Ask the Arkansas fans
I can't believe the committee that is to select our new football coach is going to pay someone to help them make that selection. A complete fool knows who the people of Arkansas want. Why doesn't someone ask the Arkansas fans who fill the stadium on Saturdays who they want as their next football coach? If you don't already know, you shouldn't be on the selection committee.
Wake up, committee, and kick your brain into gear. For Pete's sake, please use your head for something other than a hat rack. Remember, they don't play touch football in the SEC.
JOHN LANDERS
Benton
Advice for interim AD
Wally Hall's column on Sunday was 100 percent correct. Julie Cromer Peoples, the interim athletic director, seems clueless about Razorback football. Obviously, she was auditioning for the job full-time during her news conference, but she came off like she knew everything there was to know about recruiting a new football coach and needed no one's help.
Let me give her some advice. A good football coach is not a commodity that can be bought like furniture or shoulder pads. In many ways, football coaches are more important to the university than the chancellor, athletic director and certainly an associate athletic director. Statistics have shown that a school that has a winning football program has a much greater ability to attract top students, alumni support and big donors. The reverse happens when football falls on hard times.
I suggest Ms. Cromer Peoples contact a few of the former players, boosters and coaches to understand the passion of Razorback fans and elicit their support and advice. In Arkansas, the Razorbacks are unique and cannot be treated just like another college who recruits another football coach. The fit has to be perfect.
TIM IRBY
Little Rock
Thank you, Coach B
I applaud all of those who have written in supporting Coach Bret Bielema. I am heartsick over his dismissal. I am convinced that he was turning a corner after this year and we would see nothing but up. It takes a while to raise that phoenix. With his young players and the recruits I saw possibly coming next year, I am sure he would have gone no less than 6-6 next season.
I do not agree with Wally Hall that next year's coach would do good to win four or five games. If that happens, I will consider the Board of Trustees responsible for the mess. The trustees are the ones I think need to be fired. Bielema was making men of these boys so they could go into the world and be successful. Thanks, Coach Bielema.
For those talking about the people in the stands--you should note that a majority of ticket-holders were in those stands. Only the fly-by-night minority fans were missing--those fans only concerned with the win/loss record. I do not call those fans true Razorbacks.
I will always call the Hogs.
BECKY SMITH
Fayetteville
Disgusted with firing
To the University of Arkansas board, its Athletic Department and its interim athletic director: I graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree, and in 1970 with a Juris Doctorate degree.
I have been a loyal fan of the Razorbacks for 70 years and a contributor for 55 years. I wish to share my absolute disgust in the manner in which Coach Bret Bielema was fired. It was shameful and he and his family deserved better.
Coach Bielema is a man of the highest character and integrity and a credit to the University of Arkansas. He did not win as many games as you would have liked, but he improved the program in many ways, which I consider to be of much greater value than winning all of the time, and he did exhibit a powerful winning record prior to his arrival at Fayetteville.
I wish that you had a small portion of the class exhibited by Coach Bielema in his response to your abysmal behavior in his firing, and wish him and his family all the best at his new job and their new home.
It will take many years and a vast improvement in your policies for you to regain my trust, respect and loyalty, and I suspect the same for many of the faithful.
EUDOX PATTERSON
Hot Springs
Athlete's memories
There was a piece in last Sunday's paper about black athletes in Arkansas before integration, and it was very informative, but I would like to add a group of black high school athletes that were coached by Dr. J.C. Babbs, who was a great athlete himself at Arkansas AM&N College.
In the mid-1950s, Cotton Plant Vocational High School's baseball team had an undefeated season and won the state championship game against Merrill High in Pine Bluff, but we were never talked about, even though four of our players were invited to the St. Louis Cardinals tryout camp. I was the second baseman on that team and was one of the players that went to try out with the Cardinals.
I also played basketball and remember playing against Eddie Myles, and how he beat us almost single-handed. I played against one great basketball player from Newport by the name of Jim Barnes, who went to the NBA.
I have to mention the third baseman on our team; you may have heard of him or been treated medically by him--Dr. Raymond Miller, one of the four.
CLEODIS SMITH
Cotton Plant
Editorial on 12/02/2017