The boys have been talking,” writes a reader, who continues, “The firings of Jeff Long and Bret Bielema call for nuanced observations from the East Arkansas car lot. We hope Bubba could also comment on the first-ever female athletic director the University of Arkansas has employed. Thank you for your consideration.”
Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here.
You’ve figured out that you don’t have to read my view if you can persuade me to drive east to visit with Bubba McCoy and pass along his instead.
I’m just glad you’ll read this space either way. I shouldn’t look a gift-good ol’ boy in the mouth.
Bubba was home Sunday afternoon, reared way back in that recliner with much of his lunch arrayed on his T-shirt. Mrs. Bubba escorted me back to the den.
Her name is Johnnie Lou, which I am ashamed to say I didn’t know until Sunday, maybe because Bubba never calls her anything but “the wife.”
She was infinitely more charming than Bubba had ever let on. She brought me a small slice of warm banana bread and a cup of hot black coffee. She said she’d bring Bubba some but that there didn’t appear to be enough room left on his shirt.
A TV screen of a size suggesting Bubba might have bought it from the old Cinema 150 in Little Rock was showing Kansas City versus Buffalo.
I asked Bubba who he was rooting for.
“Oh, I don’t care. It’s just football. They hike it. They throw it. They run with it. They try to kill each other. And I don’t have to do anything but sit back here and fall in and out of consciousness. I can always count on my snoring to wake me up.
“Anyway, what would I do on a Sunday afternoon in the fall if I wasn’t sitting here looking at pro football?”
I told him Johnnie Lou could probably think of something.
“She figured out a long time ago that lettin’ this TV babysit me at nights and on weekends makes her life a whole lot more tolerable. I told a guy the other day that she and I separated about 1989, but neither of us ever worked up the energy to move out of the house.”
He said he’d been at deer camp. I said I thought he’d told me he must have low-T because he didn’t want to kill a deer anymore.
“I didn’t say I went deer-hunting,” he said. “I figured out the only way I was ever going to have bacon for breakfast again and a grilled ribeye for dinner was to get shed of her for a few days and cook for everybody at deer camp. I made some venison chili one night. She told me if I died out there not to bother having anybody send me back, because she had better things to do than bury a suicide victim.”
Oh, I don’t think a few strips of bacon and one big juicy ribeye is going to hurt you, I said.
“That’s what I told her,” he said. “I thought that’s what the stent was for — to keep the blood running no matter how much grease I send through there with it.”
I told him that might not be a solid medical analysis. He said that’s what she said.
Look, I said, people want to know what you’re making of this business with Bret Bielema and the woman athletic director.
“Ain’t she a pistol?” he replied. “She looked ’em right in the eye and said, ‘I’ll pick your new football coach for you whether you like or not, Buster.’
“Hell, I about half expect her to pick herself. I can see her on the sideline next year standing on one of those things they have for the band leader so she can look her quarterback in the eye when she tells him to get his head out of wherever he keeps it.”
So, you like her?
“I’m not saying I like her. I’m amused by her. At my age, with this ticker, that’s all I’m looking for.”
What about Bielema?
“I think, with him leavin’ the state, it’s between you and me on who’s most likely to explode first.”
But did the coach get treated fairly?
“Oh, sure. Look, the best year of my life was 1964, although that was when I officially flunked out at Fayetteville. But Arkansas had a Miss America that year, Donna Axum. And we won the national championship with a defense that shut out its last five opponents. I’m talking nary a point. This guy comes in here and we’re scoring 40 a game and still losing. I think they’re still trying to count up how many yards Auburn got against us the last two years. I didn’t have any trouble with firing him right after the last game. I’d have fired him in the third quarter of that game against the Coast Guard.”
The Coast Guard?
“Oh, you know. Whoever that was. Coast somethin’ …”
Coastal Carolina.
“Whatever.”
Speaking of Auburn, would Bubba like to see Gus Malzahn as the new coach?
“I don’t care. I don’t think they’re going to be all that good ever again, even if they get Gus. They’re more like Kansas anymore than Alabama.
“The fact of the matter is that they were good back in the pre-integration days only because they were in the old SWC playing Rice and such.
“They’ve got two options if they ever want to get good again. One is to go the Ole Miss route and cheat. The other is to get Pitino a new motorcycle.”
Pitino?
“Oh, hell, what was his name?”
Petrino.
“That’s what I said.”
So, was Bubba saying that all was pretty much lost for any return to Razorback glory?
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
I told him I wouldn’t dare try to put words in his mouth because most of them would wind up crumbs on his stomach.
“All I’m saying,” he explained, “is that this stent is my ticket to a front-row seat for the freak show. That’s all.”
He invited me to drive by the car lot and see a Toyota 4Runner he had out front. He continues to covet my Jeep Patriot because he thinks Delta parents will fight over it for their teenaged daughters.
“I’d take you over there myself, but I’d rather not try to get up.”
I told him to keep his seat, then bid a pleasant farewell on my way out to Johnnie Lou, thanking her for the delicious banana bread and telling her to take good care of the rascal.
“I’d miss him if he was gone, I guess,” she said.
I fired up the four cylinders for the girly ride back to Little Rock.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.