If people are really serious about maintaining WMS’ role in Razorback football long term — and that’s what we’re talking about here — something is going to have to happen, and that something is going to involve many millions of dollars. I just don’t see that anyone is going to step up to the plate and come up with the cash to do what needs to be done — the legislature, the city, or private interests. Gary Smith has the right idea, but he doesn’t have the funds to do it.

It’s a small thing, I know, but this sums it up for me: When I go back South, people in passing cars wave, and I wave back. My kids ask “Dad, do you know that person?” “No,” I say, “that’s just what people do down here.”

No doubt there are lots of fans here, but they don’t seem to me to have the same passion for the Razorbacks as the folks back home. I hope the Hogs continue to play in LR forever.

Apologies to any of my neighbors that I have offended.

It’s really more of an east-west distinction in this part of the country than a north-south distinction. Generally, the further east you go (even the Missouri Bootheel and Southern Illinois), the more Southern it gets as opposed to far western Arkansas and western Missouri.

I would contend that these days, Cairo is more Southern than Rogers — Rex

I live in Fayetteville and it’s likely apparent where I am by default on the stadium business. I’m actually with Rex, more or less — literally. He said the Razorbacks should play two or more games a year in Little Rock. I say they should play two or less. We have found common ground, and we are both better for it.

That was easy to resolve, especially compared to the knotty issue Rex raised when he said, “Fayetteville is not in the South. Fayetteville is in the Midwest.” Well, yes, no, sort of and not entirely. Fayetteville is in the South, the Midwest and the Southwest all at once, part of each of them and indicative of none of them. There are also small traces of the Northeast and West Coast here too, all welcome parts of the mix even if somewhere under the radar.

(By the way, opinions expressed here are those solely of the author and not necessarily those of Northwest Arkansas, and definitely not intended to be representative of the city of Fayetteville, where consensus is rarely found on anything other than our fierce determination to be Fayetteville, depending our various factions think that is at a given moment.)

Back to the main point, as to Fayetteville’s geographic inclinations. People from the three predominant regions mentioned above have been coming here for decades and settling in with those already here as native born or long-time immigrants. Those from the three regions fall into two categories:

– The ones who look around and see most of the culture is not exactly like it was back home, wherever that was. They hoped for a carbon copy of life back home and didn’t find it here. They complain a lot and generally flee within a few years or less.

– The ones who look around and see, in addition to some of their original home’s culture, an intriguing blend of other regional cultures that appears to co-exist and thrive rather well within one municipality. They stay for a long time and become part of a local melting pot that is largely indifferent to where one is from, much less where one’s ancestors lived.

So Rex is right in noting that if you’re in Fayetteville and looking for the real South, you’ll probably have to drive at least as far as Little Rock to find it. For that matter, if you want to find the real Midwest you’ll have to drive about as far the opposite direction and head to Kansas City. If you want to find the real Southwest, start in Tulsa and keep going. It’s all easily accessible to us from Fayetteville and makes us a bit separate from everyone else. Nobody has ever really claimed us. It could be the ultimate identity crisis, but it’s probably more of an issue to people far from Fayetteville than it is to the local citizenry. We’re quite content with what and where we are, whatever and wherever everyone else may think it is.

Did you contact anyone at the WMS Commission to find out what other events will be held at WMS after spending in excess of $100MM to add the press box and ring of luxury suites? After all, it would be incompetent spending so much of our state’s tax money if they had no new tenants for WMS.

Because of the University, Fayetteville has a population made up almost entirely of people from other places in Arkansas. I’m from Little Rock but almost everyone I knew up there was from some small town in East or South Arkansas.

I gotta question if you’ve ever been to the Midwest before, Rex? The Ozarks are nothing like Kansas, Oklahoma or anywhere else that is actually in the Midwest. Are the Ozarks just like the Delta, no; but then again, most parts of the South aren’t like the Delta either.

You can’t exclude Fayetteville from the Greater South