FAYETTEVILLE -- A defunct club forgotten needs remembering as the University of Arkansas honors Nolan Richardson on Tuesday night.
At Walton Arena during halftime of Tuesday's SEC game with Texas A&M, the UA will raise a permanent banner bearing the name of the coach whose teams won more Razorbacks games than any other and claimed the UA's lone basketball national championship during his 1985-2002 tenure.
Richardson's reign ended in acrimony, including him filing suit against the UA following his 2002 firing.
The lawsuit was eventually decided in the UA's favor, but nobody emerged favorably from the fallout of wounds that never would have been so exacerbated had all parties better communicated before careening to an impasse gone unresolved to a bitter parting.
Time eventually heals most wounds. But this clock needed speeding up to reunite Razorbacks fans and alums with the Hall of Fame basketball coach who never moved from Fayetteville and remained close to so many Arkansans.
It took a public event to realize how close and how many to whom Richardson remained Arkansas bonded and how much the multitudes wanted Richardson reunited with their Razorbacks.
Wayne Stehlik, Richardson's jack-of-all-trades top administrative troubleshooter for all 17 Arkansas seasons and his assistant when Richardson coached internationally and in the WNBA, with several other local basketball boosters including Donny Story of Arvest Bank, started the Northwest Arkansas Tip-Off Club. The club boosted not just Razorbacks basketball but high school basketball throughout Northwest Arkansas.
Stehlik's club brought home the Razorbacks' 1994 national championship team in the winter of 2008, the team's first homecoming since the UA's awkward situation with Richardson caused the university not to celebrate anniversaries of its greatest basketball team at Walton Arena.
Jeff Long, the UA's brand new athletic director at the time, attended.
The event opened eyes -- starting with Richardson asking all in attendance to call the Hogs -- that Arkansas and its winningest basketball coach needed and wanted to be reunited.
In 2009, Richardson and the national championship team were reunited in a packed house ceremony at Walton Arena.
It, and the accompanying SEC victory over Georgia it inspired, by far marked the zenith of that 2-14 SEC season that former coach John Pelphrey's team suffered through after a promising 12-2 nonconference start.
The occasion not only renewed a past that needed renewing but triggered the Razorbacks' 22-5 present.
What Stehlik's club started in 2008 planted the seed for Mike Anderson in 2011. It created the climate for the clamor to return Richardson's top assistant, who was eventually hired away from Missouri and has rebuilt the Razorbacks to the type of conference success they haven't experienced since Richardson coached them.
Now the athletic director for the Springdale school system, Stehlik didn't have the time to keep the Northwest Arkansas Tip-Off Club going, but in its time the club brought great times and a great coach back to Arkansas basketball.
Its role shouldn't be forgotten as Richardson is remembered.
Sports on 02/23/2015