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Prediction Time: What Does Rasputin's Crystal Ball Say About 2010?
by Arkansas Expats on Sep 2, 2010 1:44 PM CDT
in Football
5 comments
Not a moment too soon, here is our staff soothsayer Rasputin's forecast for the 2010 Razorback football season. A Russian immigrant who claims to be hundreds of years old and who sleeps every night in a chamber of pure oxygen, Rasputin (that's him in the picture above) has been a rabid Razorbacks football fan since the program's debut in 1894 under head coach John C. Futrall.
The forecast below was produced after months of fasting, meditating, drinking weapons-grade vodka, consuming peyote and examining animal entrails in disturbingly detailed fashion. We were going to have ole Raz write up his predictions but unfortunately, he overdid the vodka and peyote consumption. Fortunately, one of our staff interns is an expert at deciphering and translating his intoxicated ramblings. After the jump are Rasputin's predictions as translated by that poor intern:
Rating the Frosh
Chris Bahn makes his educated guesses on which freshmen will see the field this Saturday against Tennessee Tech.
Me Thinks Our Quarterback May Suffer from OCD
Ryan Mallet's appearance yesterday on ESPN2's "First Take" brought about the revelation that he likes to shower a lot, like somewhere in the ballpark of five times a day.
Dear god, Ryan - have you no consideration for the protective oils that your skin produces naturally? And if you don't care about them, then think about Mother Earth. She's one overextended broad these days.
SEC Power Poll: Preseason
by Arkansas Expats on Sep 1, 2010 7:00 AM CDT
2 comments
Once again, we're honored to be part of the prestigious SEC Power Poll, the grandaddy of all blogger-based football conference polls (or something like that). The official preseason poll deals with best/worst uniforms, and although we voted in that we don't feel strongly enough about the teams' fashion (except to rate Tennessee last) to repeat our thoughts in detail here. Instead, we're going old school and will rank the teams from best to worst like usual.
All this is subject to change once the games start, of course, but here's how things look to us now:
1. Alabama - Last year's conference/national champs are the easy #1 pick until someone proves otherwise. (Say it with us: September 25th!)
2. Florida - It's so stressful being Urban Meyer. He has to decide which new blue-chip players will replace the former blue-chip players who left after last season.
3. Georgia - As long as you're not their former athletic director, things are looking up for the Bulldogs. That game in Athens is going to be tough.
4. Arkansas - We all know the strengths and weaknesses here. The Hogs are poised to make a quick jump up (or down) depending on how the first month goes.
5. Auburn - Malzahn has gone into his lab and cooked up a powerful offense to go along with the Tigers' porous defense. Sound like any other team you know?
6. LSU - Plenty of talent, but a few tough losses and this will be the Hat's last year on the bayou.
7. South Carolina - Look for these guys to be lower in November, of course. And they still haven't been hit with the full fallout from the summer agent-related scandals.
8. Mississippi State - Dan Mullen & Co. are going to shock somebody this year...we just hope it's not the Hogs.
9. Ole Miss - They were a lot higher on our list until Masoli was ruled ineligible. On the bright side for him, we hear Mississippi has an excellent Parks & Recreation graduate program, and he can probably get student tickets to the games.
10. Kentucky - Only a few more weeks until basketball season!
11. Tennessee - We really really really wish the Hogs played the Vols this year.
12. Vanderbilt - You guys might as well get comfortable down here in the basement.
Time to Share Your Feelings
by John Expat on Aug 31, 2010 2:38 PM CDT
1 comment
Despite our well-deserved general image as beer-swilling, ass-kicking tough guys, we at Arkansas Expats, Inc are also sensitive types who are in touch with our feelings. So, when our corporate overlords at SB Nation introduced the "how are you feeling about your team" widget we thought it was a great idea.
In the upper left corner of the site (right under the logo), you'll notice a little widget with a sliding scale that allows you to register your confidence level in the team (100 being fully, perhaps irrationally, confident).
The idea is that you can register your feelings about the Hogs throughout the season (I put mine down as 90, for what it's worth) and the data will periodically be shared as a way of taking the fan base's collective temperature. Should be interesting.
So, don't forget to share your feelings as we go, and may the entire season remain as positive as possible. Feel the love!
Everything Is Gonna Be Great This Season, But...
by John Expat on Aug 31, 2010 11:40 AM CDT
in Football
5 comments
After many months of wandering in the sports desert, the Arkansas Razorbacks 2010 football season begins in a mere FOUR DAYS. And, if that weren't enough reason for excitement on its own, this year's team could be the best Hog squad in a long, long time. An all-universe offense, an allegedly improved defense, a coaching staff that's up to the task...what could go wrong?
As for that last question, well, this is Arkansas football we're talking about. Events over the last 40 years or so have too often conspired to give Hog fans a bit more kinship with Charlie Brown trying to kick that ball from Lucy than I'd like to admit. Every time the pieces start to come together, something else happens to knock them apart again.
Personally, I feel like this really could be the year we kick the ball right out of Lucy's hands. But, because this is a reality-based blog, we're going to acknowledge that history could repeat itself once again.
So, if you're not too squeamish, follow me after the jump for five things that are worrying me about this season:
Q&A: Tony Cherico, Part 4
by Arkansas Expats on Aug 30, 2010 4:20 PM CDT
in Football
0 comments
Hog fans who followed the football team in the 1980s no doubt have great memories of watching Tony Chercio, the undersized but tenacious noseguard who starred for Coach Ken Hatfield from 1984 to 1987. Cherico, who was an All-American in his senior season and a three-time member of the All-Southwest-Conference team, is now a defensive line coach for the legendary Barry Lunney Sr. at Bentonville High School in northwest Arkansas. In today's fourth and final installment (here are the links for the preceding segments: part 1, part 2 and part 3), Tony discusses his funniest teammates, "Miami Vice" and the intense love football players have for soap operas.
Expats: We’re always kind of interested in looking behind the scenes. In your days, there, were there any players that stood out as the guys that always kept things loose in the locker room?
Cherico: Oh, yeah. We always had a class clown. Bobby Joe Edmonds, he was legendary for some of the things that he would come up with. First of all, he had his own language. He was a running back. Sometimes, he would come up with stuff that would just floor you.
The other one would be I think Ravin Caldwell. Ravin was funny. He was a great athlete. He was Fort Smith Northside. Heck, he ended up playing in the league five years. He has two Super Bowl rings to show for it. Great athlete but he was a clown. He kept everybody loose.
The whole defense - we were hard-nosed, but we were fun. We were close-knit group of kids.
Greg Thomas on the offense, and Derrick Thomas. They were funny. Derek always used to do imitations of the coaches. [Steve] Atwater and Sammy Van Dyke. It was funny - we always had somebody who could imitate a coach to a tee.
It kept it light. It kept it fun. The one thing that we really had going for us when we were playing under Coach Hatfield is that it was a family-type atmosphere. We knew we were there to play ball and to win but yet we kept everything in perspective. It was a game, and it was fun.
Expats: This is another behind-the-scenes kind of question. When you look back on your playing days, is there any particular song or music that whenever you hear it -
Cherico: Oh man, you’re going to make me date myself to the 80s! The one show – I was there for four different seasons, so we kind of went through the whole gamut. You had "Alf," that was a comedy show that everybody watched.
Stonewall, Run a Post for General Lee: Reflections on our Saturday "Wars" Between the States
by KevinHog on Aug 30, 2010 11:24 AM CDT
0 comments
Below is a re-post of a piece I posted last year at this time. I couldn't top it with a new one this year, so I thought I would just change a date and share the post again. As I reread it, I couldn't help but think of the reporter who recently wore the wrong colors behind "enemy lines," so-to-speak. That people actually called in death threats reminds us how people can sadly go from fan to fanatic. But the general thesis below is that college football is actually a good substitute for our tribal instincts, and I think that idea still stands as the vast, vast majority of us don't issue death threats, just Hog calls.
To help kickoff the start of game week here at Arkansasexpats.com, here is a rather lenghty post that I've been working on during these long, hot, summer weeks of life without college football. Our wait, however, is nearly over. Come this time next week, we will have seen the 2010 Hogs take the field to begin this fall's campaign. In the mean time, I hope you will enjoy this look at the connections between the sport we love and the region that can claim to have its most passionate fans. Who knows, it might just be gameday by the time you get to the end of it!
In a comment that I posted back when our blog here was still Razorbackexpats.com, I remarked that I looked forward to having a certain shark eyed, business like coach on our sideline after the years of watching the emotional Houston Nutt flop around like a just caught crappie. I wrote that I wanted to see a coach with a killer instinct, not one who bites his nails. I wanted a coach whose men would coldly and efficiently put teams away while he calmly gave orders and sucked on a lemon, just like Stonewall Jackson once did. What I wanted was someone who would say, "Kill them, kill them all," in a matter of fact tone, just like Jackson at Fredericksburg, and mean it, so far as you can by the rules "kill" somone on a football field.
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