
Stromberg, named to the preseason watch list for the Rimington Trophy, played in nine games with eight starts last season, lining up at center in all of them.
He played 628 offensive snaps on the year — the fourth most on the team and third most among offensive linemen — and played every offensive snap of a contest seven times during the campaign.
The junior from Tulsa, Okla., totaled a 69.7 run-blocking grade for the season, ranking second among Hog offensive linemen. He allowed only one sack on 355 pass-blocking plays, posting six games with a pass-blocking grade of 70-plus.
Morgan, a candidate for the 2021 Bednarik Award, was one of the best players in all of college football last year after producing one of the greatest seasons in Arkansas history. The Greenwood, Ark., product, who was named a Walter Camp and AFCA Second Team All-American at the year’s end, posted a team-best 111 total tackles, including 7.5 for loss, with 2.0 sacks in 2020.
The linebacker finished tied for the nation’s lead in tackles per game (12.3) while intercepting one pass, breaking up five and registering one quarterback hurry.
Originally a walk-on, Morgan joined Martrell Spaight (2014) as the only two Razorback defenders to garner both AP and Coaches All-SEC recognition in the last 10 seasons.
Catalon, also named to the watch list for the Bednarik Award, was tabbed to the All-SEC First Team by the AP and named a Freshman All-American by the FWAA last season after logging 99 total tackles, 2.0 tackles for loss, three interceptions, four pass break-ups, one fumble recovery and two forced fumbles as a redshirt freshman.
The Mansfield, Texas, native was the first Razorback defensive back to earn All-SEC honors from the league’s coaches since Michael Grant (2007).
Cunningham anchored Arkansas’ offensive line at left tackle last year, starting all 10 games while playing 705 snaps — the most of any Razorback.
The redshirt senior from Warren, Ohio, produced four games with an 80-plus passing grade, allowed only two sacks and was flagged just four times during the 2021 campaign.
Information from Arkansas Communications is included in this story.
BUD LIGHT SELTZER MORNING RUSH PODCAST: OU, Texas may join SEC
Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft talk the biggest news of the week, Texas and Oklahoma’s possible move to the SEC.
Aggies may be only ones not seeing $$$ with Texas, OU in SEC
The only people who really know what’s going on with the SEC, Texas and Oklahoma flirting with each other aren’t talking.
Nobody doing the talking right now really knows.
But the general attitude from published reports is Texas A&M may be the only person who’s raising any serious objections, which makes you wonder if that’s just for public relations purposes.
Even the president a decade ago that negotiated the whole thing, R. Bowen Loftin, is hollering about some unwritten “gentleman’s agreement” that should be completely binding.
“There’s this understanding among the membership — at least it was 10 years ago —‚ that you don’t admit a school from the same state as a member school unless that member school’s OK with it,” Loftin told ESPN.com on Thursday. “We talked about it from time to time among ourselves, that this was the way it was going to be, that if we had another school in Texas wanting to enter the SEC, Texas A&M would have veto power.”
It didn’t even pass the giggle test then and sure doesn’t in the current financial climate of college athletics.
The arms race in college athletics has arrived. A global pandemic has altered the budgets of every institution and nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen in the future.
Sorry, but any “gentleman’s agreement” over a decade ago really isn’t going to carry a lot of weight when the financial situation has changed so dramatically.
While television money is still the biggest driver of revenue in this conference arms race, it’s vastly different than 10 years ago. Now everybody is chasing the streaming dollars, which is the current wave that’s still getting bigger and shows no signs of washing out anytime soon.
There aren’t 10 teams in all of college sports that draws more national eyeballs to some sort of screen than either the Longhorns or the Sooners. No pair of teams could have the draw of those two being paired together.
Texas is No. 1 in athletic revenue and Oklahoma is either No. 7 or 8, depending on who you want to believe.
The Aggies are either second or third with hopes and dreams of taking over the top spot so it’s not hard to understand why they don’t want the Longhorns. Whether they want to admit it or not there are still some who have a massive inferiority complex to Texas that has been a little ridiculous for a few decades now.
Nobody seems to think league-wide approval will be a big deal.
“The votes are there,” Houston-Chronicle reporter Brent Zwenerman told our Tye Richardson on Thursday. He’s been right on these things for over a decade.
The general consensus among the speculation is Texas and Oklahoma would join a re-arranged SEC West along with Missouri while Alabama and Auburn head to the East, a move that probably won’t thrill some coaches over there.
It does give both Texas and ESPN a way to wiggle out of the financial boondoggle of the Longhorn Network (SEC Network 2 has actually been mentioned). With OU’s Sooner Sports Network it opens up a way for third-tier rights fees on the streaming channels, which is the most important financial part of the future.
From a logistics standpoint everything makes sense. In financial terms it makes even more cents.
And that’s the biggest reason that it could actually happen.
SEC MEDIA DAYS 2021: Sankey with Morning Rush on state of SEC
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey talked about the direction, state of the league with Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft on ESPN Arkansas.
Texas, OU’s exit from Big 12 could happen sooner rather than later
Houston Chronicle reporter Brent Zwenermen thinks the ball is rolling now and movement could happen faster than you think.
Halftime Pod Presented by Eastside Liquor: Day 4 of SEC Media Days
Day 4 of SEC Media Days in Hoover, Razorbacks, conference realigment and more!!!
SEC MEDIA DAYS 2021: Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman
Hogs almost didn’t get to play game against LSU plus trying to get better in second season as head coach.
