Remembering longtime Arkansas sportswriter Bob Holt

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) – I’m sitting at home on a freezing December morning trying to process the fact that I will never see my friend and colleague Bob Holt at another press conference, Razorback practice or game. Bob passed away last night in Columbia, Missouri five days after collapsing following last Saturday’s Arkansas-Missouri football game.

It is perhaps fitting that Bob’s last day on the job was spent on the campus where he had graduated from Missouri’s noted school of journalism. They taught him his craft well. Outside of my dad he was the best true journalist I’ve known.

The image I have included shows Bob in his element at his last press conference. Upfront, eager to go to work, ready to get the needed quotes for his post game story. On this day that story would not be written but the quotes he got would be used by many others.

Few of us like press conferences. In the old days we could talk individually with coaches and players and get our own quotes, quotes not shared with other reporters. But there is no question that Bob helped all of us do our jobs better because of the way he handled press conferences.

No matter how lengthy the presser he instinctively knew if there was a point still to be raised, a question that still needed to be answered even if it was frustrating for media members on a deadline.

Nate Allen had this habit of vigorously rubbing a pencil back and forth in his palms when Bob would ask yet another question just as it appeared that the presser had ended. He would look back at me and roll his eyes. I would shake my head side to side back at him.

Dang it Bob. We gotta go.

But how many times did those extra quotes become part of our own stories? It bothers me now that I never came back and thanked him for my misplaced frustration.

My favorite memory of Bob goes all the way back to a summer night in 1985. Grant Hall had invited a gathering of friends to a housewarming party he was giving after he and his wife Audley had purchased a home on the east side of Fayetteville. Bob was there along with most of the NWA based Razorback media. Eddie and Patsy Sutton were special guests.

Sutton had been Kentucky’s basketball coach since the previous March but he was still living in Fayetteville. I went to the party to specifically ask him what in the heck he was doing. Was he going to try to coach Big Blue Nation remotely?

At some point in the evening, after a few mixed drinks, Sutton addressed Bob directly.

“I hear you do a great me. I want to hear that,” Sutton said with a half grin on his face.

Bob was embarrassed. His impersonation of Arkansas’ head basketball coach was legendary among us. The term, laugh ’till you cry comes to mind. But to do this routine in front of the man himself was not something Bob was prepared for.

Thankfully Sutton didn’t give him a choice. Bob was going to do Eddie in front of Eddie and that was it.

It was awesome. Patsy almost fell out of her chair laughing along with the rest of us. Sutton’s reaction was classic. He looked around the room as if to ask, is that how I sound? Really?

It was one of those nights when I was glad that I chose this line of work.

Thank you Bob.