Kim Gaskill tours the University of Arkansas football stadium and a new bronze Razorbacks statue, explaining how coach Hugo Bezdek inspired the mascot choice. She shares student reactions and asks viewers to research their own team's origin story.
Good morning from the University of Arkansas. I'm Kim Gaskill, and this is the Daily Spark. Yes, I'm standing outside of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville today, and I'm standing outside of the newly remodeled football stadium. It is gorgeous, and two things caught my eye as I pulled up to the stadium. One, that it was done because it went way over time to get completed. So I was happy to see that. But the other thing was this huge bronze statue that is pretty much the focal point of the outside of the stadium. And the statue is of a mass of wild running Razorbacks. Now, if you don't know what a Razorback is, I'm going to share something with you. A Razorback is a cross between a pig and a wild boar. And in the early 1900s, Arkansas was the state where most of those Razorbacks were. Today there's about 200,000 in the state, and they're just about in every state across the Union. But at the time, they were concentrated in Arkansas. And one of the early football coaches— because I was thinking, how did the Razorbacks get that as their mascot, right? So I looked it up, and one of the early coaches had made a statement about how the team played. Hugo Bezdek proclaimed the team played like a wild band of Razorback hogs, which was a good thing, I guess, like getting in there and being destructive, like the Razorbacks are. And so that description stuck, and they decided to keep the Razorbacks as their mascot. Now, if you ever come to Northwest Arkansas, everything here is red and white and has a Razorback on it. They are very proud of it. They have them all over town. They have sculptures of them all over town. And this new bronze sculpture in front of the stadium is absolutely stunning. And I asked some of the students how they felt about it, and the general consensus that I got is everyone thinks it's great. They love it. But the Razorback is really an ugly animal. So if you're not a Razorback fan, you might not think that the sculpture is that cool. It's about, I don't know, 12 or 15 feet high, maybe 20 feet across, and it has a waterfall on the base. It's pretty, it's pretty impressive. I actually love it, but it did spark my curiosity as to how they became the Razorbacks, so I thought I would share that with you today. And if you have a sports team in your area Do you know how they got their mascot? How that was chosen for the team? If you don't, look it up today and join me again tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
