By John Brummett

Jim Lindsey was a country farm boy from just outside Forrest City who was fast and strong and could play football well.

He wound up on scholarship with the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, eventually as the integral wingback on a national championship team in 1964.

He blocked for the better-known players like Bobby Burnett. He gained key yards on a few counters and sweeps. He caught flare passes out of the backfield.

Lindsey was a seriously dedicated Razorback, the quintessential team player.

I remember as a boy reading one of the preseason football magazines. It carried a feature on Lindsey and his ferocious, unrelenting practice habits. “Ah cain’t, ah cain’t,” he was quoted as saying, meaning “I can’t,” when someone encouraged him to take a break.

For a few years he played professionally for the Minnesota Vikings, mainly on special teams. He was especially effective on kickoff coverage, an assignment requiring speed, strength and an inner madness reflected in a willingness to sacrifice one’s body while running all-out down the field to tackle the opposing team’s kick returner.

Then Lindsey came back to Fayetteville and set out to become the wealthy real estate mogul he now is. He dabbled in conservative Republican politics, even running for governor on an anti-crime platform against David Pryor.

He became a good friend and benefactor of his coach he so admired, Frank Broyles. Then he got appointed to the Board of Trustees of his beloved University of Arkansas.

He is now weeks away from the end of his 10-year term. Alas, he got caught last week trying to wrangle here at the end to get an old Razorbacking friend from Marianna, farmer-lawyer Stanley Reed, pre-emptively installed as the next president of the University of Arkansas system.

I spoke with Lindsey about that. He told me that all he wanted was to make sure the next UA system president “knows what ‘wooo, pig, sooie’ means.”

That got me to thinking about what that eerie and distinctive sports cheer indeed means. Here’s what I came up with:

• “Wooo, pig, sooie” is an anthem for the state’s happier and prouder heritage. Arkansas is forever poor, often backward and regularly ridiculed. Razorback athletic teams have stood alone in giving the people of the state something occasionally positive and accomplished to rally around. Yes, Bill Clinton became president. But politics is necessarily partisan, divisive. Four in 10 never could stand Clinton even here at home. But seven or eight in 10 love the Hogs. Even when we’re mad about the temporary coach, we cling to the permanent team.
• The cheer also is an anthem to a single statewide sense of community. Nothing else can bring the intergalactic worlds of Dermott and Rogers together.
• This primitive call also reflects misplaced priorities. We cheer nothing else so vigorously. A recent study found that the University of Arkansas spends more on athletics as a percentage of academic spending than any college in the country. It’s perhaps a dubious report; it’s hard to imagine anyone beating Oklahoma State considering what T. Boone Pickens has been lavishing on Cowboy athletics. But the UA is smaller than its SEC rivals. So, to compete, the athletic budget must rise as a percentage of the academic one.
• Finally, “wooo, pig, sooie” announces a deep-seated inferiority complex rooted in provincialism, smallness and irrationality.

We insist on supporting only one real major college athletic program because we don’t think we’re good enough to turn out more than one.

We obsess on Texas even after we’ve long moved to another conference, only because Texas is so much richer and bigger. It was always worth it for us to lose to them five times just for the thrill of beating them once.

Now all of this has a high academic connotation. Do we want the next UA system president to be a confirmed lifetime bleeder of Razorback red? Or do we search nationwide to import established talent in academic administration?

The real question is whether we can hold to “wooo, pig, sooie,” but put the strange chant in its appropriate compartment.

That is to say we need to celebrate it as a sports cheer, but lose it as an anthem for a way of life.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.