‘Wooooooo Pigs-Sooey’--Arkansas Fans Get in the Holiday Mood

In the strangest of settings, the subject was pigs.

In the midst of a civic and civil luncheon Friday afternoon on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger, the subject was pigs. Or hogs. Or both.

This was an affair to honor the football players from Arizona State and Arkansas, who will gather for the Holiday Bowl Sunday afternoon at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

But the subject was pork.

Arkansas Coach Ken Hatfield’s wife Sandy was at the microphone, and suddenly all of these people from Fayetteville or Little Rock were on their feet as though preparing to sing the national anthem.

Though the Ranger’s chefs had seemingly gone to some lengths to prepare a feast of roast beef, these people did not seem satisfied. As I understood it, they were requesting a different entree.

“Wooooooo pigs-sooey,” Sandy Hatfield said. This is an interesting sentence. Can anyone actually say “Woooooo pigs-sooey”? Do these people groan? Or perhaps oink?

All of these people-- adults, mind you--joined in this bizarre chorus. Three times they said it. Wooooo pigs-sooey. And, finally, as if a form of punctuation: “Razorbacks.”

Razorbacks? Pigs? Hogs? What was this they were ordering? Pig-soooooey? Or was it pig-suey? Is it eaten with rice? Or perhaps grits?

Frankly, I was content to pig out on the roast beef.

I was to later learn these people rise in groups of 50,000 to call for these pigs back home in hog heaven. Some of them--again, adults, mind you--even wear silly red plastic hats molded in the shape of a . . . you guessed it.

Love those pigs.

All of this was transpiring on one of America’s finest fighting ships. John Paul Jones, the first Ranger’s first captain, surely would not have understood, but he probably would have been equally confused by football itself.

This was not to end when the Arkansas folks settled back in their seats, because Arizona State was not about to let the Razorbacks hog the spotlight.

This fellow Brent Brown, the executive vice president of Arizona State University, was standing at the microphone. The subject again was pigs.

“We’ve got hogs too,” said Brown. “We have javelinas. I don’t think anyone from Arkansas can even spell that name, let alone say it. Our hogs don’t make a lot of noise. They just get the job done.”

I was a bit baffled. These pre-game affairs usually develop into no-win debates over which state is the best or the most beautiful. It is even fashionable to debate which university has the best football team, though that question will be resolved Sunday evening.

But hogs?

I thought the encyclopedia might be helpful. I hastened to the office and looked up hog. It was not helpful. I found James Hogg, Quintin Hogg and Thomas Jefferson Hogg. However, under hog with one G and a lower case h, it said: “See pig.”

Wooooo, soooooey, I thought. Flip to another volume and I would understand about these razorbacks--and maybe javelinas.

Under pig, I found Beltville, Palouse, Yorkshire Large White, Berkshire, Spotted Poland China, Chester White, Hampshire, Duroc, Maryland, Minnesota and Montana, among others. Remarkably, there was nothing about either an Arkansas pig or an Arkansas razorback.

I guess the Arkansas Razorback has more to do with pigskins than pigs.

In fact, the only razorback I found in the encyclopedia was the razorback whale. This would not seem to be a pig, and I forgot to check and see if it was the nickname of an Arkansas lineman. You know how nicknames are the rage these days.

However, it will interest the gentleman from Arizona that the javelina is listed, though not in any detail. The entry says, “javelina, see peccary.”

This beast, which resembles the razorback on the Arkansas helmet, is described as the New World counterpart of the swine. This animal is a member of the family tayassuidae, which I presume is pronounced something like: “Tay-yah-soooooey-day.”

Alas, Arizona State’s fans do not seem inclined to call the hogs indigenous to their neighborhoods. Indeed, ASU’s teams are known as the Sun Devils. Consequently, this won’t be one big hog bog hoedown. Hopefully, these folks will have a nice generic cheer, something old-fashioned like: “Rah rah, sis boom bah, go Sun Devils.”

But from that one section of the stadium will come this forlorn oooooooohing like the sound emerging from the mist in a Stephen King movie.

Woooooooooo-sooooey.

This sound will be echoing in the depths of the USS Ranger for years to come. Unborn sailors will someday hear that echo, and it will likely become known as a haunted ship.

All of this will come to pass because some folks from Arkansas wanted pork instead of roast beef.