All Hail the '70s, When Eddie Sutton Awoke "The Sleeping Giant"

By: Evin Demirel

It’s not clear where the collectible comes from, but its credentials appear fairly legit.

How else do you get 104 pages chock full of courtside photographs, team photos and insight from a Razorback coaching legend? The book’s title: “A Tribute to Eddie Sutton.” Its year: 1984. And its tone? Nothing Orwellian about it in the least.

Every last page, you see, is practically a paean to the man who rebuilt Arkansas basketball from the ashes and turned it into a national powerhouse.

That much is clear from the very first page, when we are introduced to this sentence: “Frank Broyles, Athletic Director at Arkansas, was aware of the awesome potential of basketball at the University of Arkansas and felt that Coach Sutton was the man to conduct the transformation. Was he ever correct!”

To skim through its pages is to enter a time machine and whizz back to the days of “Porker Power” signs, Ron Brewer’s Clyde Frazier-esque stylings and Jim Robken’s “magnificent hogwild band.”

No single post can do this masterpiece of fandom full justice. But we can bring you a few choice nuggets in honor of the banner which was raised in Sutton’s honor at Bud Walton Arena during the Razorbacks' 84-72 win over Missouri on Saturday night.

Below are five top selections from "A Tribute to Eddie Sutton."

darius

1- Eddie Sutton was coming off a 23-6 record at Creighton when he accepted the UA job in 1976, according to the book’s author, someone who appears very well connected to the program. At that point, Arkansas was stuck in cycle of mediocrity which extended back to at least the early 1960s.

“Many thought Arkansas was a good place to bury a thus far successful and bright young basketball coach,” the author writes. “Bobby Knight, Indiana’s brilliant basketball coach, upon hearing of Eddie’s move to Arkansas, was less than encouraging. ‘Look at the jobs that will come open next year’ lectured Knight, five years Suttons [sic] junior. ‘And you’re going to Arkansas? Forget it.’”

2- Then Arkansas became one of the nation’s winningest programs over the next seven years, racking up five conference titles and in 1978 becoming the first Southwest Conference program to rise to No. 1 in the nation, according to the author. Sutton’s tempo certainly wasn’t what would next come down the chute in Nolan Richardson, but that didn’t stop fans from marveling at Sutton’s “fast pace” all the same.

darius

3- Hawgmania swept through the hills and down into the delta. What was long a football school was becoming a basketball school, too. Pretty soon, Barnhill Arena was the definitive place to be for fans and media alike:

darius

4- It helped, of course, that this was the late 1970s -- a fact not lost on the crowd’s more musical contingent:

darius

5- Bobby Knight, according to the author, foresaw the kind of commemoration Sutton received in Bud Walton, the 19,200 seat arena which likely wouldn’t have been built without his success as a foundation.

A couple of years after his initial remark about Arkansas as a coaching graveyard, Knight “offered a confessional … sort of,” the author writes. “‘I was wrong,’ he said ruefully. “You made the right move, you ‘bleep.’ I won the national title this year, but so what? Indiana’s done it before. But here … here they’re going to build statues of you.”

darius

Why stop strolling down memory lane here? See vintage Santa hat-wearing Eddie, Jimmy Carter, Elizabeth Ward, Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer and more by visiting BestOfArkansasSports.com.