Darren McFadden-LSU-Wood — Arkansas Communications

ChatGPT Still Has Long Way to Go for Any Authority

Apparently using automation to figure best-of lists works off headlines, not stats

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
May 28, 2023 1:55 PM EDT

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It was an entertaining way to create a list people love to argue about the guys over at HawgSports.com had over the Memorial Day weekend. They ChatGPT, an AI thing, to determine the 10 best Arkansas football players of all times.

It's obvious the computer crawled the internet and used headlines to determine things far more than statistics or much of a deep-dive into things. Grouping everyone over the last 100 years into some sort of ranking is impossible, in my opinion, because there's no way to compare what players in the 1960's had in the way of training, nutrition or anything else. In the 1960's they gave us salt tablets and soft drinks during August workouts and a coach said one time after several players passed out from heat "the human body is incredible ... you will pass out before you die."

That had changed even before I got out of high school in the 1970's, but you get the idea. Comparing different generations is impossible, so I don't. Arguing hypotheticals and speculation is a waste of time.

Here is the way automation put together a Top 10 list of best Arkansas players of all time:

10. Lance Alworth. He burst onto the scene as a sophomore in 1959, helping the Razorbacks to a Gator Bowl. He was one of those guys that would have been a superstore from the time he got out of his car at his first football practice straight from Brookhaven, Miss., and left jaws open in 1958.

9. Clint Stoerner. None of this is personal, because he's a great guy and always been a straight-up guy and is strictly stats-related. He had decent stats, but I'm not sure he's a Top 10 quarterback in Hogs' football history. Greg Thomas won more games as a starter, just ahead of Bill Montgomery and that's always been my biggest measurement. He also couldn't get really impressive stats until 1998 because he played on some pretty bad teams. Again, though, it's subjective.

8. Chuck Dicus. Knowing Chuck a little, I'm sure he got a chuckle over the "hailing from Little Rock line" considering he was a Garland Owl quarterback before that Dallas suburb added a host of schools and was part of Frank Broyles' great quarterback haul he signed as freshmen in 1967. Then he spent a year with them figuring out who could play better at other positions. Montgomery was part of that group, too.

7. Brandon Burlsworth. This one based off headlines as much as anything and I respect the walk-on who turned into an All-American with a fantastic senior year and nearly five years of developing into a quality player. He didn't have the body of work over a few years to be on any Top 10 list of greatest players.

6. Billy Ray Smith, Jr. Turned into one of best linebackers in school history after a freshman year in 1979 where he was the noseguard on a team that played No. 1 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl after a stunning 10-1 regular season for a share of the SWC title. Moved to linebacker-defensive end under a new offensive coordinator. One change not correct in the story was he didn't play in the 1982 Orange Bowl. Clemson and Nebraska probably wouldn't have been in favor of throwing a third team on the field as the top-ranked Tigers were winning a national title. The Hogs played in a foggy Gator Bowl after the 1981 season and the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston after the 1981 season.

5. Dan Hampton. No argument here. Played for defensive line coach Jimmy Johnson his first two years, then Monte Kiffin in 1977 on what was, in my opinion, the best team in Razorback history. They beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl and actually had two services vote them as national champions in a year where Notre Dame got the wire service titles, Alabama picked up a couple and even Texas still got a few. There are a whole gaggle of those things, but the wire service polls are the only ones that matter.

4. Steve Atwater. Again, hard to dispute because he was the biggest hitting safety in program history and certainly in the Top 10 in NFL history (sorry, Jack Tatum still sits on the top of the that one).

3. Loyd Phillips. In his time, the Marshall, Texas, native was the greatest defensive lineman the Hogs ever had. He was, at times, dominating.

2. Jerry Jones. The North Little Rock native (well, actually the Rose City section) came to the Hogs as a running back and finished as an offensive guard. He wasn't particularly good at either position, but he was enthusiastic and clearly the best salesman on the team. Maybe nobody ever made a list based on what he did after playing in Razorbacks Stadium or got more out of a claiming a mythical 1964 national championship claim than Jones. He bought the Dallas Cowboys and that's usually mentioned when talking about the Pro Football Hall of Famer.

1. Darren McFadden. Clearly the obvious choice because nobody ever got more out of being a great talent surrounded by the perfect cast of teammates with the perfect coach in Razorback history. He could run the ball maybe like nobody has before or since, had a couple of other pretty good running backs in Felix Jones and Peyton Hillis to go along with one of the best offensive lines in school history. Houston Nutt wasn't a football idiot and was perfectly willing to let him run the ball often.

It's doubtful artificial intelligence is going to take over sports writing anytime soon. Right now it appears to be some form of crawling Google searches and putting what came back in the order it was presented. But it was something entertaining on a long holiday weekend.