FAYETTEVILLE - An item in the July 31 edition of the Jonesboro Sun reflects a disturbing trend in college athletics in general and the University of Arkansas in particular.
The Jonesboro Sun reported: “University of Arkansas basketball coach Mike Anderson attended a Northeast Arkansas Razorback Club function at a downtown Jonesboro restaurant on Tuesday night. The Sun made an attempt to cover the private event but prior to Anderson’s arrival at the establishment, the assembled media was told it would have no access to the coach or the event itself.”
Razorback Clubs operate as private entities and certainly can close their doors if they see fit, but they deal with a very public state university’s very public athletic teams that in previous UA administrations held their functions very publicly.
Arkansas inclusion, not exclusion, always was the essence of the Razorbacks so indelibly woven into our state’s everyday fabric.
The more publicity, the greater the participation in the Razorback Clubs, previous administrations reasoned, and the more it made those in Arkansas locales far from Fayetteville feel a part of the UA with attending local media able to ask visiting coaches about the players their area have on the Hill.
That was the tried and true way, and it served Arkansas and the Razorbacks well.
Most Arkansans, regardless if they were tycoons or down to two bits, felt a part of the Razorbacks, which enabled the Razorbacks to fulfill their part in bonding Arkansans through good times and bad.
Now, as the UA brass targets the big bucks while pricing the average fan to the limit, many longtime UA fans and alums have said that it seems the Razorbacks are marketed on exclusion over inclusion.
More privileges for the privileged and less access for the masses isn’t the advertised message, of course, but it certainly seems the gist of it and is increasingly interpreted as such.
Also, it’s no coincidence that at the UA and throughout college athletics that media access to football practices has waned to zip while schools with their websites compete as media vs. media.
The UA’s website has bragged on Twitter of its football practice coverage exclusivity while all week the UA prohibited state and local media from Razorbacks’ workouts. Coach Bret Bielema did announce Friday on Twitter that today’s scrimmage would be open to media and fans.
A recent addition to the UA’s athletic administration was touted in the news release announcing his hiring for his athletic department’s program of “telling its own story” at his previous college workplace.
Public entities “telling their own stories” generally translates into propaganda.
Telling their own stories while walling off outside media was the Cold War stuff of which Radio Moscow and Pravda were made.
Nobody would compare the magnitude of Pravda propagandizing Communism to the stuff of a university propagandizing its football program while impeding sports media, but the basic premise is very much the same.
Such conduct should not be the stuff of public universities that also profess to teach journalism, communications and ethics.
It also should shake the family tree of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart, the son of an Arkansas newspaperman.
Sports, Pages 20 on 08/10/2013