Red Wolves boost profile with success

About this time every year, someone calls the sports department and kindly (more often that not) requests that we devote more coverage to Arkansas State.

This courtesy update usually follows a barrage of stories emanating from Southeastern Conference media days about the Arkansas Razorbacks. The news last week out of Hoover, Ala., annual site of the SEC media clambake, was especially grim with Arkansas, 3-9 last season, receiving the fewest votes of any conference school. This declaration, of course, required extensive analysis from this newspaper and other media outlets with Razorback-centric readerships who cannot get information about their favorite team.

Arkansas State, with much less fanfare from Sun Belt Conference media this week in New Orleans, is picked to finish second (behind Louisiana-Lafayette) in a league that it has won or shared the football title the last three years.

If history repeats itself, first-year ASU coach Blake Anderson will win enough games for a bigger-name NCAA Division I school to make him the focus of its coaching search. ASU has become the new Tulsa in this regard, Hugh Freeze (Ole Miss) and Gus Malzahn (Auburn) parlaying their success in Jonesboro to SEC jobs and Bryan Harsin returning to Boise State last December.

Anderson, a 13-year assistant at the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision level, most recently for two years on Larry Fedora's North Carolina staff, inherits a program on the rise while that of Arkansas has reached a 20-year low in the SEC.

Even so, Arkansas State can win the Sun Belt 10 years in a row and not become the state's flagship football program. ASU's home opener with Montana State will draw considerably less media attention than Arkansas' at Auburn a few hours earlier on Aug. 30. (That said, I would rather watch ASU's Week 2 game at Tennessee than Arkansas' against Nicholls State on the following Saturday.)

As anyone who can find the laces on a football knows, Arkansas does not schedule games against in-state schools (ASU, UALR, etc.). It has been written here that this matter should be looked at with fresh eyes, which I still maintain.

But as much as Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium needs filling, it is not the time for Arkansas legislators, with far more pressing issues at hand, to compel Arkansas and Arkansas State to play each other in football. Whether that convenient season will ever arise is debatable, although the Razorbacks look especially arrogant in scheduling other Sun Belt schools in football while ignoring one in northeast Arkansas.

ASU is developing a solid Garland County fan base, Lake Hamilton people this year keeping tabs on redshirt senior tight end Kenny Rains after following the Red Wolf careers of Philip Butterfield and Cole Lorigan. Believe it or not, a generation of Arkansas youth is growing up that wouldn't know Frank Broyles from Frank Zappa (both before their time) and sees Arkansas State turning out NFL-ready players. In an image-is-everything society, ASU chips away a little more at UA bedrock with each postseason appearance while the Hogs stay at home at bowl time.

If nothing else, ASU has shown resilience during its coaching changes. Red Wolf fans were miffed at Malzahn when he returned to Auburn, this time as head coach, after one season at Jonesboro, but ASU players didn't miss a beat as defensive coordinator John Thompson orchestrated a GoDaddy.com Bowl win over Northern Illinois. After Harsin accepted his dream job at Boise State last year, Thompson earned more kudos for another bowl win in Mobile, Ala., this one over Ball State. (Regretfully, Thompson, a native Arkansan, was not retained on Anderson's staff, landing at Sun Belt rival Texas State, which plays ASU at home on a Thursday night in November.)

"We're just a team that is used to winning," wide receiver J.D. McKissic said at SBC media days. "It's not something that we're going to let change. We're just a team that's aiming for a conference championship every year."

The Red Wolves might never bump the Razorbacks below the fold in the sports section, but an ASU football game is no longer a filler story.

Sports on 07/25/2014

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