Bill's Blog: Headed to Little Rock

While this is my 20th year with the University of Arkansas, today’s game is my first at War Memorial Stadium. I had worked several and attended most of the Fayetteville games, but often there were events to cover for the women’s soccer or volleyball in the early fall and almost always a road women’s basketball tournament in November.

Not to say I don’t have some fond recollections of War Memorial – like walking back into the hotel room on the west coast just in time to see the Miracle on Markham; listening on the internet while setting up for a women’s basketball road game to the back-and-forth battle with Miss State.

I’m looking forward to seeing for myself the great traditions that I’ve only heard stories about: the golf course tailgating, the 50,000-plus in the single deck stands, the roar of the Saturday night crowd.

But like last week, I’m counting on those of you in and around the stadium to help out. Those of you with the 3G phones, take some pictures of those tailgates and email them to me at bismith@uark.edu. I’d like to add a few to the pregame part of the blog.

Speaking of pregame, we’ve made a special War Memorial edition of the intro video for this week’s game. Last week in Fayetteville, the 2008 intro produced by TeamWorks out of California (owned and operated, by the way, by a proud University of Arkansas graduate) wowed the crowd. I even saw it on YouTube (hmm, too much zoom to be a camera phone – did someone forget the no video in the stadium policy?).

Nevertheless, the TeamWorks soundtrack, voiced by none other than UA graduate Pat Summerall, gets the Little Rock treatment with clips from War Memorial games. Watch for it right before the team entry, and kudos to the director of new media, Blair Cartwright, for his work on creating it.

Today’s game program has a feature story by Andrew Reynolds of the media relations office saluting the 60th anniversary of War Memorial Stadium.

As the morning dawns in Fayetteville, it’s crisp and clear, a mere 57 degrees on the home weather station and it feels like football weather. Enough for now – time to pack the Mini and head south.