The dispute over how many football games the Arkansas Razorbacks should play at Little Rock was settled before Dr. David Alsobrook came to town to direct the Clinton Presidential Library. But he knows which side he would have been on.

“I wish they played more games here,” he said. “When the Razorbacks are in town, we get not only Razorback fans but the other team’s fans too.” He remembers fondly the swarm of LSU fans who visited the library two years ago.  

“But we know who makes those decisions, don’t we,” Alsobrook said. “He’s been here, by the way.” The reference was to Frank Broyles, the athletic director and former head coach at UA. It was Broyles who dictated a reduction in the number of Little Rock games from three to two, so that another game could be played in the larger stadium in Fayetteville. Broyles came to the library with Broyles Award nominees and their families. The Broyles Award is given annually to the assistant coach chosen as the best in the country. While Broyles was at the library, he had his picture made with a sheet-metal sculpture of a Razorback that was given to Clinton while he was president by one Jabe Jackson of Montana.
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There was a big smile on Bill Valentine’s face when he noted that hardly had his Arkansas Travelers made the skyboxes in their new stadium available when most of them were leased.

“We didn’t even have to advertise them,” he said.

As Michael Marion, the general manager at Alltel Arena, could have told the folks behind the building of Dickey-StephensPark, Central Arkansans love their skyboxes. Alltel’s were gone quickly, too, before the arena opened in 1999, but Marion made sure the arena held back two of them to be leased for individual events.
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Bringing the USS Hoga tug used to rescue sailors after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which North Little Rock won custody of from the U.S. Navy last year, to an Arkansas River port hadn’t been smooth sailing. Too fragile to be towed through the ocean, the tug needed to be shipped from Oakland, Calif., by a special barge, and cost estimates ranged from $900,000 to $1.2 million.
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