FAYETTEVILLE -- From the post Civil War carpetbaggers on, too many came to Arkansas to exploit it, swindle it, smirk at it and belittle it.
Frank Broyles came to treasure it. He treasured Arkansas 10 years before he lived in Arkansas. Because he never forgot his great cause to treasure Arkansas he accomplished greatness that Arkansas should forever treasure.
In his 50 Razorbacks years, 1958-76 as head football coach and 1973-2007 as athletic director, Broyles was the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's most recognized and remained so through his death Monday at 92.
In 1948 Broyles visited Fayetteville for the first time as a young Baylor assistant. It was love at first sight that Friday night before Saturday's game. He repeatedly recalled that 1948 visit seeing every store adorned in Razorbacks red.
Arkansas instantly became his dream job.
Broyles saw a state feverishly united like none he had ever seen for a college team.
He leaped at Arkansas' opening after head coaching Missouri one year.
Broyles was convinced an inspired Arkansas convinced it could overachieve would overachieve.
The convincing, Broyles said, was based on "relationships."
Relationships with those loving Arkansas and inspired by his enthusiastically exuded optimism.
He so loved Arkansas to turn down innumerable lucrative offers, his alma mater Georgia Tech and the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys among them, without hinting for a pay hike.
As a coach, especially from 1959-70 with six of his seven Southwest Conference championships and the 1964 national championship, Broyles is a Hall of Famer.
Broyles had an enormous ego fueling his optimism. Orville Henry wrote in the Arkansas Gazette that: "If Frank was getting run out of town he would think he's leading a parade."
Unlike most of outward ego, Broyles was so comfortable in himself to hire the best.
His first hire as an assistant, Wilson Matthews, was an Arkansas high school coaching legend and UA grad considered a Razorbacks candidate before Broyles was hired.
Their totally different styles meshed spectacularly both coaching and in administration.
Broyles knew newspapers and TV spread the word on the Razorbacks. So he kept his home phone number listed and his office door open. No appointment necessary.
You can't relate to folks if you don't see them. Frank saw them all.
All helped him turn the football only with underfunded tag-alongs he inherited into an all-round powerhouse.
Broyles is credited as a visionary transferring the UA from the Southwest Conference to the SEC.
Frankly, as Nolan Richardson once said to Billy Packer, "a blind man" could have seen that.
The vision was Broyles building the program to the all-round prowess coveted by the SEC. It was built on Broyles various coaching hires long lodged in their sport's Hall of Fames.
Basketball was a SWC stepchild under football's heel until Broyles, then the athletic director-football coach, hired Eddie Sutton in 1974. Sutton's spectacular success and the Houston Cougars entering the SEC prompted Texas Athletic Director-Football Coach Darrell Royal to hire Abe Lemons. That football league became a basketball hotbed.
Hiring Nolan Richardson, the first black head coach in the South of a major college's major sport, won a national championship beyond even Sutton's success.
Promoting John McDonnell to head men's track wrought 42 national championships and 84 conference championships.
Baseball coach Norm DeBriyn, hired in 1969 working half for baseball and half for the physical education department, was upped to full-time baseball late during the 1976 season. His Hogs finished national runner-up in 1979.
As his football successor, Broyles hired Lou Holtz going 11-1 in his 1977 debut with players Broyles bequeathed.
Great coaches like those nearly always have big egos. Their egos and Broyles' ego, sometimes through their fault and sometimes through his, inevitably clashed at times, sometimes severely like between Richardson and Broyles.
Ultimately all fences were mended. Richardson was among those paying public tribute to the AD opening the trail for him to blaze.
All who knew Frank Broyles always knew this: All greatness he accomplished and whatever mistakes he made, he did everything with his best intent for Arkansas.
No one ever arrived loving Arkansas more, and no one gave Arkansas greater cause to love him back.
Sports on 08/16/2017