Introductory Hog Call

Growing up in Little Rock in the 1980s, few things gave us more pleasure than Razorbacks sports. Whether we were watching Alvin Robertson on the hardwood or Quinn Grovey on the gridiron, we were captivated in the way that kids everywhere are captivated when watching their athletic heroes. When the Hogs won, we were joyous; when they lost, crestfallen.

In the early 90s, we both moved out of the state (barely) to attend the same college in Memphis, Tenn. You might think that the obsession would have waned; on the contrary, it exploded. Encountering lots of people who didn’t like the Hogs - even some who, horrors, hated the Razorbacks - our fandom kicked into overdrive. It also didn’t hurt that our small liberal arts college’s teams competed in the NCAA’s Division III and thus engendered no real loyalty and that the Arkansas basketball team was enjoying the greatest half decade in its history.

But after graduation, our obsession began to wane. One of us ended up on the West Coast, the other on the East Coast. In the midst of establishing careers and building new lives in new places, following the Hogs fell off the radar a bit.

Within the last year, however, we’ve felt ourselves drawn back to our boyhood obsession. While trading e-mails about Darren McFadden’s Heisman candidacy, Houston Nutt’s various trials and tribulations, and the university’s often tragic and comic search for a new basketball coach, we rediscovered the way Arkansas athletics can so thoroughly captivate, irritate and, especially, amuse us.

Thus, RazorbackExpats.com was born.

We look at the site as a way for two Arkansas expatriates to keep on top of and share our views on Razorback athletics. We plan to do so in a spirit of good humor, balance and perspective. The Earth does not hang in the balance with each Hogs’ game.

Furthermore, we will be filing no Freedom of Information requests for coaches’ cell phone records.

We hope you will join us.

Filed under: General — Razorback Expats at 10:00 am on Wednesday, August 8, 2007

6 Comments »

2

Comment by CharlieHog

August 8, 2007 @ 11:50 am

Nice looking blog. Looking forward to reading more.

10

Comment by Chope

August 15, 2007 @ 7:30 pm

Three cheers for my college roommates for putting this together! Like John, I am out on the west coast and miss the glory days of calling the Hogs!

This blog rocks!

12

Comment by Chope

August 15, 2007 @ 7:39 pm

One other idea- how about we start a thread with places for Hog fans to get together to watch games outside Arkansas? I bet there are already some groups meeting up at sports bars already……

14

Comment by robb white ellett

August 16, 2007 @ 7:48 am

try this for your sports group needs:
http://www.urbantailgate.com/

all of fay is a twitter with news of the expat blog. good luck.

21

Comment by Stephen

August 18, 2007 @ 2:15 pm

Robb White Ellet,

Thanks for the good luck wishes. Might you be the one they call “Skinny”?

Look me up the next time you’re in Atlanta.

100

Pingback by Q&A: Gene Lyons | Razorback Expats

September 10, 2007 @ 3:44 pm

[…] In our introductory posting, we stated that we wanted to follow the Hogs “in a spirit of good humor, balance and perspective.” Few people do that better than Gene Lyons. You may know him as a weekly political columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A National Magazine Award winner and former general editor of Newsweek, he’s also published articles in Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine, and has penned several books, most recently “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton,” which he co-authored with Joe Conason. (Click here for his full bio.) […]

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