War Memorial Commission chair reveals potential plans if Hogs leave for good

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — For once War Memorial Commission chair Kevin Crass is expecting a break with the weather, so now he his priority is to hope for plenty of available water and a working clock for the scoreboard.

He's more than aware that his facility has struggled to keep pace and do an upstanding job of hosting major college football games. He admitted as much when he appeared with Justin Acri and former Razorback DJ Williams on "The Zone" on 103.7 The Buzz in Little Rock Friday morning.

Those types of issues, along with poor facilities and unreliable internet services for broadcast networks, which have, to be fair, been the bane of all Little Rock venues looking to host college sports, caused the SEC to forbid the Hogs from playing major opponents in Little Rock long ago.

That's a big reason why the first ever and possibly only game between the Arkansas Razorbacks and Arkansas State Red Wolves is on ESPN+ during the weakest television weekend of the college football season.

With such a prime story and also a former Tennessee Volunteers coach on the other side, it should have easily made its way to the SEC Network line-up, but ESPN couldn't risk having an incident similar to what happened to ASU's streaming game in Jonesboro last week where signal was lost for an entire prolonged game-opening drive for the Red Wolves.

"I'm honest about this, the stadiums had execution problems with game day, and we are doing everything in our power to make sure we don't have any of that," Crass said. "It would help, though, if people make sure they download their tickets before they get to the stadium. I'd say, do it today.

“We do have extra scanners. We have extra vendors. We want to make it a great game day experience. And the tailgating, you know, we added a number of reserve tailgate, I think they sold out. The corporate tailgate sold out."

While Crass looks back with nostalgia on the many memorable games that took place in Little Rock back before Razorback Stadium got built up and I-49 and a quality airport arrived in Northwest Arkansas.

He's a realist who understands this is likely the final stand for War Memorial as everyone has come to know it. He just hopes fans who bought tickets will actually show up and make one last big memory.

"The pregame will rival any game we've had in a long, long time," Crass said. "And then we just want people to come in there and make it a special environment for for all of us, it's so much more fun when it's full and it's loud, right?

“I mean, you're sitting in there and the end zones are empty and people aren't really into the game. It's just not the same environment. And I think, you know, there's very few things you can do in life and say this, I've got a chance to participate in an historic event.

"I would say to people, you know, we do have tickets sold, make sure you show up so [you] don't wonder 20 years later, 'Why wasn't I there? I can't remember,' because I think it'll [be historic], no matter how the game comes out, and it could come out in a way that would be quite memorable for a lot of people.

“Yeah, I think it'll be exciting to be there for this first first game, and then hopefully that excitement and that experience creates kind of an organic pressure to tell me again why we're not doing this again, right?"

There have been several attempts by the city to build up the area around War Memorial. Crass mentioned a Top Golf that ended up elsewhere and an effort by the city's mayor for a baseball facility that failed to get the needed votes to financially support it.

"There are experts who've looked at proposals, but it all comes down to money," Crass said. "And you know, when the when the mayor goes to the city with a sales tax, he's he's got to make it attractive to the city as a whole.

“If you could just say, let's fix War Memorial. Most, some of the city would say, 'No, it's not in my ward,' right? But we as a community have got to come together if, in fact, we repurpose the stadium and have that repurposing also include repurpose, repurposing the park.

However, the only thing Crass knows for certain is the zoo next door to War Memorial has some money to make renovations, a soccer team that will use the stadium needs some adjustments made, and he has an idea for reworking the stadium to fill a need the local community has needed for some time now.

"I think the stadium at that point has to reimagine itself as more of a multi purpose facility, and my crazy idea is to take out, say, the south end zone, and build a facility that the community has been longing for, which is a basketball and volleyball fitness center type thing that's a part of the stadium, and make it, make it multi purpose," Crass said. "You know, if we don't have a Division I football game, we don't need that many seats, and the soccer team needs the corners, the concrete in the corners, taken out.

“You know, we've had inquiries about other soccer teams. So I think you got to reimagine its purpose right now. Everybody's purpose for that stadium is football games, and we're not going to make it a better football stadium. We need to make it a better multi-purpose facility."

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