UA planning to recognize its ‘First Fan’
Bill Clinton, the former U.S.
president and Arkansas governor, is planning to attend an Arkansas basketball game in Walton Arena later this season to be honored.
“They’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of Arkansas winning the national championship when I was president,” Clinton told ESPN. “They said that I was their sixth man and they wanted to put a No.
42 jersey [in the Walton Arena rafters] because I was the 42nd president, which I thought was really nice.”
Clinton, a former UA law professor who served as president from 1993-2001, became known as the Razorbacks’ “First Fan” when he attended several of their games, including their victory over Duke in Charlotte, N.C., to win the 1994 national championship.
UA spokesman Kevin Trainor said the university is working with the Clinton Foundation to honor him, but he couldn’t provide specific information about which game Clinton might attend.
The Razorbacks’ remaining home games are against LSU (Feb. 15), South Carolina (Feb. 19), Georgia (March 1) and Ole Miss (March 5).
Arkansas Coach Mike Anderson said Thursday when a reporter mentioned it that it was the first time he’d heard about plans to honor Clinton, but he supported the idea.
“When you talk about … a former president, a Hog fan, it doesn’t get any better than that,”Anderson said.
Sidney Moncrief’s No. 32 is the only jersey retired by Arkansas, but it isn’t hanging in Walton Arena.
Scotty Thurman, who starred on Arkansas’ national championship team and is now the Razorbacks’ director of student athlete development, said he hopes honoring Clinton will result in more former players having their jerseys retired.
“For him to be able to come back and have his jersey retired, I think, is a cool thing,” Thurman said. “I think it would probably be even much more exciting if we can start to have some of the former greats to be able to have their names put in the rafters as well.
“Hopefully, this will be something to get that jump-started. I mean, I love the former president and all, but he never scored any baskets here.”
Still on the payroll
They came from all corners, infants and senior citizens alike, a solid wall of people festooned in Seahawks gear, painted in Seahawks colors, crowded onto balconies and hanging from trees.
In the midst of the celebration at Century Link Field was the one person alive who has been therewith the Seahawks organization every step of the way. Sandy Gregory, director of community outreach, is the only original Seahawks employee left from the organization’s fledgling days in 1976.
Gregory was there in the Kingdome when the expansion team won two games that inaugural season, and dreams of a Super Bowl were as far-fetched as imagining a state-of-the-art outdoor stadium on the exact spot where they celebrated Wednesday.
So it was easy to understand her feelings Sunday, sitting in MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and watching as Percy Harvin return the second-half kickoff for a touchdown while realizing that the Seahawks were on their way to their first Super Bowl title.
“I was scared to get excited,” Gregory told Larry Stone of The Seattle Times. “At halftime, I was maybe not quite there yet. But when Percy returned the kick, I just started bawling. Everyone in the stands was hugging me, and I was literally bawling. That was the point you knew, we’ve got it.
We’ve sealed it now. It was just very emotional.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette staff writer Bob Holt contributed to this report.
Quote of the day
“I think he just brings an attitude that the program has probably lacked for some time. That it’s about us, it’s not about one guy.” Former Razorback Scotty Thurman on Arkansas freshman Bobby Portis
Sports, Pages 18 on 02/07/2014