OPINION — Like It Is

OPINION | WALLY HALL: In the past, coaches worked to impact lives


Standing outside the ballroom with some of greatest coaches in Arkansas history, it was almost overwhelming to share a time in history with guys like Ken Hatfield, Cliff Garrison, John Hutchcraft and too many others to list all the names.

Whether it was in high school, small college or the University of Arkansas, they have been difference makers in thousands of young people's lives, and last Friday many were assembled to be introduced as past inductees of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and to honor the new class of eight.

All of them, and every one of the newest class, thanked coaches for caring about them and helping them to make right decisions.

No doubt there is a generation or two that doesn't know men and women used to go into coaching to encourage and teach, just like someone had taken the time to do in their lives.

Sitting there listening to Shekinna Stricklen talk about the late great Pat Summitt or Jeff King and Norm DeBriyn and Fred Allen went all the way back to his junior high coach Johnny Greenwood -- it made for a moment of reflection.

All of those eight were unaffected by Name, Likeness and Image.

Today's young people may be elected into the Hall of Fame and take the time to thank the collective who negotiated their NIL deal, and that's why they went to the school they did.

Not to play for a certain coach. Not to represent a school or even a state. Today's athletes play for pay.

"I'm glad I don't have to deal with that," said one of the past inductees. "That's a nightmare in my opinion.'

Charles Barkley has called it the ruin of college athletics.

Those who are sitting on the outside watching this train wreck, most say the same thing: There are no rules, no regulations, no guidelines and no management.

When the NCAA was forced by the Supreme Court -- it must have been a really slow day for the most powerful law body in the country to take time to rule on sports, which at the core is still games -- to accept NIL, it just kept its head buried in the sand.

A recent article about Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin quoted him as saying he thought about taking the Auburn job because he was concerned about the total dollars the Rebels had in their NIL bank account.

When that article was published, overnight the Rebels' collective rose by millions to $10 million.

Kiffin decided to stay with the Rebels. Oh, he did get a pay raise to $9.5 million a year after an 8-5 season when Ole Miss lost four of its last five games.

The point is coaches know the playing field is not level.

And if you think it is bad for a Power 5 school, how would you like to be a mid-major or small college, especially in the face of the transfer portal where kids can now be lured to a different school with cold hard cash?

Yours truly didn't play sports after junior high. Everyone else got another growth spurt or two, but the late great Clyde Horton, one of best track coaches and men ever, impacted my life every day at Central High until he was activated for the Pueblo Crisis in 1968. He shipped out almost immediately.

He never cared that I had deceptive speed -- I was slower than I looked -- or got winded after running a block .

Like all those men who were at the Statehouse Convention Center last Friday night, and not all of them were being honored or had been honored but could and should be some day, Horton cared about young people.

They went into coaching to make a difference, to pay ahead for someone who touched their lives, and not one of them had to deal with the NIL and are better off for it.


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