sports writer, fayetteville, Ark.

One other question: What's the ownership situation up there these days? Is it Hussman, Stephens, both, or neither?

 

Stephens and WEHCO merged in NWA to form Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, LLC. The four papers from the NWA area come as wrap-arounds to the Democrat-Gazette each day.

 

This is my new gig. I'm excited to start.

 

Congrats Matt. Is the job description as you described, primarily preps?

 

Thanks. Yea, it's a prep deal. It's a really unique model they have down there, with one beat reporter for each of the six 7A high schools. If you're a fan of local news, it's definitely a win-win. My favorite papers to budget at my college daily were the ones that had all original content and no national wire.

My sister is a junior at UA, so it will be nice to be close to her for support, and all virtually all my athlete friends from when I was at school there (only went my freshman year before transferring to Colorado State) are in grad school now, so that will be nice. My folks are out in Tulsa, so this will be a bit of a homecoming.

 

Congrats, dude. I'm sure I'll be running into you soon. I'm moving that way myself in about a month.

 

Thanks, Eric. Look forward to seeing you.

 

7A? Christ, what kind of preps system do they have in Arky?

 

Classifications rank from 1A-7A in most sports in Arkansas, with 7A being the biggest as far as school size, but smallest as far as the number of team. I think there are only like 16 schools that are in the 7A system, 12 of which make the playoffs in football. It is a complete joke. (1A schools do not have football and some 2A schools don't play either)

 

Yea. Most Oklahoma 6A schools are bigger than the Arkansas 7A. Mainly, it's to have another champion, IMO.

 

Hard to compare the two states because Oklahoma (like most other states) takes its enrollments from grades 9-12 and Arkansas only takes them from 10-12, and freshman enrollments are normally much bigger after dropouts are taken in account. Also, certain Arkansas schools are, ahem, pretty creative in counting who's a ninth-grader and who's a sophomore.

 

I would bet most 6A schools in Arkansas (maybe some 7As) wouldn't be 5A schools in Texas. I think you need to have more than 2,000 students -- maybe close to 2,200 -- to be a 5A school in Texas now.

Seems like I've seen some 4As with enrollments over 2,000. Maybe that's because they are headed up next reclass and are 4A in name only for a year, maybe it's because the cut-off is over 2,000. I'm not sure.