WholeHogSports
HOG CALLS : SEC loses two greats
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
URL: http://www.wholehogsports.com/nwat/65388/
John McDonnell won’t mind sharing space in this column with Ron Polk.
Arkansas’ retiring track coaching legend admires the now officially retired Mississippi State baseball coaching legend’s fight against the NCAA’s bureaucratic assault on men’s spring sports and those who coach and play them.
Polk’s stance on the NCAA administration he has called “ nerds” was recently addressed in a column here. It was written from talking with Polk during the SEC Baseball teleconference before Polk’s Bulldogs played their final games under their coach of 29-years last weekend against Arkansas in Starkville, Miss.
However it needs immediate corrective re-addressing.
Polk said Monday he appreciated the column — most of it.
The part he courteously took exception involved my, in the writer’s view, misinterpreting or misunderstanding or just flat screwing up a portion of the conversation.
The SEC was the sponsor, not the opposition, Polk stressed in Monday’s phone conversation, of legislation Polk sought allowing baseball walkons to transfer within NCAA Division 1 without having to sit out a year redshirting.
Somehow, maybe through a bad phone connection but more likely a brain break, I interpreted it the opposite in the teleconference and wrote the SEC had shared the NCAA Board of Directors’ view in nixing the legislation.
So kudos, not brickbats, to SEC Commissioner Mike Slive and the league office and deepest apologies to them from this space.
They did the right thing supporting walkons’ ability to transfer in a sport limited to splitting 11. 7 scholarships while 10 players (colleges use the DH ) a game.
Polk stressed Slive and the SEC have worked hard to help players and coaches.
The NCAA has not, Polk will tell you at length.
There’s more to come on McDonnell with Arkansas hosting the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Mideast Regional Outdoor meet May 30-31 and the NCAA Outdoor Men’s and Women’s Outdoor Championships June 11-14 in Des Moines, Iowa, before the Razorbacks’ 42-time NCAA championship cross country-indoor track-outdoor track coach hangs up his coaching spikes.
However with McDonnell’s unprecedented national success, he’s won more national championships than any coach of any sport, comes the byproduct of not appreciating his coaching success on the conference level.
It’s unprecedented, too.
In the Razorbacks’ track and cross country history before McDonnell became head cross country coach in 1972 and head track coach in 1978, Arkansas had from 1949 won seven Southwest Conference Cross Country championships and zero conference crowns in indoor and outdoor track.
Last Sunday at Auburn, Ala., McDonnell’s men completed the SEC Outdoor Championships claiming Arkansas’ 84 th conference crown under his cross country-indoor-outdoor direction.
In cross country, McDonnell finishes with 34 consecutive conference crowns including 1974-1990 in the Southwest Conference and then never skipping a beat from competing in Arkansas’ first-ever SEC event — the 1991 SEC Cross Country Championship with his top five placing first through fifth for a 15-points perfect score — until last fall.
Starting with their first SWC Indoor crown in 1979, McDonnell’s men have won 27 indoor conference championships and now 23 conference outdoor championships.
Other than horse racing, triple crowns were not part of Arkansas’ vocabulary until McDonnell.
Now they are so routine everyone loses count of his Hogs winning conference championships the same academic year in cross country, indoor and outdoor track.
Officially, the conference triple crown count ended last Sunday with No. 21.
An appropriate number for a legal-aged toast to college coaching’s most prolific conference champion.
Nate Allen covers the Razorbacks for the Northwest Arkansas Times.