Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

ESPN college football analyst Mark May covered more subjects in 30 minutes for the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Monday than most football banquet speakers would manage in a week. With his rapid-fire delivery and his ability to change directions in mid-thought, May touched on everything the Arkansas football fan would have wanted to know as the Touchdown Club opened its eighth season with a one-off at the Peabody Hotel.

May, a former NFL star offensive tackle with the Washington Redskins and a College Football Hall of Fame inductee, described himself Monday as "blunt, truthful and honest."

That's why he commands such a prominent position for ESPN analyzing college football alongside "Doctor" Lou Holtz and host Rece Davis on Saturdays. Their workday, which last year ran from 10:30 a.m. Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday (that's Eastern Time) just expanded to probably 4 a.m. thanks to ESPN now broadcasting a late Pac-12 game on Saturday nights.

That change might have Holtz grousing, if not going ballistic, May joked, but it doesn't appear to faze a guy who still can't believe he's paid to watch and talk about college football.

His matter-of-fact style drew a full house Monday to the Peabody Ballroom.

The crowd also momentarily saw a 6-foot-4 man — who at peak playing weight in the NFL carried 305 pounds (320 in the off-season, he said) but now is a svelte 240 thanks to regularly working out — appear to tear up when the subject of the Penn State child molestation scandal come up during a Q&A with the audience.

May called it the biggest story in college football since the tragic Marshall University plane crash in 1970.

The image of the Nittany Lions program, built up behind the do-good reputation of Joe Paterno for nearly a half-century, "came down like a house of cards," he said.

"How could a man [Paterno] not do everything in his means to stop a child molester," May said, referring to Paterno and Penn State allowing former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky to have access to Penn State's facilities, where alleged sexual molestation occurred, from 1998 on.

"I don't understand how a person with the chance could not stop it," May said haltingly. "It's about as bad as it gets in college football. Hopefully everyone involved will get their just dues."

Paterno, who died in January, has seen his reputation ruined, his campus statue taken down. Sandusky will spend the rest of his life in jail. Other Penn State officials await trial for their roles in the coverup.

The NCAA then came down hard on Penn State, whose followers will no doubt point out that May played for rival Pittsburgh in is college days. But May has long since shown on ESPN that he's as unbiased an analyst as there is. Later, after addressing the Touchdown Club, May added about the NCAA's penalties: