Jarius Wright and Joe Adams have seen the flood of criticism.
In the last few days, the two great former UA receivers have been catching flak from some Arkansas football fans who feel like they acting entitled by expecting to get into the locker room after the Hogs’ win vs Saturday night.
A couple of accounts since then – one by Jarius’ wife in a Facebook post and the other by David Bazzel on the radio – contradicted each other on exactly who was to blame for the reason Adams and Wright were turned away before they could see their former head coach Bobby Petrino, now the Razorbacks’ offensive coordinator.
They know that a lot of Arkansas football fans got the impression that they are selfish former stars who feel like they have the right to barge their way into the company of the current staff and players.
But that’s not the case at all, Wright and Adams said in the most recent episode of the “4th and 5” podcast.
In the episode, they explain that they waited about 30-45 minutes to head down from their suite at Reynolds Razorback Stadium and on a whim see if they could meet with Petrino as well as show some support to the current Razorbacks. Wright was careful to note they waited to head down out of respect for the coaches’ post-game talks.
“We played in so many games,” he said. “We understand we’ve been to that highest level and done that. We understand not to walk in while the coaches are speaking right after the game.”
For those who think the Hogs’ all-time leading receiver expects the cardinal red carpet rolled out for him wherever he goes, the 34-year-old Warren native has a message: Jarius Wright pays for his tickets just like you do.
“I’m a season ticket holder,” he said. “I don’t ask the university anything. I’ll buy my own. It’s my way of giving back to the university.”
“I did read some of the comments and I read the [talk of] entitlement and all this stuff. It is funny how people throw things out and don’t know the full story.”
New Details Emerge around Arkansas Football Stars Denied
Part of that full story, interestingly, is that Wright said an actual Arkansas football staffer escorted them, a detail that had been lacking from the previous accounts. “We actually had a staff member who was going to walk us back, and that’s when we – and he – was denied. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
Why the staffer would have been denied access as well is unclear, although perhaps he didn’t have the proper ID himself. Regardless, Adams and Wright lacked a media pass and were stopped by a security guard. “It’s not like we tried to force our way in there or anything like that,” Joe Adams said. “We were sitting there having a good conversation with the security and they just told us that we couldn’t go back there. So we pretty much left.”
Besides just catching up with Petrino, both former greats wanted to be ambassadors for the program by putting in some face time with the current Razorbacks. They want to show the kind of in-person support that Adams, at least, wished he would have gotten when playing 15 years ago.
“We had guys that we didn’t get to see – if Darren McFadden and them would’ve been coming back, you know how much that would’ve did for us too?,” Adams said. “Not just for us but now recruits… Just to have them pop up sometime on us, Anthony Lucas or any of them.”
“I think it’s very beneficial if the new recruits see us coming back,” Wright said in an earlier part of the podcast.
“We love Arkansas man. We dedicated our life to Arkansas. We still live here in Arkansas, we coach high school football.”
Adams added: “We’ve always tried to give back to Arkansas.”
Best of Arkansas Sports’ Response to DJ Williams
PS: At end of the below video, DJ Williams accuses me of taking the Facebook post of Jarius Wright’s wife out of context in my original article about the locker room drama. I disagree. I simply reported what Mary Katherine Bentley Wright posted and then tried to add some context on the fly by reaching out to Jarius himself as well as a few other Razorbacks.
I also made sure to include the voice of Peyton Hillis, who had made a similar complaint a few years ago.
On top of that, I tried to present valid reasons for why the university in these post-COVID times would deny access to post-game fraternizing with former players. Yes, in a perfect world, on Saturday night I would have gotten immediate feedback from 20 former Razorbacks and from the UA itself to present a fully formed article.
That, however, wasn’t possible on such a short timeline, so I wrote the piece with the caveat that more reporting over the coming days would surely reveal key details. That’s exactly what has happened with David Bazzel’s account and now this interview. But those key details don’t invalidate the original article based on the angry social media post or why it’s significant that quite a few former Hogs agreed with it.
“I wasn’t expecting it to blow up the way it did, but it kind of seems like it shed a little light on what might be a problem,” Wright said.
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