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Closing Out the Decade (1988–1991) “This will go down as one of the greatest victories in Arkansas history.” —John McDonnell at the 1989 Penn Relays. As the decade drew to a close, the ultracompetitive Southwest Conference suddenly found itself in a state of self-immolation. Several of the major football programs were on some form of NCAA probation, most notably Southern Methodist, which faced the ignominy of its football program being shut down completely for two years through the NCAA’s Death Penalty. Even head-track coach Ted McLaughlin, two years removed from his third national championship, departed the Dallas-based school and was replaced by Dave Wollman of Stanford that same year. Once the doormat of the conference in just about every way imaginable, Arkansas was now challenging Texas for all-sports supremacy due to the efforts of Frank Broyles, which had borne fruit most notably in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. Arkansas had even led the national all-sports standings on several occasions. In 1988 alone, the Razorbacks athletics department captured the SWC championship in eight of the nine possible men’s sports. “The Southwest Conference was beginning to disintegrate from a competitive standpoint ,” said Terry Don Phillips, who returned to Arkansas as an assistant athletic director in 1988. “You’d go down and play Rice and you might get fifteen thousand people. SMU was in trouble, and TCU was really struggling. So other than ourselves, you had Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech; and Baylor was somewhat okay, but the rest of the conference was hurting pretty bad.” On most statistical levels, Arkansas football coach Ken Hatfield had been nothing short of an unqualified success. Not only did he have the highest winning percentage (55-17-1, .760) of any Razorback football coach, including Frank Broyles, but won two Southwest Conference championships and earned two trips to the Cotton Bowl. What he was not winning was the hearts and minds of Razorback fans, who had lost interest in hearing biblical quotations on his radio show or watching his team play, if falling ratings or slumping season ticket sales were any indication.1 Most damning of all for 189 9 Hatfield’s prospects of remaining the Arkansas football coach for any length of time was his failure to win more than one out of seven Bowl games. When he refused Frank Broyles’s advice to relieve certain assistant coaches of their duties following the conclusion of the 1987 season, their relationship began to sour.2 Simultaneously, John McDonnell’s relationship with Broyles remained steadfast. Not only had the athletic director supported him through periodic facility upgrades and salary increases, sometimes in response to interest from other programs, such as LSU’s in 1987, but he had provided the resources to feed the growing monster of championships that McDonnell proved ever adept at winning. “The athletics department saw his success and supported it with resources that would give him a chance to continue to be successful,” said Arkansas athletics director Frank Broyles. “We paid him a top salary and gave him good facilities and made it a prominent sport in the state. That’s what every athletics director is supposed to do for their coaches. That’s what you try to do if you can pull it off, and our fans allowed us to pull it off.” The signing of David Welsh in the following fall along with that of top prep athletes such as Gilbert Contreras from El Paso, and Paul Thomas and Ian Alsen from California, began a wave of American distance talent to Fayetteville that would not stop. Far from having to coax reluctant athletes who claimed to not have even heard of Arkansas, the challenge had now become simply making contact with people and then deciding who to let within the pearly gates. “I never wanted too many distance runners, usually around fourteen to fifteen,” said McDonnell. “I always felt if you had athletes on the team they should have a purpose otherwise you have dissension and discontent. I always had enough for every event from the 800 meter through the 10,000 meter so I could accommodate and travel them all during track season. I learned this from watching some early Texas teams. They would sign every good kid in Texas, and back then there were a lot more scholarships, so these kids would be tripping over themselves. I remember they had ten guys under 4:05 at one point, and you...

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