This past week has been a coming-out party of sorts for Arkansas star guard Boogie Fland. First, on Tuesday night, the Hogs’ impressive freshmen led his team to a comeback win over No. 14 Michigan with a good chunk of the college-basketball world watching the victory from the World’s Most Famous Arena.
Fland noticed the crowd support, especially, during the game, pointing it out afterward.
“The atmosphere is crazy. We’ve got all our fans here,” Fland said. “We’re at Madison Square Garden, one of the most famous arenas. Let’s go out with a bang.”
Then, on Saturday afternoon, the spotlight wasn’t nearly as luminous for Arkansas’ tussle with UCA, but that didn’t mean Fland shone any less brightly. The Bronx, NY native became the first SEC player since John Wall to put up at least 16 points, 9 assists, 5 rebounds and 5 steals in a single contest as the Razorbacks romped to a 25-point win. Afterward, Fland said he was impressed by the number of Hog fans piling into the 18,000-person Simmons Bank Arena.
In both cases, the energy was easy for him to notice in large part because it’s been so absent when he’s played on his home court.
To say Bud Walton Arena has been lukewarm this year would be an understatement. The lack of warmth – both from voices and the lack of literal human bodies within the arena for Arkansas games – is more embarrassing this year than in years past, even, given John Calipari’s hiring away from Kentucky in the offseason and all the cachet that comes with having him as coach. And for a team itching to prove itself back among the bluebloods, embarrassments like that make Arkansas look more nouveau riche than anything.
Arkansas Remains Duke’s Little Cousin
Granted, things will change in the new year. Fland is already fantasizing about SEC games bringing teeming crowds to Bud Walton Arena, the kinds of masses he’s seen on the highlight clips from previous years that helped sell him on Arkansas in the first place. “I just feel like its’ going to be crazy,” Fland said of SEC play on Saturday. “The atmosphere is going to be nuts.”
And things were certainly different last season during much of non-conference play. Just a little over a year ago, when Arkansas fans rushed the Bud Walton Arena last year in November when the Hogs beat the seventh-ranked Blue Devils in a game that should have portended great things on the horizon.
Instead, it was the first and only impressive game the Razorbacks put together all season en route to a 16-17 record, the team’s first losing season in a decade. Duke, currently No. 2, has finished the season ranked inside the Top 10 in the nation 29 times in the last 40 seasons with 13 Final Fours in the span. The Razorbacks, who have, at times, considered themselves a potential public-school foil on the hardwood, have numbers of six (top-10 rankings) and three (Final Fours).
One of America’s favorite pastimes, anyway, is making fun of Duke, a school stereotyped as the college for spoiled white rich kids in a city that, until the 2020 census, held a plurality populace of black Americans. Durham, NC, after all, is the hometown of none other than Ricky Council IV.
The Blue Devils have lent themselves to the teasing, too, what with the bro-some, angry-faced dudes that have dotted the roster over those last 40 years, one of whom is the current head coach. So when Jack Winters, one of the school’s associate athletic directors, recently emailed fans about opposition infiltration at Cameron Indoor Stadium, you can imagine much of the American hoops landscape getting a good chuckle:
Arkansas, however, should save any jeers.
Duke is incorporating two of the exact measures a friend of Best of Arkansas Sports and Tommy Foltz recommended Arkansas employ in its struggle with attendance (even if the Blue Devils aren’t exactly struggling attendance-wise). And sounding a touch less desperate than Arkansas while at it.
Duke Is Getting Wrong Fans While Arkansas Is Getting Few Fans
See, Duke is watching opposing fans buy aftermarket tickets and sop up some of the atmospheric juice from Cameron Indoor (capacity: 9,314) and Winters responded with an admonition that feels largely toothless, like your mom saying Santa wasn’t coming this year because you won’t get your damn shoes on. … Or is that just my house?
Anyway, Arkansas, on the other hand, can’t even build juice, the Bud (capacity: 19,200) is so empty. The athletic department spoke some half-hearted words about the prohibition of selling tickets on third-party sites. Words that have fallen on deaf ears. And Arkansas would never really put claws on that threat, save in an occasional egregious violation. The school should, though, as Foltz suggested.
Right now, the Blue Devils are just sending out ol’ Winters, not exactly the sort of star-power face of an advertising/marketing/crisis communication campaign that is going to change minds. He is pushing hard for Duke fans who can’t make the game to give their tickets back to the school so the athletic department can ensure the tickets go into the hands of Blue Devils fans. To offset some of the monetary loss – which isn’t a technical loss, but third-party sellers can make serious dough selling tickets to a packed-out event – Duke will provide credit for the original cost of the ticket toward the would-be seller’s Iron Dukes account, which is the equivalent of Arkansas’ ‘A Club.’
“In other words, don’t make cash off your ticket. Give your money to us, instead!”
Still, it isn’t a bad trade-off, really, especially if the fan base truly wants to maximize their favorite school’s chances. Take Arkansas’ for example, a fan base which long clamored for a return to the glory days of those early-to-mid-1990s, when their favorite team could legitimately play as Duke’s rival, is on the verge of getting its way after the hiring of Calipari, but suffering the same problems. Not just the same problems as Duke (even though they’re not even, really, the same) but the same problems as before.
Arkansas, meanwhile, jumped straight to its big guns: Calipari has told fans directly on post-game shows to do the same: take part in Arkansas’ ticket exchange program. So far it isn’t hasn’t worked as he first mentioned it after the Pacific game November 18. Games against Maryland Eastern Shore and Texas-San Antonio appeared to have even fewer people.
A Nit-Picky Problem Or No?
The official Arkansas basketball attendance figures remain high. The Hogs, actually, finished fourth in the nation in average home attendance per game last year. Of course, that’s number of tickets sold, not butts-in-seats. As you can see above, Duke has no such issue. And, yes, Cameron has about 50% of the available capacity as Bud Walton. Still, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen a truly raucous environment in Fayetteville for a basketball game in the last five years, because even after bodies come through the door, intensity should be the standard and, mostly, it isn’t.
Step one has to come first, though.
What gives? Lots actually. Primarily, it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Arkansas athletics suffers the same qualm as lots of other mediocre big-conference schools. Even before the NIL, the Razorbacks were in an arms race for facilities and opening the checkbook for coaches. Bankrolling infrastructure and personnel, while increasing salaries for bloated staffs, takes money. Ticket prices to Arkansas basketball, baseball and football games skyrocketed. Money is, ultimately, what’s keeping people away. Not only is the cost of the ticket proper as out of reach for the proletariat and the bourgeois, but the purchased tickets buy the let-them-eat-cake crowd sell for three and four times their worth. And if the well-to-do don’t get a buyer? Just hold on to them. Because if you can’t triple your profit, what’s the point?
What used to be a middle-class family-fun weekend for a good chunk of Arkansans is out of reach. Corporate boxes, courtside seats and tickets behind the plate dominate the focus of the Razorbacks’ sales staff. The reason has nothing to do with either ‘Joe Biden’s America’ (i.e. inflation) or greed.
Stuffed-shirts don’t hoot and holler and get rowdy, generally. Middle-class morality is too much for them. College students do, obviously. As do out-of-towners, especially rural ones. And while the former can easily go to games, the latter cannot. But even collegians can’t be counted on for attendance for games against such stalwarts at UTSA, UMES, Troy, Pacific and Lipscomb. Hell, I was paid *to go* and nearly stayed home, anyway. Duke doesn’t have such problems. Even against Army, Cameron was full.
Fans Almost Everywhere Are Tuning Out
Things are so bad to that end, schools famously bad at sports are having the same damn problems, exacerbated by economic disparities that have only worsened in the last decade-plus.
That’s clearly what happened at Duke and it’s clearly what’s happening at Arkansas. The common fan might have wanted John Calipari and the coach is practically guaranteed to find success with the Razorbacks. It’s just many of those who sought Calipari, who long to be Duke, well, they are only going to get to watch it on television.
Because, let’s be real. Did you actually watch the Hogs’ win over Central Arkansas on Saturday?
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It’ll be better in SEC play, certainly…maybe.
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