Dribbling Ink

Arkansas football has bottomed out for 2012. After a last-second 30-27 loss at the hands of the Ole Miss Rebels—the perennial whipping dogs of the SEC West—the Razorbacks truly can’t achieve a lower level of ineptitude this season. Of course, Jeff Long could always rehire John L. Smith as the next head coach. Anyway, let’s just get right to the good part. Ten observations from the Arkansas-Ole Miss game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas: 10. The music selection still sucks. Apparently so do the speakers now. Except for “Go DJ” when Dennis Johnson was about to return a kickoff, which is almost too easy to even be considered clever, the music was predictably outdated and lifeless. Might as well play “Cotton-Eye Joe.” 9. None of the technology at WMS is ever checked before the game. I have never been to a game in Little Rock in which everything worked properly. This time the video board was glitching the entire time and, predictably—there’s that word again—there...

Bye weeks are fickle monsters. A week that should be neutral in theory never quite works that way. The bye week always creates collateral damage. Sometimes the fallout helps your team and sometimes it hurts your team. That’s because college football is dynamic—everything changes from week to week, which is why the BCS will continue to thrive no matter how many playoff games are added at the end of the season. Bye weeks also provide clarity. When the hectic race from fall camp to the beginning of the season to winning or losing games finally reaches a respite, players, coaches, and fans get a chance to reflect on months of preparation, expectations, and execution. Thus, after a week of washing my hands of Arkansas’s dreadful start to 2012 and watching other SEC teams more closely, I had an epiphany: Arka-Tenne-Burn-y. What is Arka-Tenne-Burn-y? Exactly what it sounds like: the shared state of four programs—Arkansas, Tennessee, Auburn, and Kentucky—that aren’t as different as their f...