Hog Calls

Track and field carries Arkansas' banner

Arkansas track coaches Chris Bucknam, left, and Lance Harter pose with their SEC championship trophies won during the 2015-16 year.

FAYETTEVILLE -- A 1958 Mad magazine cartoon parodying the Lone Ranger and Tonto comes to mind with the University of Arkansas' Top 25 finish for the Director's Cup.

The Director's Cup standings is based on the combined national achievements of schools' men's and women's athletics programs.

Arkansas placed 23rd.

In Mad's cartoon classic, the masked man and his faithful Indian companion are surrounded by hostile Indians as the Lone Ranger surmises: "Well, Tonto, ol' Kemosabe, looks like we're finished."

Both turning to him and turning on him, Tonto inquires, "What you mean we?"

Though staunch team players who would never utter anything remotely so contrary to their peers, women's track/cross country Coach Lance Harter and men's track/cross country Coach Chris Bucknam might seem within their rights to ask 'What you mean we?' of the UA's others toasting the Director's Cup. For without cross country, indoor track and outdoor track, the UA would have come closer to a Dixie cup than the Director's Cup.

In addition to Harter's Razorbacks and Bucknam's Razorbacks sweeping SEC Cross Country-Indoor-Outdoor triple crowns, their teams nationally led the UA.

At the NCAA Cross Country, Indoor and Outdoor meets, Harter's Razorbacks placed ninth, second and first, the UA women's first NCAA Outdoor championship going with their first NCAA Indoor title won in 2015.

The 2014 NCAA Indoor champions, Bucknam's men nationally placed sixth in cross country and second in indoor and outdoor track.

Arkansas sports a rich history in football and men's basketball, with a national championship in each, and baseball. It has enjoyed some prime conference and national moments in most of its other men's and women's sports.

But nothing like its consistent excellence in track.

Harter's program is the bellwether for Arkansas' women with its national championships.

No collegiate coach of any sport approaches the 40 official national championships and 84 conference championships that retired Coach John McDonnell's men won for the Razorbacks.

Bucknam, the only coach hired during Jeff Long's tenure to win a championship, has extended much of the McDonnell magic.

The track assistants, men's field events coach Travis Geopfert, men's sprints coach Doug Case and women's vault coach Bryan Compton, with three Olympic vaulters including two for the U.S., and women's sprints coach Chris Johnson, have excelled.

Of the 15 athletes with Arkansas ties representing six countries at next month's Olympic Games, including six for the U.S., 13 are or were directly coached by a current Arkansas coach.

They are separate staffs coaching separate teams, but the Bucknam and Harter staffs flow in mutual respect.

Presumably that respect from the Arkansas flows from the top down.

They call track a nonrevenue sport. But for an athletic administration whose prestige is enhanced by athletic success and whose wallet contractually expands with bonuses from championships, it's money in the bank.

Sports on 07/23/2016