Playing games in Little Rock is a ridiculously bad idea

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it,” was how the esteemed Samuel Langhorne Clemens put it as his alter ego of  Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

That pretty much describes the situation the University of Arkansas finds itself as we get ready for the next — and potentially last — round of debate over the Razorbacks playing football games in Little Rock.

Oh, it’s coming … sooner rather than later.

The time has come to end what has become an almost laughable embarrassment. Yes, War Memorial is an embarrassment for an SEC-caliber team to be playing any kind of game there.

There once was a time when it was an advantage playing there. Most Razorback fans either weren’t alive or too young to recall the glory days when there were four games a year played there. For the last few years it’s become an expensive distraction that has ballooned with the decline of the Hogs in football.

Now at least one former player has let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, about what the players think about the game.

Many fans are ready to be done with Little Rock. I can tell you 1st hand that the players hate playing in Little Rock. It’s time to be done with it

— Bijhon Jackson (@BijhonJ) May 3, 2018

Actually, I’ve had that feeling for a number of years from the players. Nobody’s going to say it, of course. That’s not the correct thing to say.

There is a lot of sentiment from some about tradition and all that. Well, my first Razorback games as a kid were at War Memorial Stadium and sometime about 1978 I realized the place was a dump. I wrote it and said it … and was promptly chastised, but it didn’t change my mind.

When the interstate was completed, the stadium expanded (before the South end zone was completed), I said again it was time to quick the ridiculousness of a game in Little Rock.

As I was south of Little Rock when writing and saying that on the air, everybody raised several kinds of a ruckus. None of it changed the fact that playing home games anywhere but Fayetteville hasn’t made sense for years.

Houston Nutt was the last Hogs coach that really embraced playing in Little Rock. I don’t care what the others said and anything Bobby Petrino said I would want witnessed, notarized and photographed anyway.

You could tell from body language and reading between the lines of what Bret Bielema said he didn’t like playing games at War Memorial. In five years, he had a miserable record in Little Rock (3-3).

John L. Smith was 0-2 and Petrino never lost a game there, going 8-0, beating LSU twice, Mississippi State twice and some lower-tier teams. That was the last of glory years, although Jeff Long didn’t particularly care for the amount of money the UA was losing every time they played there.

And that is the entire crux of the issue.

In the competitive world of the SEC, money is the biggest competition. Winning considerably more than you lose helps accumulate the money. Paying to play there should not even be a consideration.

Also there is a significant disadvantage for recruiting playing games in Little Rock. If potential future Razorbacks want to go to the game, well, they need to have a ticket. Playing the game in Fayetteville makes it a true recruiting advantage.

But it comes back to winning.

If Arkansas is winning enough, it doesn’t matter where the games are played. The stadium will be packed, the tailgate areas will be buzzing hours before kickoff and the atmosphere will be big time.

Fans complain about the seating. In case you don’t know it’s the same seating arrangement as when it seated around just 50,000 fans. Frank Broyles simply made the seats a little narrower and increased the number. That came a few years after they dug down in the stadium and added some seating lower along the sidelines.

Some say there are influential boosters in Little Rock and other areas south that want at least a game every year to be played down there.

Fine. Let them make up the financial difference. Better yet, let them sit in the stands, use the concession stands and bathrooms down below.

To quote Mr. Spock from Star Trek, “Change is the essential process of all existence.”

You may not like it, but the pointy-eared Vulcan has a good point. Yes, there are many, many fond memories for those of us that grew up south of the mountains about Razorback games in Little Rock.

But things change.

In today’s world, players don’t want to play there, coaches don’t want to be there (although, granted, they hate distractions no matter how minor or trivial) and somebody’s going to have to pony up big bucks for renovations to get the stadium to minimum SEC standards. Quite frankly, the only way it should even be considered is if the stadium is upgrade beyond SEC standards and they pay the difference to the UA of playing a game in Fayetteville.

To put it simply, War Memorial Stadium should have been imploded years ago. It’s a half-step above a dump for big time college football games.

And it’s beyond time for Arkansas to change it’s stance on playing football games in Little Rock. Whether you like it or not.

Tradition is nice, primarily for memories