Bill's Blog: The Season is Here

FAYETTEVILLE — Long time, no blog.

But like those last free days of summer, it all comes to an end this weekend — the last weekend of summer for UA students. Tomorrow, a crop of freshmen will gather for the first time with the rest of the Razorbacks at the annual athlete’s welcome back picnic.

Another year begins with Academic Convocation, and this year’s special guest and speaker — none other than UA graduate and head coach of the Razorback baseball team, Dave Van Horn. We’ll post the special DVH intro video tomorrow evening after he speaks.

Today was Fan Day for the Razorback football team, and a great crowd turned out to hear the concert and get autographs at The Gardens.

Perfect weather in Fayetteville today — that early fall weather that gets you in the mood for football. For those Razorback fans around the world — Simpsons-like clouds, a light breeze and maybe 80. Right now, a fantastic 68 degrees.

Since we last chatted, there have been plenty of changes — our new Twitter feed, for example. In the Twitter world, going on 10 months actually qualifies as old, and we’re proud to have over 3,000 followers as we head into football season.

Yesterday, we officially announced the department’s official Facebook page. Our colleagues in the Razorback Marketing Office will keep the Facebook page stocked with events and specials. By next week, I anticipate another addition to the ArkansasRazorbacks.com universe.

Fans who follow The Razorback Report podcast through iTunes can hear the first episode of the new academic year. Subscribe today at iTunes (search for the title or follow this link).

However, most of your questions have been about football and on-line television. Let’s go over what’s ahead. The new SEC TV agreement will put every league game on television, mostly on the ESPN family. That means all those games will be available on ESPN 360 — live. Avoid the rush — check your local connection’s availability. It is a free sign-up for AT&T and Verizon users.

What does that mean for RazorVision? First, the SEC rules never let us stream football anyway. What RazorVision members get is the live pregame stream from home games — we take the stadium feed right up to kickoff — and the live audio feed from Razorback Sports Network. A bonus this year is on the replays. In the past, SEC regulations kept the replays from turning on world-wide until 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. Now, they can be live at 11 p.m. central time. If a game runs past 11 p.m., obviously, the replay can’t start until the game ends and we finish the FTP to the servers.

RazorVision will have postgame press conferences live this year, starting with the first Fayetteville home game.

If you live in the state of Arkansas and you can’t get the PPV game through your cable system, you can watch the game as a RazorVision PPV for the same price on your computer. That’s Missouri State, and that will be the only PPV this year — again, a part of the new SEC TV deal, only one PPV per school in football each year.

What’s new on the blog? You’ll have to check back next weekend to find out.