I dated a woman who made our weekend plans with her friends once without even asking me, plans of which I quickly rejected.
“So, you’re just going to sit here all weekend doing the ‘sports thingy?,’” she asked.
Yup.
She left, I stayed, and it was close to the last time I saw her.
A psychologist would likely consider it unhealthy to be so consumed in sports, but try telling that to the throngs of Arkansas basketball who’ve been wrapped up in the success of the Razorbacks this season. There’s much in our state that divides us, particularly in regard to politics. But this University of Arkansas team has transformed basketball fans from Blytheville to Bentonville to Texarkana and Lake Village into what we were at one time.
A united and proud One-Hog state.
Everyone loves a winner, of course, and many of us were thrilled when Arkansas-Little Rock beat Purdue in the NCAA Tournament a few years back. But the Razorbacks have earned the spotlight with a string of successes lately on the national stage.
Sports has long served as temporary relief from the daily grind, going back to well over 100 years ago in our country when a lot of folks tried to eke out a living in physically-demanding and low-paying jobs. The standard of living in the United States is substantially higher now, but it can still be depressing when you turn on the TV and hear 24/7 about people in Ukraine, especially children, being slaughtered by invaders from Russia.
Turning to sports is our escape and we don’t like it much when the games are politicized.
Arkansas reached the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season, an achievement few thought possible with a slew of newcomers coach Eric Musselman had assembled. We knew of Jaylin Williams, the former Fort Smith Northside star who’s developed into the Hogs’ best overall player as a sophomore.
But who or what, I wondered, was an Umude? Who was this guy smacking gum and jacking up three-pointers all the time? And who was this little fella who rushed off the bench and zipped around the court non-stop?
We know them now as Stanley Umude, JD Notae, and Chris Lykes, and they’ve all played significant roles in the Razorbacks’ success.
Musselman deserves much credit for molding together a team that carried a 28-8 record heading into Saturday night’s loss to Duke. Few on the national stage gave Arkansas much of a chance entering Thursday’s game against No. 1 Gonzaga, a view which motivated the Razorbacks even more.
“We kept believing in ourselves,” Williams said during an interview with CBS following the game. “We saw what everybody else was saying and we kept believing in ourselves from the jump. We kept fighting and we did our thing.”
Because Williams and his teammates keep fighting, Arkansas basketball is relevant again. You sense it in an airport or restaurant where a person wearing a picture of a hog on the front of a shirt might elicit a nod or a thumb’s up from a stranger.
That’s what success in sports can do for a college, university, or a whole state. If you don’t believe it, please tell me what you knew about the small private Jesuit school way out west before guys like John Stockton started playing basketball for Gonzaga. Or, how about Saint Peter’s, a 15th seed which has eliminated Kentucky, Murray State, and Purdue from this year’s tournament?
Anybody?
Anybody?
Didn’t think so.
There’s been times in our state’s history when the news coming out of Arkansas was not good. But these Razorbacks have helped to restore a sense of pride and I look forward to doing the “sports thingy” all the way until the end of the college baseball season at Baum-Walker Stadium.