You know Danny Sheridan? That guy who’s always listing the odds for various things in USA Today and elsewhere? Well, it turns out he’s based out of Mobile and is a pretty big Alabama fan.

A few weeks ago he sat down with Paul Finebaum of the Mobile Press-Register and shared his thoughts on the SEC in general and Alabama football. He’s certainly not lacking for opinions - he’s not shy about blasting the Mike Shula era and predicts Nick Saban to win a national championship for Bama in the next 3-4 years - which makes for an entertaining article.

He’s also asked to rank the SEC coaches, and based on “building and sustaining a program” he lists Houston Nutt at #5…ahead of noted ‘genuises’ Urban Meyer and Mark Richt. I’m sure that alone will spark a discussion among Razorback fans.

Anyway, the whole article is worth reading. Check it out here:

Danny Sheridan’s interview with the Mobile Press-Register

(and thanks to our embedded Alabama correspondent, George Talbot, for the tip on this article)

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.)

But, he’s also an avid sports fan, and he brings the same shrewd eye and acerbic wit to following his favorite teams that he does to his day job. We recently e-mailed him a list of Razorback-related questions, and he was kind enough to respond. We can’t thank him enough. Without further ado, here’s part one of our Q&A with Gene Lyons.

What is your reaction to the whole Mustain/Malzahn/Nutt soap opera? Is it more annoyance or amusement?

I followed it only in the sense that I also read “Dilbert” every day. Back in August 1966 when I first drove to Arkansas from Virginia to meet my wife’s parents and bring her back to school, I remember being astonished at all the Razorback football coverage in the old Gazette.

First of all, the season was a month away. There were still two months left in the baseball season. The big news the day I arrived was that two brothers, both linemen, had a fistfight at practice. Orville Henry portrayed it as a sign the Razorbacks had a lot of spunk.

Now me, I’d lived with football jocks for 3 years at Rutgers. (Smaller, maybe not quite as quick as the Hogs in those days, but football players are football players.) So I saw it as a sign the Razorbacks were pretty much like football jocks everywhere: animals in need of obedience training.

(Read on …)

* A chalk talk with David Lee about how the Wildcat/hog offense works.

* LSU looked pretty damn good last night. Scary good, in fact (one Tiger blog called it the best played LSU game he’d ever seen). However things shake out between now and Thanksgiving weekend, the matchup between Darren McFadden and Glenn Dorsey will be one for the ages.

* What’s next…wiretapping Wally Hall’s phone? In a move straight out of Washington, D.C., it seems as if the U of A athletic department is trying to stifle dissent about the program. (from the Hawg Blawg)

* We’re a few months too late on the Dana Altman jokes, but this is a fun YouTube clip.

* Today’s Democrat-Gazette reports that University of Pittsburgh Athletic Director Jeff Long is a “leading candidate” to become the next AD at Arkansas. In 2004, Long hired former Miami Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt to take over the Panthers’ football team. Visit our always entertaining friends over at The Hog Blogger to see a picture of Wannstedt in all of his mustachioed glory. If Long voices a commitment to bringing such quality facial hair into the Razorbacks’ athletic program, his candidacy will receive our highly coveted endorsement.

* Can Darren McFadden possibly do more on offense than he already does? Arkansas’ coaches think so.

* Happy Belated Birthday: While performing some routine research for this blog the other night, one of our staff interns stumbled upon the fact that Dwight Stewart recently celebrated his 36th (!!) birthday on Sept. 2. As time rolls on, readers of this blog will become all too aware of the special place that Dwight has in our hearts. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. Happy birthday, Sy Dog.

* Does the Wildcat - or the Wildhog … or whatever the frig it’s supposed to be called these days - seem to lack last year’s snap, crackle and pop? The fine folks at Razorbloggers can tell you why.

Every week during the football season we’ll be posting five reasons to hate the upcoming opponent to help you get fired up (as if that were really necessary). But, since this week is a bye we thought it would be fun for us to list our personal least favorite SEC teams…the ones who annoy, irritate and make us more irrational than any of the rest. So without further adieu, here we go:

Stephen’s Bottom Three:

1. Tennessee - Everything about this program drives me crazy. The fans, the team colors and that damn “Rocky Top,” played over and over and over. As a former resident of Memphis and a big fan of the city, I also don’t appreciate the snotty attitude many UT fans and east Tennessee residents have towards the Bluff City. Get over yourselves.

2. Florida - I admit it: Part of me is just jealous at the insanely successful run that Florida’s athletic program is on right now. I attended both the SEC Championship football game last year and the SEC Tournament final in March and, needless to say, I’ve had my fill of Gator fans for the rest of my life. Florida’s hateability may decrease, though, with the departure of Joakim Noah.

3. Georgia - I have to say, outside of the above two teams, I don’t find the rest of the SEC to be especially unlikeable. I do get tired of the Mark Richt worshipping performed by much of the sports media in Atlanta and Georgia, though, so I’ll put the Dawgs at number three on my list. To listen to sports talk radio here, you’d think the Bulldog coach spends his spare hours feeding thousands with two fish and five loaves of bread.

John’s Bottom Three:

1. Florida - Yeah, I’m jealous of their recent success. And yeah, I’m bitter that their b-ball team repeated as champs when I know the 1994-95 Hogs were better. It’s mainly the all the arrogance, though, that does it for me. Even though they don’t have too much SEC history with the Hogs, the image of Steve Spurrier smirking out from beneath his visor drives me crazy.

2. Tennessee - Ditto to everything Steve said. Maybe it’s just something about orange teams that conjures up bad feelings. My next door neighbors, who are otherwise very nice people, are from Knoxville and hosted a huge crew of Vols fans who flew cross-country for last week’s Cal game. I have to admit that I was cackling evilly to myself as the Bears rang up 45 points on them. (the Pac-10 still sucks, though)

3. Alabama - Partially because of a few folks we knew in college. And partially because they erroneously claim the 1964 national championship. But mostly because if I hear one more thing about how great Bear Bryant was, or how the Bama fans still can’t get over him, my head might explode.

That’s it for us. Which teams bug you the most? Add your comments below and vent away!

A couple of weeks ago, this blog applauded outgoing Athletic Director Frank Broyles for his belief that the LSU game should be played in Little Rock (we hear that this meant a lot to him). Now, however, we’d like to voice our displeasure with one of his other stances – his refusal to permit the Razorbacks to play other Arkansas schools.

We recognize this is a well-worn debate in Arkansas, but viewed from afar, it’s particularly baffling. I live in Atlanta, where the Georgia-Georgia Tech football game is perhaps the most anticipated sporting event of the year. Furthermore, those universities’ various teams periodically play those from other, smaller in-state schools, such as Georgia State and Georgia Southern. Even if the game is a mismatch, the geography factor gives it some appeal that would be absent from just any other ‘ole non-conference dust-up. In California, where John lives, intra-state match-ups are a vital part of the college sports landscape. Arkansans got a brief taste of how exciting such games can be in the 1987 NIT Tournament, when the Hogs stormed back from 20 points down to defeat Arkansas State in overtime.

It doesn’t have to take place every year, but a football game against Arkansas State would provide some excitement to a non-conference schedule that all too often is weighted down with the likes of North Texas and Tennessee-Chattanooga. Same goes for basketball – wouldn’t you be more interested in seeing the Hogs take on A-State, UALR, UAPB or Central Arkansas than most of the typical out-of-conference foes?

Not having really followed the issue in recent years, we’re not sure what the current stated and unstated reasons for not playing in-state schools are. But the fear that the U of A would suffer some sort of significant loss of prestige — if indeed this is a reason — by losing to one of these schools is pretty silly. This is a school whose football team lost to The Citadel of Division I-AA and whose basketball team lost to American-Puerto Rico of Division II. And yet, somehow, the program is in pretty good shape. It’s clear now that those losses were mere bumps in the road (well, maybe not to Jack Crowe).

Frank Broyles has been a forward-thinking AD in many ways. But on this issue, he’s way behind the times.

This is sort of old news, having originally been announced before we started this blog, but it’s still worth mentioning that Scotty Thurman was inducted into University of Arkansas Sports Hall of Honor last weekend. He accepted with a sense of humor, thanking Dwight Stewart “for fumbling the ball so I could make history.”

In addition to hitting the shot against Duke that, to me, is the single greatest Arkansas sports moment of my lifetime, Scotty provided fans with a list of classic plays too lengthy to list here. From his very underrated freshman season (when he practically carried the team while Corliss was injured for a long stretch) to his clutch shots in the ‘95 tournament, he helped define the winningest era of Razorback basketball. Simply put, when the ball was in his hands (especially at the end of the game), you just knew good things were going to happen.

I’m not sure what took so long for him to receive this honor, but from us at RazorbackExpats, congratulations Scotty and thanks for the memories.

* Spoiler alert: FOXSports.com played out the entire college football season on NCAA Football ‘07 and has determined that the Razorbacks will finish #4. That’s #4 in the nation. Plus, D-Mac will win the Heisman and Arkansas will rack up an impressive win in the Fiesta Bowl. I just hope that your knowing this doesn’t ruin the enjoyment of watching it all happen.

* Looking for in-depth analysis of what went right and wrong on Saturday? The folks at the RazorBloggers Network have broken it all down for you.

* Looking on some perspective on how the SEC is looking after the first week? Check out the HogBlogger’s week 1 power poll.

* In the ‘pretty damn cool’ department (and if thinking this is awesome makes me a nerd, then so be it), the Northwest Arkansas Times’ Mark Taliaferro has created a series of four mock comic book covers featuring Peyton Hillis (above), Marcus Monk and a couple of running backs you might have heard of. They’re all great…check ‘em out here.

We haven’t really written about the Mitch Mustain situation since starting this blog, mainly because that’s last year’s news and we’re all about being positive and looking forward (editor’s note: well, some of the time). But, after the underwhelming aerial attack against Troy we figured it was time to weigh in.

We’re not sure if our expat status helps us or hurts us here, but from where we sit, this seems like one of those fun cases where there’s plenty of blame to go around. Anyone who says otherwise is probably oversimplifying things. More to the point, this seems like a situation where both parties actually wound up worse off than they were before.

From the Arkansas side, yeah, Mitch wasn’t particularly impressive at QB when he played last year, but we need all the arms we can get at this point. And from Mitch’s side…well, if he gets a lot of playing time at USC we’ll be surprised. This is a guy who was afraid to compete against Casey Dick for the Hogs’ starting QB job so he transfers to USC? Those guys sign high school all-Americans like Houston Nutt sends text messages. Maybe he’s like a lot of college students and just wanted to live further away from his mom.

The basketball Razorbacks completed their two-exhibition-game visit to Mexico on Sunday with a nailbiting 71-point victory (108-37) over the Belize National Team. The finale of the Hogs’ trip provided quite a contrast with their Saturday game, in which they barely defeated Quintana Roo Pioneros, a Mexican pro team, by the score of 60-57. (Patrick Beverley was suspended for the first game after being late for the team bus.) For detailed coverage of the trip, click here.

One interesting note about Sunday’s game was the effort of 6-10 sophomore Michael Washington, who scored 21 points while hitting 7 of 8 field goals and 7 of 10 free throws. Last year, he seemingly came out of nowhere to play a significant role in the Hogs’ late-season rally. Granted, Belize wasn’t terribly stiff competition, but it’s good to see some evidence that Washington’s upswing will continue.