Over the weekend, former Arkansas football stars Jarius Wright and Joe Adams jumped into the spotlight again after a social media post surfaced stating that they had been denied access to the UA locker room after Arkansas’ win over UAB game in Fayetteville.
On Saturday night, I reported on that Facebook post by Jarius Wright’s wife while making a point that there was plenty left to be discovered in the coming days before getting a fuller sense of what actually went down at Reynolds Razorback Stadium. In the initial piece, BoAS contacted multiple former Hogs, including Jarius Wright, to better understand the situation. I was careful to point out there were many reasons why locker room access could reasonably be denied in a post-COVID college football world.
While some perceived the report as a type of hit piece, we at BoAS believe that it’s important to report and “weigh in on the most important or interesting news of the day,” as is laid out in our mission statement. “We don’t write opinion pieces based on whether they could hurt recruiting or not. Doing so would disservice readers by simply being a mouthpiece for ‘positive’ news and opinion.”
In service to you readers, then, let’s look at an eyewitness account of what happened which seems to contradict some of that initial Facebook post.
The account comes to us from David Bazzel, co-host of the Morning Mayhem show on The Buzz 103.7 FM and founder of the Little Rock Touchdown Club.
On the radio on Monday morning, Bazzel said that he and Steve Sullivan, the KATV Channel 7 sports anchor, ran into Joe Adams and Jarius Wright in the immediate aftermath of the Hogs’ 37-27 win at Reynolds Razorback Stadium that did nothing to move the needle on their chances of winning the 2024 SEC league title according to www.promoguy.us.
Adams and Wright, as well as their wives, wanted to enter into an elevator to go down to the ground floor near the locker room and press conference room. Because they lacked a media pass, the elevator attendant told them they couldn’t go down, as Bazzel recalls.
“I said, ‘They’re former players. Would you just let ’em go down there to see if they can get in there?'”
Not Recognizing Arkansas Football Stars
In such a case without a media pass, getting close to the coaches and players can come down to the luck of the draw. If the security guard knows you, you can be waived on, Bazzel said.
When Sullivan and Bazzel got down to the floor level, they had to leave the two couples behind to make sure to catch Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman’s opening remarks.
“So apparently they did not get in and somebody, I think, came out so they treated him badly,” added Bazzel, a former Razorback football player himself.
According to Mary Katherine Wright’s now-deleted post, the reason they were denied access was not on the security guards, as “they loved seeing them and happily ushered them to the doors.”
But in Bazzel’s account on Morning Mayhem, it was a guard or attendant who didn’t recognize Wright and Adams and made the final call in turning them away, not some higher-up.
“You can’t blame that security person for going ‘I’m sorry, I don’t see a pass. I’ll get fired’ if I let you through.”
Bazzel added: “If I’d had more time, I’d have turned around and tried to come back and try to talk them into it.”
The guard “still would’ve probably said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do it.'”
Assuming a security guard or attendant did make the final call to deny access, then that certainly casts the UA in a better light when it comes to this one specific incident.
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See more here:
Bazzel explain the story starting at the 1 hour, 27 minute and 20 second mark here:
Mike Irwin on defensive backs and rumors
In the latest “Ask Mike,” Mike Irwin dropped some interesting speculation about Hudson Clark, the senior
Arkansas defensive back who exited the OSU game with a back injury and never returned. “You may have lost Hudson Clark for the year,” he said. “They haven’t said that, but I’m hearing rumors that this situation with him is not good. So I don’t know. I hope he can be back next week.”
That would mean younger DBs like TJ Metcalf need to step up. “I think TJ Metcalf is a talent, he said, but “Metcalf just needs to stop running his mouth and play football and stop overrunning ball players and pulling their helmets off.”
See more at 23:25 here:
More on Arkansas football from BoAS:
