Should a Football School Make Room for Basketball?

It’s been more than 18 years since Arkansas played its first football game as a member of the Southeastern Conference, and one has to wonder if it finally has become a bona fide member.

In other words, is Arkansas, like the vast majority of its SEC counterparts, nothing more than a football school now? Is basketball nothing more than a way to kill time between football season and spring practice?

That might please those like former football star Steve Korte, who once admitted to putting his Razorbacks cap on a shelf for much of the 1990s. Only when ex-coach Houston Nutt finally breathed some much-needed new life into the football program did Korte start donning his cap more frequently.

“It used to just bother me to death,” Korte said of the Razorbacks’ on-field struggles for much of the 1990s. “The program really lost its spark somewhere. It almost became a basketball school. It was disheartening.”

Korte said those words in 1998, and he was partly joking. His fondness for Arkansas and his time here couldn’t have been clearer.

Still, like a lot of Hog fans, Korte’s true love is football. And for all those who rank football first, second and third, and basketball somewhere after that, the recent announcement by the school’s board of trustees must have been especially sweet.

The board made known Jan. 28 its intent to issue bonds that will fund a new $35 million, football-related facility. Assuming nothing changes between now and the April 1 vote that will make it official, Arkansas soon will begin the process that will result in an 80,000-SF football operations center.

Here is some of what the center will include:

• Locker rooms
• Meeting rooms
• Office space for coaches
• Training and equipment rooms
• A recruiting reception area
• A football museum

There also will be a new practice field, complete with a parking deck underneath it. The whole thing, no doubt, will be quite snazzy, even in the football-mad SEC.

This is on top of coach Bobby Petrino’s contract extension and pay raise. Then there are the recently announced raises for all of his assistants.

It’s hard to blame athletic director Jeff Long, though, for investing in football. In addition to its function as the department’s primary breadwinner, interest and support are at an all-time high.

It’s that whole strike-while-the-iron-is-hot idea.

On the flip side, though, it also seems safe to wonder if an irreversible shift in focus is being made. Could basketball become an afterthought at Arkansas the way it is at, say, Auburn or Alabama or Georgia or LSU?

Frankly, outside of Kentucky, most SEC schools care about basketball about as much as Hugh Hefner cares about a generation gap. Not so much.

The guess here, though, is Long fully realizes how much money all those empty seats in Bud Walton Arena aren’t producing. Some of the wide-angle TV shots during a January win over Auburn were enough to make one wonder who ate the most hot dogs that night – those in the media workroom or those who actually paid for a ticket.

Die-hards will say help is on the way in the form of a highly touted recruiting class. Particularly fanatic fans are even throwing around “Triplets” talk.

More skeptical types might point to another ballyhooed class, the one that included Rotnei Clarke, Courtney Fortson, Jason Henry and Brandon Moore. We all know what happened to that one.

Whatever side you’re on, the truth is Arkansas’ basketball program could be second-best in the SEC relatively easily. While Kentucky is entrenched at the top, who’s next?

Florida?

Tennesse?

Really?

That’s why, with the football facility deal all but done, it will be interesting to see what happens now that Long can turn his full attention to hoops. Long refused to tip his hand in a radio interview recently, noting a third of the season has yet to be played.

Smart money says those games will determine coach John Pelphrey’s future. In a season in which the SEC barely deserves mid-major status, that should be good news for Pelphrey and his supporters.

Their only other hope would be that Long is content to make Arkansas a football school at basketball’s expense. That, however, doesn’t make dollars or sense.