FAYETTEVILLE -- Good thing for Norm DeBriyn that he will retire Jan. 6.
Knowing DeBriyn, he'll need a full four months of retirement into the spring just to unwind from the stress he will put on himself starting Sept. 1 as interim executive director of the Razorback Foundation.
Whether coaching or administrating, nobody at the University of Arkansas ever ached to do better than Norm DeBriyn nor literally aches like DeBriyn for others' pain along the way.
Some players that DeBriyn had to cut to get his Razorbacks baseball rosters down to the required size related tales that by the end of the process they felt sorrier for their coach's anguish than their own.
Many also went to great lengths to tell of the great lengths that DeBriyn stretched helping find them another opportunity elsewhere if it could not work out here.
So if he encounters a dissatisfied customer -- and the head of any fund-raising organization dealing in tickets and parking and status is sure to find some upset with something -- DeBriyn likely will become more dissatisfied with himself than the customer is dissatisfied with the issue. That's just the kind of guy Norm is.
A former Arkansas Razorbacks baseball coach (1969-2002) and an executive in the Razorback Foundation since his 2002 coaching retirement, DeBriyn has been summoned by Athletic Director Jeff Long to succeed Sean Rochelle.
Rochelle, an native of Elkins, will leave at the end of August to pursue an opportunity in private business.
DeBriyn is 73 and for a long while has intended to retire at the calendar end of 2015, but he will give Arkansas his all just as he always has since coming from Wisconsin. He will give it in the honest, earnest personable way that everyone wants in their next door neighbor.
In fact, DeBriyn is such a down-to-earth good guy that it seems he doesn't get the coaching recognition he deserves even though he was enshrined in the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Folks usually don't think extraordinary thoughts about their neighbor next door, but DeBriyn was an extraordinary coach with an extraordinary record of 1,161-650-6.
Along the way his Razorbacks, first playing the Fairgrounds and then at an American Legion field, qualified for Arkansas' first regional in 1973 as an independent and then won championships in the Southwest Conference and Southeastern Conference.
They went to four College World Series, which included a runner-up finish in 1979, and merited the UA first building George Cole Field in 1975 and finally Baum Stadium in 1996, which is still considered among the best in college baseball.
Arkansas built college baseball's best based on relationships.
A fund-raising relationship based not on power points but a handshake between DeBriyn and humbly retired Wal-Mart multi-millionaire Charlie Baum arranged by the auto mechanic, Billy Jack Mahan, who knew both and just knew they would get along.
Mahan and Baum have passed on, but with DeBriyn in the interim that true Arkansas-style fund-raising can live on.
Sports on 08/26/2015