Cold weather provides reminder as to why Hogs fans relate to in-state athletes

One of the things about getting up at 4 a.m. to start the work day is the quiet peacefulness it provides.

There's just something about how distinct each sound is as you walk across the wood to the tile floors of the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. Sitting in the dark with that smell reminds me of the mornings where I would sleep on the couch on Friday nights before either a Saturday during deer season or before a fishing trip.

The noises and the waft of coffee brewing help me recall my dad trying so hard to not wake me just yet while I pretended I had been able to sleep. However, this morning, as I glanced through the glass of the kitchen door, a whole different set of memories came flooding in.

It was still quiet, but because of all of the snow in the back yard, it looked almost daylight. It had that appearance of the moment right before the sun fully gets up over the trees in the east.

It was a lighting and there was a cold right by the door that triggered a flood of memories that go a long way toward helping understand why people who went to school in Arkansas feel so connected and supportive of in-state players who get to play for the Razorbacks, or, in all honesty, just about any other program.

In 1990s Warren, there was no track at the junior high. There was an old high school field where many of our parents once played decked with the crumbling remnants of a band stand, a delapidated outdoor weight room that had no modern amenities other than just enough electricity to run a light bulb, although, looking back, I don't recall us using lights, and a small junior high school building that once served as an air conditioning free high school with giant windows at the back of classes that lifted high enough to easily jump out.

While the coaches sipped on their drink of choice each morning, they set us running off on the gravel parking area behind our dressing room to the city road that runs around the old football field, behind the bus barn and back up the other side of the football field to where we started. Like so many before us, we ran through the struggling light, cold tearing into our throats and chests as hard as we could until we finally got behind a certain part of the bus barn. Then, we'd walk long enough to recover until a gap that could technically be seen from the steps of the locker room.

As for that weight room, before we could use it, we were required each year to help the coaches clear the place of pigeons that would take over when it wasn't in use. Once the bodies were disposed and the fecal matter cleaned, the 7th and 8th grade male athletes were cleared to go through a weight training program, which was a first for most.

As we grabbed the metal weights and machines, our hands were numb with cold. Somehow it almost seemed colder in that gym than it was outside. It's as if the rotten, broken boards that technically formed walls held moisture that cooled the air inside even more.

Each time we sat a weight down, there was legitimate concern it would go through the lightly carpeted floor. There was a long metal set of monkey bars that was pretty high up that was difficult not necessarily because of having to hold up your own weight, but because the cold air and the iron to which we desperately clung made our hands numb.

However, the coldness of gyms was something we were somewhat used to experiencing. On Saturday mornings in elementary school, if you had the first game of the day, the basketball gym at the local YMCA hadn't had time to warm up. Once again the lighting was low because other than a few small windows at the top of the gym, there were no lights yet.

You grabbed the best ball you could find, sifting through the metal rolling cage for one that still had grip on it and enough air despite the cold to bounce somewhat normal. Then you would go and shoot and shoot until David King, the man who ran the YMCA at the time, turned on the lights and the heat just minutes before the first game.

It's these conditions that create commonality among those who played sports in Arkansas. It is seen as terrible conditions by a lot of people today, but there was nothing terrible about it.

There was something about the experience that made us way better than we would have been. It helped make us both physically and mentally tougher, which was desperately needed because most of us weren't exactly elite athletes.

For those who didn't play sports, their cold memories come from sprinting from the car to the door of the gym trying to outrun the freezing cold. The second they opened it, they were greeted with a blast of dry, buttery warmth as parents and coaches desperately tried to keep enough popcorn made to keep all the fans as the high school basketball game happy.

Of course, getting that warm bag of popcorn came with a price because the line required taking blasts to the face from the outside air as the doors swung open again and again. Fortunately, once snacks and drinks were in hand, the interior set of doors to the gym meant getting to watch the game fully protected from the elements.

At the football game, it was the challenge of getting up the stadium risers while carrying a lidless hot chocolate or coffee while trying not to spill it onto your hands. Failure meant a temporary burn followed by extreme cold that could only be treated by the warmth of a chili dog wrapped in foil.

This is where so much of that connection to in-state athletes comes. We know they likely overcame less than state of the art equipment to become who they are.

They build a lot of their strength and agility naturally by way of how life simply is in Arkansas and they gained their toughness in freezing cold gyms or running on frozen fields or neighborhood streets. There was something that had to be overcome to reach that level of success and Razorbacks fans know the in-state players must have handled it well.

While Arkansas athletes were training like they were Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, players from Texas and several other states get to arrive having come from the greatest facilities massive local tax bonds can buy with workout plans similar to Ivan Drago from the same movie minus the steroids. It's hard for local fans to relate to athletes who often view college facilities as a step down from what they worked with in high school.

So, when your favorite Razorback from Arkansas makes a big play, think back to this day with its cold air and deep snow or ice and imagine what he or she might have had to do in similar conditions, whether indoor or outdoor, to get there.

That's why you relate so much better to them. That's why you love them.

It's what shaped them to handle doing things with a toughness and a grit that you so often refer to as the Razorback way.

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