PEA RIDGE — Just as the girders and beams go up on the new athletic building on the high school campus, the Blackhawk football team continues to build toward the future with a perhaps record number of erstwhile players looking to the coming fall.

It is reported than more than 60 players have been working out for head coach Tony Travis’ 2011 edition of the gridiron ’Hawks and there is a new coach that will be walking the sidelines with Travis this fall.

Lafe Caton, who coached for many years for Rogers High School, most recently was the defensive co-ordinator of the Nashville Scrappers, a team that went 10-3 last season, losing to eventual state champion Shiloh in the state playoff quarterfinals.

Caton attended my alma mater, Harding University in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I was the sports writer for the Harding until I left in 1976, but I received a lot of sports information from the university afterwards and I remember coach Caton’s football playing career in some of the press releases. He most recently made the news when a Harding player broke Caton’scareer kickoff return yardage record which stood for 27 years at Harding.

A seasoned, successful athlete and coach, Caton’s coming is one more piece in the building of the Blackhawks’ football future. As I have said before concerning the coming of coach Travis, Caton didn’t come to Pea Ridge just because he needed a job, he’s coming here to build and to win.

If Pea Ridge can continue to get more students to get behind the team as players or supporters, success will follow.

Is the NCAA down on Razorbacks?

After the events of the past few months, I have to wonder if perhaps the NCAA has something against the Razorbacks.

It seems to be obvious after the events of December last and some more recently. In December, the NCAA announced that they had hard informationthat five Ohio State University players had broken NCAA rules by profiting financially by being members of an NCAA sports team. It was bad enough to get the NCAA to ban the players from five football games. However, the NCAA wanted the crooked Buckeyes to be able to play in the Sugar Bowl against Arkansas, which they did.

The five cheaters were the difference in Ohio States’ narrow win over the Hogs.

More information has emerged since then, and it looks like all that was discovered in December was the tip of the iceberg. The highly popular Ohio State has been fired and it looks like those five players will likely never play college ball again. It also looks like the Buckeyes will probably have to forfeit all their victories in 2010, including their Sugar Bowl win overArkansas.

Normally, when the NCAA founds out about wrong doing on the part of athletes, their suspensions are always immediate. But for some reason, the NCAAwanted players that they had already deemed as unworthy of eligibility to be able to play against Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl. Are there Buckeye fans in the committee, or is there an anti-Arkansas bias amongst committee members?

The latest travesty against the Hogs is their exclusion from the list of regional hosts for the 2011 baseball playoffs.

At the end of the season, Arkansas was ranked 14th nationally in the NCAAs’ own rankings. Normally, the NCAA has the best 16 regional teams host one of the 16 regionals unless they lack a quality home stadium or something along those lines. Arkansas had been ranked by several sports outlets as having the best collegiate stadium in America. When they have hosted regionals, they have led the nation in attendance figures.

However, when the NCAA released their regional sites, Arkansas was not selected. Instead, they chose 19th ranked Texas Christian, 21st rankedFresno State, and believe it or not, 31st-ranked Oregon State. If they decided to disregard their own rankings in their site selection, they might have considered bypassing Arizona State, the Hogs host of their regional. Attendance has been terrible (245 for the Arkansas/Charlotte game) and the teams played Sunday in 105 degree heat. I would guess that the Arizona State total regional attendance figures wouldn’t have been as much as just the first game of an Arkansas region.

There are 16 regionals, then eight super-regionals.

They select eight teams to be the top seeds which are automatic super-region hosts in the event theywin their region tournament. The top eight seeds includes two schools not even ranked in the NCAAs’ own top 10. Rice, 11thranked, and 12th-ranked Texas got top eight seeds, and not seventh-ranked Clemson or eighth-ranked Georgia Tech.

The NCAA has always insisted on amateur athletes. Do they also rely on amateur officials in their administrative offices?

◊◊◊

Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.

Sports, Pages 8 on 06/08/2011