Now What Do We Do? Tips on Surviving Until Fall Practice

It seems like ages have passed since Casey Dick went out a winner in Little Rock last November. The good vibe from the LSU game got us through not having a bowl game to go to ourselves. The basketball season, well, the less said the better. But now that spring practice has concluded for the football team (Red 49, White 21) we are left with getting through the rest of this month, May, June, and July without much going on with the football program. I hope the baseball team manages to make some more positive headlines, but for me it is going to be months of wishing the kickoff to the football season would hurry up and get here. In that spirit, I wrote the following ideas down as ways you can deal with these football-less months we have ahead of us. Feel free to add any tips of your own in the comment section.

1.) Have a contest with a friend on who can watch on youtube London Crawford's catch in the LSU game more than the other. As to the count, both of you will have to be on the honor system. You can make a prize or wager, but considering you are both watching a victory over LSU unfold, there are no real losers here. Well, except LSU, of course.

2.) Read back pages of Razorbackexpats. Focus on five out of the twelve games played last year.

3.) Turn the temperature down in your house as low as it can go, put on your cold weather Hog gear, gather family and friends into your smallest bathroom until you are packed in like red and white sardines, do the Hog call a few times, call it a victory, and then see who among you can write the best Wally Hall imitation column recapping the imaginary game. Give a free Mexican dinner to the winner.

4.) Create a spreadsheet from the summer college football magazines based on their predictions for the 2009 season. Get pissed about what is certain to be their lack of optimism (compared to your own), write your most homeresque letters to them, and then come back down to earth before you waste any money on a stamp.

5.) Alternative to the above. Just read the magazines at Wal Mart, still get pissed about their lack of faith in the Hogs, but save yourself the expense of the magazine itself.

6.) On your summer vacation at the beach, put your sand sculpting abilities to good use and create a sand Hog and then just dare the ocean to mess with it.

7.) Discover how fireworks and stuffed mascots from other SEC schools make a wonderful combination about around July the 4th.

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8.) Challenge yourself to learning how to sing the Razorback fight song in Latin. If you have that mastered by August, then why not Greek? NOTE: If you are thin skinned about charges of nerdiness, then be very selective amongst whom you share this new talent with! For its ALPHA, RHO, KAPPA, ALPHA, NU, SIGMA, ALPHA, SIGMA for Arkansas!

9.) Obressed by the heat? Then read Keats' "To Autumn." Insert lines about Fayetteville and Reynolds Razorback stadium where you think necessary.

10.) Hungry for stadium food? Then just find the nearest vending machine and put money in for your items, collect them, then put in the same amount of money, but then just walk away without collecting.

11.) Tell your kids that the name of all the lightning bugs they don't catch is Michael Smith. If they don't recognize the name, then take them to youtube and show them Smith's long TD run against Auburn. Tell them how some kids in Alabama still call the lightning bugs they don't catch, Fred Talley.

12.) Have friends over for a victory party after each weekend the Hogs avoid landing a member of the team in the Washington County jail. You can also among your friends select good citizenship fantasy teams. Hopefully all of you will be tied for first place by the time the season rolls around.

I don't want to call it thirteen (hey, you can't start the season superstitions too soon), but another idea that I know I will use is the watching of old games I have recorded, games that the Hogs always end up winning. It has been quite some time since I've watched the seven overtime game in Oxford, so maybe I will dust it off. I will just have to try to forget that one of those QB's recently won a Superbowl while the other is looking for a team. Something how the present has a way of messing up the past. The great thing about the 2009 season right now, it lives in the lily pure future where any and everything good is still a possibility.