The Little Rock Touchdown Club has joined forces with the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the Arkansas chapter of the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame to serve more scholar-athletes at the high school and college levels across Arkansas.
Eddie Bradford, a former football player at the University of Arkansas, long had served as the president of the Arkansas NFF chapter from his base in northwest Arkansas. When Bradford decided to step down from his role as chapter president, University of Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long asked another former Razorback, Little Rock Touchdown Club president and central Arkansas media personality David Bazzel, to take on Bradford’s former duties.
“The Little Rock Touchdown Club is excited to have the opportunity to help grow the National Football Foundation chapter in Arkansas,” Bazzel says. “We support the mission of the foundation and look forward to educating football fans across Arkansas about that mission.”
Bazzel then joined forces with Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sports editor Wally Hall, the president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, to come up with a plan for offering joint memberships in the Hall of Fame, the Little Rock Touchdown Club and the NFF Arkansas chapter. The joint memberships can be purchased at the weekly meetings of the Little Rock Touchdown Club.
The Little Rock Touchdown Club recently began its 10th season with new Arkansas head football coach Bret Bielema as the speaker. More than 700 people were in attendance at that meeting. The club meets each Monday for lunch during the football season. Speakers scheduled for later in the fall include former college head coaches Tom Osborne, Gene Chizik and Houston Nutt.
In February 2014, the NFF Arkansas chapter and the Little Rock Touchdown Club will join forces for an awards banquet that will honor high school and college players from across the state. Lou Holtz, a 1983 inductee into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, will be the featured speaker at that banquet.
A new national award will be given during the banquet. The Cliff Harris Award will go to the top small college defensive player in the country. Players from any NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III or NAIA school will be eligible for the award. Harris, an Arkansas native and Ouachita Baptist University graduate, played in five Super Bowls as the starting free safety for the Dallas Cowboys during the 1970s. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1985.
The Cliff Harris Award was officially announced during a Touchdown Club meeting Aug. 26 at which former Harris teammates Roger Staubach, Mel Renfro, Charlie Waters and Drew Pearson spoke. Gene Stallings, who was Harris’ position coach at Dallas, and former Cowboys personnel director Gil Brandt were among the other speakers.
Two other new awards that will be presented at the banquet are the Dan Hampton Award, which will go to the top college defensive lineman and top high school defensive lineman in the state, and the Willie Roaf Award, which will go to the top college offensive lineman and the top high school offensive lineman in the state. Hampton was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1992, and Roaf was inducted in 2007.
Hampton and Roaf are both members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and both native Arkansans. Hampton, who is from Jacksonville, played for the University of Arkansas in college before joining the Chicago Bears. Roaf, who is from Pine Bluff, played for Louisiana Tech University in college before playing for the New Orleans Saints and the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL.
“The joint membership in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, the Little Rock Touchdown Club and the NFF Arkansas chapter has proved to be extremely popular,” Bazzel says. “I have no doubt that these organizations will soon have their largest memberships ever.”