Thanks for your readership and comments…you’ve made writing this blog a lot of fun for us. We’ll be back after the break with thoughts on the Cotton Bowl, basketball and much more.

We here at RazorbackExpats would like to wish our readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s hoping for a Hogs win tomorrow to make the weekend extra enjoyable.

During the weekend of the South Carolina game, I had the pleasure of returning to the Natural State (Little Rock, to be specific) for the first time in about a year. While there, I managed to make note of a few blog-worthy observations:

* The Clinton Presidential Library has some neat tidibts for Hog fans. My favorites were these notes back & forth from Pres. Clinton and Nolan in March 1994 (plus this other page with all the signatures from the 1993-94 bball team). The best part, obviously, is the handwritten “Win the NCAA!” at the end of Clinton’s letter…I guess the team took that Presidential order pretty seriously. And am I crazy or did Nolan misspell “tough”?

* I really should watch games with my dad more often. Before the South Carolina game, the most recent Razorback game we had watched together was last year’s triumphant win over Tennessee (which seems like ancient history now, of course). Is it a coincidence that the Hogs’ only two quality wins in the last 365 days occurred when I watched games with my dad? I think not…you are all welcome to take up a collection to fund me returning to LR more often.

* Wally Hall looks different than I remembered. I’m so used to the bearded Wally in our iconic Wally Watch graphic that I barely recognized the shaved, glasses-wearing Wally staring out at me from the Democrat-Gazette. For a second, I thought Leonard Maltin had taken over the “Like It Is” column (and yes, I know Leonard Maltin has a beard…just bear with me).

Worried that your kids might not grow up to be Hog fans? Just to be on the safe side, it’s best to begin the brainwashing early in their development process while they’re still in an easily influenceable state. Luckily, there’s a handy DVD featuring “footage of Arkansas sports, mascot, marching band and campus attractions in an exciting, playful and educational format”.

As a parent of two young children who are growing up outside of the Natural State, I can see the benefits of exposing them to such valuable propaganda to prevent them from becoming ardent Pac-10 fans or something like that.

I do think, however, that this DVD should come with the following warning label: “The Surgeon General has determined that raising your children as Arkansas Razorback fans will expose them to dangerously high levels of raised expectations followed by inevitable heartbreak, as proven over the course of 40+ years of field research.”

When John and I were college roommates, we had a poster of the 1983-84 basketball Razorbacks on our wall. The poster, which was John’s, featured headshots of the team members (with hilarious 80s hairstyles, I might add) and had a schedule at the bottom in which one could fill in the game scores. We were in the fifth grade when that season took place, and, at the end of the schedule, a 10-year-old John had scrawled the score of Arkansas’ NCAA Tournament loss to Virginia and added in parentheses, “Bad calls lost the game.” In Arkansas, the persecution complex begins at an early age.

I remembered that comment after the pass interference call on Kevin Woods in the final minute of Saturday’s game and thought it would be fun to reminisce about other controversial or “bad” calls. To my mind, the two Grand Poobahs of controversial calls are the traveling call against U.S. Reed in the waning seconds of the Hogs’ 1979 NCAA loss to Larry Bird’s Indiana State team (any self-respecting Razorback fan knows he was tripped) and the pass interference call in the 1982 SMU game.

The floor is now open for comments. Gripe away.

It might take a quarter, it might take a game, it might take the whole season, but at some point you almost always get your heart broken.

And that’s all I have to say about that game.

And now, the final installment of our three-part Q&A with Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons (here’s part 1 and part 2):

Three questions: Were you ready to see Stan Heath leave? How did you think the university handled the coaching search? And, what’s your opinion on the Pelphrey hiring?

I defended Stan Heath (privately, understand) as long as I could. He seemed like a classy guy, recruited well, and I had no problem with his calm demeanor.

By the end of last year, I felt he had to go. The team just failed to show up for too many big games. Came out flat, listless, and stayed that way.

I was on a HS team in the late middle ages that went to the NJ state semis one year, lost its star players to graduation, dropped a couple of early season games and went into a self-destruct spiral of bickering and mutual recrimination.

If being on the team hadn’t been central to my HS identity, ego–all of it–I’d have quit, because it was no fun at all. Our 25 year old coach used to scrimmage with us. I actually secured permission from my father to hit him back if he caught me with another cheap elbow under the basket. Years later, I realized that was what he wanted. He was trying to wake us up.

(Two years later, he won the state outright.)

Anyway, that’s how the Razorbacks played toward the end of the season last year. Like a bunch of guys who didn’t like each other much, and wanted the season over.

(Read on …)

* 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.

* 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.

It’s a favorite conversation starter for sports fans everywhere: who is the greatest player/coach/pitcher/center/quarterback? With Darren McFadden about to embark on a potentially historic season, it feels like an appropriate time to start that debate for the Hogs.

Let’s throw out all stats, facts and figures, and comparisons of eras and go with gut feelings here. Simply put, who is the greatest Razorback of them all (looking purely at their college production)?

I’ll start by saying that D-Mac has already staked a pretty good claim as the best football player ever to play at Arkansas. With all due respect to past legends such as Lance Alworth, Billy Ray Smith, Joe Ferguson, Steve Atwater and many others, no one has had the individual impact or national recognition as McFadden.

As far as I know (which isn’t very far), no football Razorback had previously won a major national award, and McFadden has already won the Doak Walker. No Razorback has ever seriously been in the conversation for the Heisman, and McFadden was the runner-up after his sophomore season and figures to be the thick of it again this year.

After that it gets trickier. Sidney Moncrief put the basketball program on the map. Corliss Williamson was a dominant national player and led the Hogs to their only major sport national title. Mike Conley won multiple track championships and was a general athletic freak of nature. It’s hard to assess where D-Mac fits in this crowd without some broader perspective, but the simple fact that he’s already in the conversation after just two years is pretty amazing.

So who gets your vote? For me, I have a personal bias for Corliss but D-Mac could very well shoot to the top of this list after this season. In the meantime, McFadden will only be a Razorback for 13 more games, so let’s appreciate and enjoy history in the making while he’s here.