Pardon the short detour from the exciting world of Arkansas Razorback athletics in the summertime, but I have to give a brief shout-out to Mr. Will Leitch of Deadspin.com. Neither Stephen nor I know the man, and he certainly doesn’t know us (or this site), but it’s not a stretch to say that this humble blog would not exist without him.

When Stephen and I started Razorback Expats last summer (wow, almost a full year ago), Deadspin was our direct inspiration - the Beatles to our Herman’s Hermits, you might say. I’m sure we never would have even thought about entering the glamorous world of blogging without its example. So, with the news that Leitch is stepping down from the site he founded (as of today), I had to make a note of it. Kudos to you, Will Leitch, and thanks for the memories.

Now, back to more posts about Bobby Petrino and Dwight Stewart…

By way of Chicago, Sonny Weems has landed in Denver. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of time today to bore you with our commentary. Instead, here’s a brief round-up of media reports:

• Denver Post: Arkansas swingman Weems acquired for second rounder.

• Rocky Mountain News: Trade news ‘world class’ athletic talent for Nuggets.

• Northwest Arkansas Times: Weems drafted, traded.

• The Morning News: Weems drafted by Bulls, traded to Nuggets.

• Associated Press: Weems drafted No. 39 by Bulls, shipped to Denver.

• Hoopsworld.com: Nuggets make draft night deal.

Quick plug: According to our friends over at Razorbloggers.net, this week marks the end of the 2008 “fiscal year” for Razorback sports. Accordingly, they are marking the event in two ways: transferring their revenues to offshore entities to avoid paying their fair share of taxes (just kidding) and counting down the five best Razorback games of the past 12 months (not kidding). So, head on over and enjoy the good memories. They’re set to unveil the top of the list today. Gee, any guesses as to what that game will be?

In honor of tonight’s NBA Draft, we present the image below, which captures perhaps the greatest moment in the event’s history. OSHA regulations mandate that you put on sunglasses before looking. Otherwise, severe burning of the retina may occur.

To those who suggest that Bobby Petrino is Lucy with the football and Razorback fans are a bunch of Charlie Browns, The Hog Blogger, one of our occasional contributors and the proprietor of the much-missed blog of the same name, would like to say that he, for one, knows what we’re getting into.

I don’t trust Bobby Petrino.

Put out your torches and set down the pitchforks — let me explain. Why is it that I find it so hard to trust our brand-new, bona fide Razorback messiah?

Funny story, actually. If you’ve got the time, I’d love to tell it.

Without the blog to tend to, I have a lot more time to just hang out in the basement of my mom’s trailer with my sister, so on this particular Tuesday afternoon a few months back, that’s precisely what I was doing.

Anyways, this guy gets up on the TV and is all like, “Blah blah blah, Bobby Petrino is a liar, a traitor, Arkansas fans don’t know what they’re getting themselves into!” I figured something was amiss, and this slick-lookin’ character must have been mistaken, so I start up the lawnmower and head over to the library so I can see what the Internets had to say.

(Read on …)

Mike Miller of MSNBC.com’s Beyond the Arc college basketball blog is counting down the all-time great programs, and he’s placed the Razorbacks at No. 17 on the list.

A couple of things please us about this list. First off, after they’ve filled much of the past decade with mediocre-to-crappy seasons, the fact that the Hogs are even on the list at all is nice; secondly, Miller has given us some bragging rights over Texas.

Here’s part of what he had to say about Razorback hoops:

“They don’t excel in any one area, but they don’t lag behind anyone either, which is the main reason the Hogs are in the top 20. If not for the dropoff in the last 10 years, they’d be higher.

Still, when it comes to college basketball, Arkansas has two things going for it that few other schools have:

* A true shining moment from the Big Dance in Scotty Thurman’s rainbow 3-pointer over Duke’s Tony Lang that sealed the school’s lone NCAA title.

* A jaw-dropping Sports Illustrated cover of a ready-to-throw-down-a-rim-rattling-dunk Sidney Moncreif [sic] that helped introduce Arkansas hoops to the rest of the world.

The rest of the college basketball world should be so lucky.”

At first, we were choked with outrage that Miller misspelled Sir Sid’s last name. But later we saw that he had the abundant good sense to link to and compliment Whit E. Knight’s magnum opus - the three-parter on the 1978 Final Four team that ran on this site earlier this spring - and we had to sheepishly tell the angry, pitchfork-wielding mob that we had gathered to go home.

Anyhoo, check out the list when you get a chance; No. 16 is slated to be revealed tomorrow.

Really, how could you even hope to defend against this? I feel a little sorry for #40 in this picture…he obviously drew the short straw in the locker room before the game.

I tried. I really did. But I just couldn’t do it: I couldn’t get into the NBA playoffs.

Not even with the retro appeal of this year’s Finals and one of my favorite athletes getting some well-deserved time in the sun. And not even with my adopted city’s team - with a former Hog as one of its star players - nearly pulling off an all-time upset of the eventual world champion.

I turned away from the NBA in the early part of the decade, when offense dried up and final scores seemed to regularly be something like 75 to 68. And despite the obvious rejuvenation of the game, I haven’t been able to re-engage. I don’t really know why: I’ll leave that up to our staff psychologist.

Whatever the cause, my current apathy stands in stark contrast to my attitude in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, I was an NBA fanatic. And I was never more absorbed by pro basketball than I was during the epic, seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal showdown between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks in 1994.

This one had it all: two teams that despised each other, fourth-quarter comebacks, a good old-fashioned brawl, last-second heroics, a questionable game-deciding call and the in-game mental meltdown of a star player. Even before all of that happened, the series’ storylines were wildly compelling.

(Read on …)

Who’s Got Your Back? We here at RazorbackExpats are no strangers to bar fights; if it’s Saturday night, chances are that we’re in a scrap at the local watering hole. So we took particular interest in this column by the Sporting News’ Spencer Hall (a.k.a. as Oscar Swindle of Every Day Should Be Saturday). In the piece, Hall lists the college mascots you’d want on your side in a bar fight and those you wouldn’t.

Coming in at No. 2 on the list of those you’d want on your side: the Arkansas Razorback. Says Hall: “Razorbacks can weigh upwards of 500 pounds and are stone cold killing machines with knives in their mouths, incredible stamina and a bloodlust a highway killer would call ‘impressive.’ Ragnar, a former Arkansas Razorback mascot, escaped once and killed seven rattlesnakes, a 450-pound domestic hog and a coyote before being captured. You want the Razorback on your side in a fight if only to keep him from being on the other side. Bonus: He has an extremely low center of gravity and can be eaten if killed in combat.”

And who’s no. 1? Mike VI, the LSU Tiger. But as occasional contributor and frequent commenter J Hawg 3 notes in his e-mail alerting us to the piece: “Yeah, baby, but who has The Boot?”

Derek Fisher: Class Act, Part 2. Last week, we mentioned our admiration of Los Angeles Lakers guard and Little Rock native Derek Fisher. Courtesy of Max Brantley’s Arkansas Blog, we came across this moving piece about how Derek has raised awareness of a rare type of eye cancer and a new treatment for the disease. Much as we dislike certain things about the Lakers, this guy makes it impossible to root against them.

From the DC Fanatics blog, here’s a nice Topps photo shoot and interview with Felix Jones. The best part comes about two minutes in when they surprise him with a first peek at his brand new rookie card. Happy times:

December Madness? According to Brandon Marcello of The Slophouse, John Pelphrey is trying to schedule an early-season invitational that would take place next season in Bud Walton. Sounds like a cool idea, although let’s hope it turns out better for the Hogs than did the last regular-season tournament held in Fayetteville: the John Thompson Foundation Challenge Classic, which took place in November 2000.

The Razorbacks, sporting the talents of one Joe Johnson and ranked 15th in the nation, lost to Southern Mississippi in the finals. Perhaps the guys were just distracted by the ongoing Florida recount.

Peering into the Future. In the June 2008 issue of Pravda Hawgs Illustrated, Harry King does his best Nostradamus impersonation and unfurls his game-by-game prediction of the 2008 Razorback football season. The bad news? A 5-7 record. The good news? No humilating bowl loss.

The wins: Western Illinois, Louisiana-Monroe, Kentucky, Ole Miss and Tulsa. The losses: Texas, Alabama, Florida, Auburn, South Carolina, Mississippi State and LSU.

Before you dismiss his prognostications, you should know that King correctly predicted last year’s regular season record (8-4), although, as he’s quick to point out, he erroneously predicted the Hogs to beat Kentucky and lose to LSU.

Do not doubt Harry King. Stronger people than you have - and been destroyed as a result.

One on One. Bobby Petrino recently sat down for a Q&A with ArkansasSports360’s Chris Bahn; to listen to the interview, click here.

The Pride of Little Rock. Please excuse the non-Razorback item, but here’s a nice article on Los Angeles Lakers guard and Little Rock native Derek Fisher. We here at RazorbackExpats can’t think of an athlete that we admire more than Fisher, and we have been known to gab about the following “What If?” scenario: What if he had been a member of those wonderful mid-1990s Razorback teams?

In some ways, it’s not a terribly gripping discussion: After all, the Hogs did win the 1994 title without him. But, we can’t help but wonder if his off-the-charts leadership qualities might have helped combat the sluggish and unfocused play that frequently plagued the 1995 Hogs. Regardless, we would have loved to have seen a backcourt of him and Corey Beck.