Hog Calls : Big plans in store for Williams
Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008
The Razorbacks want D. J. Williams a little bigger for the much bigger role planned for him this season.
Former Arkansas coach Houston Nutt and his regime obviously thought highly of the tight end from Little Rock and Central Arkansas Christian or they wouldn't have signed him last year a true freshman.
However, with an attack geared around now NFL tailbacks Darren McFadden and Felix Jones, that staff had the luxury of gradually working Williams into the offense.
There's nothing gradual that new coach Bobby Petrino and his staff project for Williams.
They want a big-time, spread offense passing attack, and Williams proved last spring he's the best receiver they've got.
And they still want to run the ball. As a tight end / H-back / fullback, Williams is a key to that, too, springing scatbacks Michael Smith and Texarkana's Brandon Barnett.
To take the pounding Williams is going to take, Petrino and strength coach Jason Veltkamp apparently want him bigger than the 240 pounds he was listed last year.
It hasn't been as easy to oblige picking up weight with all the running he's doing in the summer heat to get prepared.
"They are stressing about my weight," Williams said earlier this summer. "I lost a couple of pounds and they are getting on me every day. I understand their philosophy. People are pretty big in the SEC so they want me to bulk up."
Why not drink milkshakes morning to night ?
"I wish I could," Williams said," but it would be out here on the field the next morning. So I usually try and eat healthy but eat as much as I can."
Even the really in shape sometimes can't stomach all that Veltkamp's summer workouts entail.
"We usually get about 10 a day," Williams said of those involuntarily emptying their stomachs during a bellyful of conditioning. "But the thing about it is they can throw up and stand right back and up and keep going. So as long as they are doing the work, it really doesn't matter."
The Razorbacks are feeling better about themselves enduring Veltkamp's hard workouts which in turn will have many Razorback fans feeling better about them.
Just don't feel too good. Because while these Razorbacks work hard in the summer, you can bet every other team on their schedule is, too.
Anymore in the SEC, improvements in conditioning and facilities don't get you ahead. They keep you even. And more importantly, from falling dreadfully behind.
The facilities part of the SEC arm's race may be in for a change.
Our nation's sagging economy and soaring energy costs likely will cast a real shadow on even the SEC's unreal zeal to lavish stadiums like palaces and build practice facilities on budgets that nearly used to fund where the games are actually played.
Fortunately for the University of Arkansas, Frank Broyles' 35 years reign as athletics director before his retirement last January leaves the entire Razorbacks program in great facilities shape for economic times when what you have is likely what you've got for a long, long spell.
New UA athletics director Jeff Long faces plenty of challenges, but major additions to the UA' major facilities aren't apt to be among them for awhile. Long's first challenge is the ongoing combining of the UA's men's and women's programs that retires Lady Razorbacks from the UA vocabulary. It's all Razorbacks now, Long said last Friday while announcing Robert Pulliza as the UA's women's volleyball coach.
• • •
Former Razorback men's basketball coach for a day Dana Altman did leave an everlasting Arkansas tradition.
Since Altman declined at his hiring press conference to wear a Razorback cap, since viewed as the tip-off he would bolt back to Creighton the following day, UA head coaches hired since have donned their press conference haberdashery like their jobs depend upon it.
It's also turned sports information director Kevin Trainor into a first-rate ventriloquist subtly reminding them to put on the hat. Volleyball coach Pulliza even yelled," It fits ! It fits ! "for his serve.
• • • Nate Allen's Razorback column appears Mondays in The Daily Record. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
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