Gameday Extra

11.26.2021 KEYS TO VICTORY What's in a number? This time, it's a lot of crazy good times and a lot of good luck. This week's Arkansas game with Missouri will finish the 30th regular season in the life of Hawgs Illustrated. The next printing will be the January 2022 edition of the magazine, Volume 31, Issue 1. It will be the 588th magazine printed. Mostly over the last 30 seasons, HI has been printed 20 times per calendar year, but there were only 12 in the first year because the magazine started in the spring. To be precise it was April 13, 1992, on a Friday. I love 13s so much that we put Jason Allen, wearing No. 13 on our first cover. We've been lucky ever since. There was only one pause where the sanity of such a project was questioned. Jean Ann, my wife of 43 years, reminded me last night about the drive home after the first game in the life of the magazine, an upset loss to The Citadel. "What have we gotten ourselves into?" she said, with an obvious reference that fan magazines do better with a winning team. (Yes, I am thankful for Sam Pittman.) Any uncertainty faded quickly. What you do is focus on the task at hand, printing another magazine and quickly move on to the next. In the off years, Jean Ann knew to stay clear of Dillards with her Christmas shopping. I wasn't the owner at the outset, acquiring the magazine in the fourth year, with help from silent partner George Billingsley. It was sold in Year 14 to Stephens Media. Gradually, that organization handed over ownership to WEHCO, where the magazine is now part of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. It's been a labor of love. I have never looked for another job in these 30 seasons and none were offered. Yes, it's a grind to do a weekly magazine during football season. Days off are rare. Mostly, the best I do is get half of a day to hit golf balls or wet a fly in a trout stream. It's important to take a little break. You can do that when the support team is strong. And, that's really what this commentary is about. The reason I sold the magazine to a media company was to get some real help. I was the only employee for the longest, filling in needs with contract labor. There was terrific help in those early days. The best was Dudley Dawson, the HI recruiting writer from the start. He knows what I'm going to do before I do it. I'm about the same with him. Our only issue comes when I don't give him enough direction when we need a change in course. I assume he's already thought of it. And, there is Brad Dunn, our general manager, the catch- all title we agreed upon when he became our director of sales after leaving basketball coaching in 2002. His No. 1 goal — and he's said that to me many times — is to never create a problem. He's a fixer. When he mentions an issue, he's already got the solution. My title is still publisher, but that's really not accurate. I'm really the executive editor, because I don't sign the checks anymore. The reason I sold was to take that pressure away. I'd discussed my predicament of growth with a couple of fan magazine publishers almost two decades ago. I needed help. I could hire a business manager or an editor and pick between those two jobs for my future with the magazine. Or, I could sell. The advice was not to let anyone handle "my" money. And because I liked the editor part the best, I sold. It's given me a chance to work with the best newspaper folks in the business. I don't have to deal with circulation or the business end. No longer am I the graphic designer. There has been outstanding editorial content from the start, partly because I learned quickly that if you are gong to call your publication "Illustrated" there must be good photos. In the early days, I leaned heavily on freelance shooters: James Smith, Chris Carroll, Walt Beazley and Tom Ewart. In the later years, the newspaper staff photographers — and that may be one dozen — have contributed outstanding portraits and action shots. Spencer Tirey, the chief photographer at the paper, has wonderful shooters. Marc Henning, Jason Ivester and Ben Goff all worked multiple years as full-time shooters for the magazine, helping with the paper as time allowed. Andy Shupe and Charlie Kaijo have been covering the bulk of the game shots of late, but there are a host of other top-shelf shooters from the paper who give us great photos. I once spent hours pouring over negatives and slides to pick photos. Now Matt Jones does that. He's the do-everything man for the magazine and WholeHogSports, the website that he upgraded for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and finally merged with HawgsIllustratd.com. There was a time when Matt was helping with both websites, doubling his work. He did it without complaint. At the same time, he was producing quality features and commentaries for the magazine. His love of baseball has helped enhance coverage of that sport on all of our platforms, print and digital. He's picked all the photos for the magazine the last two years. He's got a great working knowledge of the digital archives because of his time producing historical sports books. His deft touch in so many mediums and knowledge of Razorback history has been a tremendous asset. Matt's strengths are many. He can be a great writer, if that's his full-time focus. But he's also got three three pre-schoolers to track along with about four jobs for our company. But what's he's really good at is editing. I send everything I write to Matt. My stuff reads better after Matt has worked it. My time spent working with the newspaper has been glorious. The charge when I sold to Stephens Media: write a weekly column for their papers. I've done that, but it's sometimes become two during football season. Rusty Turner, executive editor for the NWADG, gets credit for the GameDay Extra project. I'd long written this column with the expanded keys to victory for our website. He wondered if it could also run as a special tabloid in the newspaper. Todd Nelson, then NWADG president, encouraged us to develop that idea and then promoted it. Our advertising director Brent Powers, now the current NWADG president, made sure his team sold it. It's been a fun ride all across the Southeastern Conference. Our team has designed creative ways to get to games and produce a weekly magazine. There have been private chartered flights, company planes, commercial planes and of late just lots of driving (because of my covid fears). Getting photos back to the production office was a challenge in the early years. We got "gate to gate" service with a plastic bag full of film canisters. Other times we took a portable dark room to process film, scan the images and build the pages for the disk to plate process to the printer. Sometimes computer towers with big monitors were set up in motel rooms to handle the production. There was no WiFi in the early days of the Internet. Downloading finished pages was sometimes done at copy shop. When Walmart added photo processing, we sometimes contracted for after-hour work in an SEC town. If they seemed reluctant to keep someone late in a Walmart photo lab in Athens, Ga., it was not uncommon for me to mention that our magazine was located in Bentonville and that the Waltons love the Razorbacks. A store manager probably knew that and it wasn't a terrible stretch. We did live in Rogers during those days. The production group has changed through the years, but two constants of late have been Fran Johnson and Kai Caddy. Fran reads copy and tracks ads. Kai does the graphic design. His covers are amazing. The writing team has changed through the years, but the feature writing of late has been off the charts with Jimmy Carter and Scottie Bordelon. Scottie came over from the paper to produce analysis for WholeHogSports and I run many of his best projects. We've always had solid writing, including many columns and features produced by Harry King and Nate Allen. My job has always been easier than some suspect because of great help in the newspaper business offices. Sandy Robinson, Sandy Thompson, Cathy Staggs and Carla Gardner polish and caress my budgets. They make me the star at every turn. This week's game with Missouri reminds of when I first got into covering big- time college sports. I'd spent time working at the Arkansas Gazette in high school and college, then worked a couple of years as the sports editor of the Conway Log Cabin Democrat. Sports editor Bill Connors asked me to become a college football writer at the Tulsa World in the summer of 1978 My first week — without a day in the office — began with the Big 8 Conference Skywriters Tour. The first plane trip originated (with writers and broadcasters on a 52-seat Convair 440) in Manhattan, Kan., and landed at Columbia, Mo. A huge chunk of tread from the nose wheel was lost on takeoff. The tower radioed to the pilot that we could have trouble making a safe landing. There were some serious looks around the cabin. However, some decided humor was the better approach. There were some great one- liners, per the usual with that kind of a crowd. "If you survive, here is a good phone number in Ames," said one writer. The radio play-by-play man from Oklahoma said, "There are about 50 bad jobs about to open up." COMMENTARY IT'S 30 YEARS OF MAGAZINES AND STILL COUNTING CLAY HENRY NWA Democrat-Gazette/Charlie Kaijo Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom is a former Mizzou player and coach. 507 South main Street • bentonville, arkanSaS 479-273-5545 • www.bentonvilleglaSS.com Bentonville Glass Inc. reSidential • automotive • commercial www.statefarm.com Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® Being a good neighbor is about more than just being there when things go completely wrong. It's also about being there for all of life's moments when things go perfectly right. Tim Pruitt Insurance Agency Inc. 3880 Willowood Ave. Suite A Springdale, AR 72762 479-751-6227 www.timpruitt.org Brad Scott Insurance Agency Inc. 2020 E Joyce Blvd, Suite 3 Fayetteville, AR 72703 479-443-0052 www.bradscottinsurance.com See KEYS, Page 4

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