The first thing any Razorbacks enthusiast might say about Rick Schaeffer's new book is that it's too short. Schaeffer cites merely 100 Things Arkansas Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (Triumph Books, $14.95).
The University of Arkansas football expert -- former sports information director -- agrees he could have filled many more pages.
"God has blessed me with a good memory," Schaeffer, 63, says. "I grew up in Oklahoma, but I was a Razorbacks fan. I loved the Hogs on the helmets."
He can recount details from games he heard on the radio 50 years ago -- and would, if these were the sports pages. But the features section goes for insight into the writer's life, that sort of thing.
Inspiration -- better yet, frustration -- makes for a great line of questioning. What does the author punt himself for having left out?
"Jim Benton," Schaeffer says. "Jim Benton was a great wide receiver."
This was in the 1930s, and even legends fade over time. But Schaeffer got acquainted with the man, and remembers "he had the biggest hands of any human being I've ever known."
Compromises and omissions had to be made to include not just football, but also basketball, and then things to do besides watch the game. Besides tailgating, even. The publisher insisted, and so the book includes a chapter on -- Crystal Bridges? Yessir, the art museum in Bentonville.
"Even if sports is all you care about," Schaeffer says -- and if so, he understands -- "you still should go to Crystal Bridges." Tackle some world-class art scarcely more than a fast break from Bud Walton Arena.
The arena is something else every fan should know and do, in Schaeffer's book. Sam Walton's brother, Wal-Mart co-founder and Razorbacks fan Bud Walton, chipped in half the cost of the "palatial home," millions and millions. Having made the pledge, he went off hunting.
Who knew?
Right you are, sports fan, the nearly 20,000-seat stadium is hardly a secret -- more like the first drop in a Hog fan's bucket list.
But Schaeffer may have the biggest expertise on Arkansas athletics of any human being. He is "the Fort Knox of Razorbacks history," former Hogs quarterback Quinn Grovey writes in the book's foreword.
Schaeffer displays this acumen on Drivetime Sports, the radio show he co-hosts with Randy Rainwater on KABZ-FM 103.7, "The Buzz." And he fills the 236-page book with a locker-load of who-knews, such as:
• The University of Arkansas football team took to the field in 1904, but not as the Hogs -- they were the Cardinals. Schaeffer credits the name change to early-day coach Hugo Bezdek, who said his team played "like a wild band of razorback hogs."
To this day, the exact details of the bird-to-pig transformation remain a mystery. "Nobody can find any documentation" on how it happened, Schaeffer says, "but it did."
• Calling the Hogs is a tradition from the 1920s. Schaeffer relates the story of how "Wooo Pig Sooie" supposedly started. The Hogs were losing, he writes, "when a pig farmer in the crowd starting imitating how he would call his own hogs. Other fans picked it up. Legend has it the Razorbacks rallied for a victory."
• And the No. 1 thing to know: all about Razorbacks former coach and athletic director Frank Broyles. Schaeffer wrote 100 Things Arkansas Fans Should Know ... on a break from his larger work in progress, a biography of Broyles.
"You could argue that Frank Broyles is the most influential man in the history of the state," Schaeffer says. Do that, and he will back you up.
Other headings include "Powder River Play," "Houston Nutt," "Tailgating at War Memorial Stadium," "Bob Cheyne" (the university's first sports information director, to whom the book is dedicated), "World's Largest Scoreboard," "The 25 Little Pigs" (the small but legendarily tough football squad of 1954), and "Hogs on the Helmets."
The new book is the Fayetteville author's third on UA sports. He is a color commentator on broadcasts of the Razorbacks' football and basketball games, and still gets a kick out of the Hogs emblem.
"I can't get enough," Schaeffer says. He has learned to take losses better than he used to: "I don't sulk. But during the games themselves, I still get very involved."
Style on 09/23/2014