Wally Watch: Where we read Wally Hall so you don't have to.
Nov. 6, 2007: All is well in Fayetteville, for one night at least.
Primary Theme: Saturday night was "a feel-good night" for the Razorbacks and their fans. Just so you don't miss the point, Wally uses the phrase in both the opening and closing sentences of the column.
Choice Analogy: "The offense was clicking like a bullet train on jet fuel."
Oh...Behave!: "Crisp temperatures and passionately hot fans [our italics] gave the reddrenched [sic] stadium an incredible atmosphere, especially in the first half."
Huh?: "Razorbacks football games are about the kids and competition, never the coach." Seriously ... never?
Interesting Info: "[Saturday's win] doesn't assure them of playing in a bowl game since the SEC could have as many as 11 teams vying for eight bowls (not including any at-large berths that might come open ), but one bowl official said he thought 8-4 would put Arkansas in the Chick-Fil-A in Atlanta."
Redundant Phrasing: Eleven of the column's 35 sentences begin with the phrase, "It was a night ... ." The last sentence starts with, "It was a feel-good night ... ." Finally, Wally realized the need to mix things up.
He Likes His Sentences Solo: Speaking of the number of sentences, notice that the piece features 33 paragraphs! One of our astute readers recently e-mailed us to vent about, as he put it, Wally's "patented 'one-sentence-per-paragraph-because-all-of-my- sentences-are-so-insightful-that-they-deserve-to-stand-alone' style of writing." The e-mailer went on to add, "I now have to count his sentences and count the paragraphs. There is usually fewer than five multi-sentence paragraphs ... Now that I have told you this, you will count, too. You can't help it." Indeed we can't.
Our Analysis: Leave it to Wally to make reading about such a memorable night such tedious work.