LIKE IT IS: Skip unlike Lou, and that’s a good thing

— Skip Holtz strolled into the press room with all the fanfare of a one man parade.

If he hadn’t been wearing East Carolina purple, one might have thought he wandered in from the lobby of the hotel looking for a cup of coffee.

There were no police escorts, no media and just a single sports information director.

Holtz stopped and chatted, took his place on the podium and chatted some more with our man Bob Holt and Ron Higgins of The Commercial Appeal.

By the time he started his official kick-off-Liberty-Bowl-week opening statement, there were seven media types and three cameras, one belonging to the University of Arkansas’ Razor Vision.

Holtz was nothing like his dad, Lou, who could strangle the life out of a news conference with his sharp tongue and acid wit.

Skip talked about how happy his team was to be here and how getting to the Liberty Bowl is the goal the Pirates set each January. The winner of the Conference USA championship has an automatic berth for this game.

He even talked about the SEC winning every Liberty Bowl game since it became affiliated with the bowl, and that he hoped to stop that run.

“That’s a big challenge for us though,” he said. “We lost to Kentucky here last year, and the Razorbacks are better than Kentucky was last season.”

Holtz spent most of his hour split between talking about his team’s offensive balance and Arkansas’ explosiveness.

He couldn’t quit bragging on Ryan Mallett’s arm and decision-making.

Where his dad, who led suspension-depleted Arkansas to a 31-6 upset of No. 2 Oklahoma in the 1978 Orange Bowl, would tell jokes and do magic tricks if he were in the right mood, Skip Holtz stuck to his own formula of talking up East Carolina football.

The final question of the news conference was: “Do you do magic tricks?”

“I know how to do them, but I don’t work at it,” he said. “I’d look like Bozo the Clown if I tried to fill Lou Holtz’s shoes. I just try to be me.”

Minutes later, after once again visiting with media members, he left, and soon after, Bobby Petrino made his appearance.

The media grew to 11, and there were five cameras.

There was one policeman, who looked like he had helped Petrino get through the relentless traffic that haunts this city, just as it does most major cities.

Petrino has a better rapport with the media than he thinks, but it is obvious that every minute spent talking about the Razorbacks’ preparation is a minute away from more actual preparation.

He is the reason the Liberty Bowl does not have the markings of a trap game.

Petrino has watched so much video on East Carolina that Sunday night he took a break and watched tightly edited versions of some of his own team’s games this season.

Wearing a black fleece pullover with a Razorbacks logo and the words Liberty Bowl on it, Petrino admitted the morning practice had been ragged at times. Christmas break apparently took away some of the timing between Mallett and his receivers, and some players slipped a bit on the natural grass.

“It wasn’t anything we didn’t expect,” he said. “That happens. We’ll be better tomorrow and better than that the next day.”

Saying Petrino pays attention to detail would be like saying Mallett likes to throw deep.

Quickly in his news conference he said they have to get D.J. Williams involved early, because, “We won more games when he had catches than when he didn’t.”

Petrino has a quick wit, and he uses it to make points, but after he’s made all his points and answered all the questions, he’s out of there faster than a Chinese bullet train on the open rail.

In the short span, he bragged on the Razorbacks’ fans and talked about his offense and defense and how they need to make Memphis part of their home state when it comes to recruiting.

The coaches were very different in their approaches, but both said all the right things.

Sports, Pages 19 on 12/29/2009