Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

On Monday, we may have seen our first sports luncheon conducted using Skype with a college football coach addressing a Little Rock gathering while sitting at his desk 489 miles away.

Icy conditions and some bad-weather fronts in Alabama kept the private plane destined to pick up Gus Malzahn at Auburn, Ala.'s little airport from making the trip, David Bazzel told the overflowing Touchdown Club gathering at the Embassy Suites in west Little Rock. Bazzel said he already knew by daybreak that fetching Malzahn and his wife, Kristi, was nearly out of the question, and so was trying to get the Tigers' offensive coordinator a commercial flight out of Montgomery via a half-dozen other stops.

But give Malzahn credit. Last week, we joked with friends that if any Touchdown Club speaker was likely to cancel at the last minute, it might be Malzahn, in light of the Cam Newton recruiting scandal that has hit over the past 12 days. The last thing any Auburn coach from head man Gene Chizik on down would want would be to visit a Little Rock football audience and be blindsided by questions about Newton.

Malzahn, though, was determined to find any way to make his appearance happen. So, the Little Rock Touchdown Club had its first speaker via Skype, the video conferencing technology.

It went so well Monday, we heard that it might be put to use somewhere else down the road when the club can't get a speaker, such as a busy coach from the West Coast, in to Little Rock for an in-person visit.

Outside of the $250-a-year sponsors who get their photos taken with each week's speaker, and outside of the media also getting additional time with the speaker after the program was over, or the speaker being able to visit with old friends, Malzahn's appearance went off perfectly.

He had a lot of old friends, ones who still coach in the Arkansas high school ranks in which he came up, on hand, such as Pulaski Academy's Kevin Kelley.

The Fort Smith native, Henderson State graduate and former walk-on at Arkansas said all the right things, from praising the abilities of the state's high school coaches for turning out Southeastern Conference quality players to having only nice words for former boss Houston Nutt. "He gave me a chance at coaching college football," was his answer to a club member's query as to whether he still has a relationship with the current Ole Miss head coach. They were together for one tumultuous and yet successful season for the Razorbacks in 2006.

There were two questions from the audience that drew a wry laugh from the coach as well as the crowd. One was whether Auburn was hoping to get the same replay official for the Alabama game that it had for Arkansas, where a couple of dubious calls were not reversed despite video evidence that seemed to refute the ruling on the field.

"You know, in breaking down film, I probably had more of a problem with a holding call that wiped out a 40-yard gain or a missed block," Malzahn said. "It depends on the perspective you have on that game. But yes, the call on the Mario Fannin fumble was a big play."

Another question that Malzahn laughed at, but didn't answer, was whether he called any of the plays in Arkansas' three season-ending losses in that 10-4 season of 2006.

"Next question," he said, smiling, to more laughter throughout.