Going to the Razorback Game

Richard Ruble, a member of my Promise Keeper group and a member of my church for as far back as I can remember, every year gets season tickets to Razorback games. Often he doesn't get to go to all of them and he'll find people to either buy or give his tickets to. I always let him know that I'm willing to take them if he can't find anyone else, and I've been lucky enough to use his Fayetteville tickets a couple of times.

This season, Richard called me a couple of times to go to Fayetteville, but both times they worked out where I couldn't make it. Never having gone to Little Rock for a ballgame (at least since my freshman year on campus), I figured I'd have to wait until next year to take Benjamin to his first Razorback game.

However, the day before the Hogs last game at home, which was down in LR, Richard called and asked if I wanted to go. I worked it out with Meron, since it was an early start (11:30 kickoff), and Benjamin and I headed on down to Little Rock.

Being that I'd never driven to a game at War Memorial Stadium, I had to try to find a place to park. I didn't want to get too close to the stadium, mainly because that'd be too pricey (but the side benefit of being able to get out early, because I already knew there was no way Benjamin was going to make it through the whole game) but I didn't want to walk terribly far.

After a little driving around the neighborhood, I finally parked at a school uphill from the stadium. You can see our trek on the map, though it doesn't really take into account elevation. (Apparently the map doesn't keep the markers, but the school was the big gap between Hillcrest and Kavanaugh and the stadium was at the very bottom of the map. It was a straight walk, downhill there, uphill back, for the most part.)

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Between the fact that we left later than I expected to, the trouble finding a place to park, and the walk to and into the stadium, we actually missed the kickoff of the game, which was too bad, because I thought Benjamin would have gotten a kick out of seeing the players run through the A the band makes. Still, we didn't miss any plays, I don't think.

Benjamin seemed to think the sights were pretty nice, but almost immediately he was asking for his real focus: a hot dog. We waited a few minutes to let the rest of the late arrivals come up and get to their seats, then hit the bathroom and the basically-vacant concession stands.

We both got a hot dog and a drink and then went back up to our seats. Benjamin got to work on the food while I watched the game. Mississippi State took an early 7-0 lead, but it didn't last very long. There were some nice plays, including a great bomb down the sidelines by Ryan Mallett that went for about 50 yards are so.

After the food was gone, Benjamin lost a lot of interest. He would go in spurts, get fired up and cheer, then start whining that he wanted to go home. I told him we were staying until halftime and tried to get him interested in seeing the band, but he'd have none of that.

Still, there were parts he liked. He loved seeing them run around with the Razorback flag after the Hogs scored. He got into the "Arkansas" "Razorbacks!" cheer with the other side of the stadium. A section or so over had a beach ball going in the crowd and he watched that with interest, hoping it'd come our way (though it never did). I let him take a couple of pictures with my cell phone, which had mixed results as you can see.

One of the times when he was wanting to go, I got him distracted by seeing if he'd guess whether they'd run or pass the ball on the coming play. He actually went four for four in guessing before missing one, including calling two runs in a row, which this incarnation of Hogs isn't necessarily known for doing.

When the field goal kicker missed a 50+ yarder with 2 seconds left in the half, though, it was time to go. We headed out, missing the crowd of course. By time we walked up the hill and got back into the car, halftime was over and the game was into the third quarter. We listened to it some on our way home, keeping track of what turned out to be a comfortable Razorback victory.

I made sure Benjamin thanked Richard the next day for the tickets and he told him that he'd had a good time. Richard said we'd have to make sure he got to do it again next year, maybe with a trip up to Fayetteville. I think Benjamin might be up for that!