Editorial

Undefeated UALR

A new football team would be a fumble

Does the University of Arkansas at Little Rock need a football team? Does a boar hog need a T-shirt from the campus bookstore?

Maybe a boar hog does need a T-shirt, one that says "UALR Football. Undefeated since 1956." We needed it, and ran out to buy it right after reading about a candidate for chancellor whose enthusiasm for football at Boise State caused his mind to run amok with the idea of a team on South University.

Mark Rudin is his name. He's one of three top candidates to replace the down-to-earth, reasoned and reasonable Joel Anderson. The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees will meet in little ol' Nashville, Ark., on May 25 to decide who gets to lead UALR headlong into the future.

Our reporter Jeannie Roberts traveled to Boise, Idaho, to meet and interview Mr. Rudin. The profile, published this past Sunday, was a public service. As are the profiles written about the other candidates, Cheryl Lovell of the Colorado State University system and Andrew Rogerson of Sonoma State University in California.

It's a big job, being chancellor of the state's urban university, an institution that especially serves non-traditional students. Typically UALR's students are older than the callow youth of other universities. They're largely transfers, working people and parents who have come back to campus to resume their studies.

Many of them offer a profile in academic courage. It's not easy trying to earn that sheepskin at night while working all day.

Mr. Rudin was taking Ms. Roberts around campus at Boise State. Any such thing would be incomplete without a visit to the famous blue football field and, as Ms. Roberts reported, 15 minutes of why football is good.

And it is. For the University of Arkansas and its fantastically paid coaching staff. But for UALR, a football team would resemble Ross Perot's giant sucking sound as prodigious amounts of money were spent to start and maintain a team.

Having a team was a lot easier back in the day, the day being the 1940s and 1950s when Little Rock University was a junior college power, peaking with an undefeated season in 1949 and a victory over Santa Ana in the Junior Rose Bowl.

That was then. This is now. And now for UALR sports is the basketball team. You know, the one that beat Purdue in the NCAA tournament back in March.

UALR football. Undefeated since 1956. Let's keep it that way.

Editorial on 05/14/2016

Upcoming Events