Growing up in SEC country in the 1990s along the tomato fields of Southeast Arkansas left little room for passion toward an NFL team.

During college football season, it was all about the SEC. Being that far away from the University of Arkansas with Ole Miss, LSU, Mississippi State Alabama and even technically Vanderbilt being closer than the Razorbacks, there was the obligatory requirement to wear Arkansas gear, but a lot of people had another college team on the side.

For a lot of people in that area in those days it was often LSU or Mississippi State with an equal chance of Tennessee, Notre Dame, USC or a more local team like Northeast Louisiana (Louisiana-Monroe) or Louisiana Tech. Saturdays were for football.

The mornings were pee-wee football and the rest of the day and night were college. As for Sundays, they were for church and visiting with family.

Football wasn’t in the equation. Unless an NFL team showed up on Monday Night Football, which was the biggest game of the week in those days, it wasn’t going to be seen in most households.

Even then, the great Barry Sanders and his Detroit Lions were only going to be seen for a half no matter how close the game or how insane Sanders was playing because school came first.

It wasn’t until the playoffs that the NFL got watched in a casual fashion and that was only if it didn’t interfere with Nolan Richardson’s Razorback basketball teams.

People would pick a team to ride with, but it wasn’t serious with only one or two exceptions.

One neighbor followed the New Orleans Saints, another claimed the Chicago Bears, the other was a big enough Miami fan to know if the Dolphins won or lost each week and whether Dan Marino had a good game while his stepdad cared enough about Green Bay for it to bother him if I said something about Brett Favre throwing a pick to lose to Troy Aikman and the Cowboys.

As for me, I adopted the Buffalo Bills. For some reason I liked their colors and also several players. I was a fan of quarterback Jim Kelly, running back Thurman Thomas, receivers Andre Reed and James Lofton and monster defensive lineman Bruce Smith.

After they finished losing Super Bowl after Super Bowl, I became teamless once more and the Super Bowl became what it’s about for many Razorbacks fans — the commercials.

It was such a golden age for that because that’s when it became a true marketing focus. There was the Bud Bowl, a Super Bowl played out between bottles of Budweiser and Bud Light over multiple commercials.

We saw the arrival of the Clydesdales for the first time as one kicked a field goal and also the Budweiser frogs. There was also the great battle between Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, the Budweiser fire dog commercial, Monster.com’s “When I Grow Up” and eventually the infamous Puppy Monkey Baby.

For decades I talked and played games with friends during the game and decided whether the halftime show was worth my time, but everyone was in agreed silence when the commercials came on. Once the game was over, we all argued which were the best commercials. Were you a Terry Tate: Office Linebacker guy, or did you prefer the zebra doing instant replay to see whether a Clydesdale stepped out of bounds or perhaps the Fed Ex Castaway parody where he found out the package contained everything he needed to escape the island the whole time?

But lately some companies have begun doing their best to ruin the Super Bowl experience for people in the SEC footprint. They have started running their Super Bowl ads not only before the actual game, but weeks before the game.

It’s like telling a young boy what he is getting for Christmas over Thanksgiving dinner. It’s just not right.

This year’s greatest offender has been Pepsi. They started showing their Coca Cola polar bear rip-off ad a while ago and it’s been everywhere.

It’s like waiting for three weeks to go see a blockbuster movie with a family member and trying to avoid spoilers. Because of this treacherous behavior, I won’t be partaking in Pepsi during the Super Bowl or the months that follow.

It’s sacrilege. The logic doesn’t even make sense.

By the time the Super Bowl comes around. the ad has been out so long and seen so much that it’s no longer a Super Bowl commercial.

It’s just a basic commercial at that point. It’s not special and shouldn’t even be considered when the lists come out for Super Bowl ad rankings.

Sure, places like Arkansas don’t really matter to the NFL. It certainly doesn’t matter to the people there most of the time.

However, the one time each matter to one another is the most profitable weekend of the year for the NFL. Sure, there is little the league can do, but there needs to some sort of effort to stop practices like those used by Pepsi.

Perhaps have teams that plan to release their commercials ahead of time move down the list in priority for prime spots during the game. If they claim they won’t and do it anyway, then move them down the priority list the next year.

Just please don’t let them ruin football Christmas anymore. It’s just unAmerican.

Hogs Feed

Gary and Jay Solnit invested in a piece of property in Paragould in 2016 with a Dollar General on it. They estimated the land was worth about $1.5 million.

The state of Arkansas seized the property for unpaid taxes and sold it six years later for about $27,000.

Now, the Solnits want the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them to sue the Arkansas Commissioner of Public Lands to recoup their lost investment.

The brothers, who live in California, are challenging an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling allowing the seizure and sale to stand. The state’s high court concluded the Solnits had no recourse in court because the state can’t be sued under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

“That just seems like a big problem,” said Aaron Newell, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the Solnits. “That seems like a problem that needs to be fixed.”

Alexis Reaves, a spokeswoman for the commissioner’s office, said because the case is pending, the office would not comment.

At issue is whether a state’s sovereign immunity, which legally bars suing the state under most circumstances, outweighs the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires “just compensation” for any property taken for public use. What makes the case unusual, Newell said, is the state is the entity that foreclosed on and seized the property. If a county or a private company had grabbed the land, they could be sued because sovereign immunity wouldn’t apply, he said.

Should the U.S. Supreme Court take the case, a ruling would impact sovereign immunity laws around the country, Newell said.

“This could really give people their day in court,” Newell said. “It would allow cases to be heard on the merits.”

The case started with an unpaid tax debt of about $10,000, two mailed notices that never reached the Solnits and an eventual sale of the property.

The Solnits missed their property tax payments on the land in 2017 and 2018. It is unclear who assessed the property value at $1.5 million.

That triggered a notice being sent to the registered address for the company listed as the owner of the property, BAS LLC, in Tarzana, Calif., where Gary Solnit lived for a time. The company operated from a separate address in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Gary Solnit asked the title company for the Arkansas property to change the address, but that change never came to pass. BAS also didn’t register a mailing address with the county, a requirement under Arkansas law. The two mailed notices never reached the company or the Solnits.

After not paying property taxes for two years, the Greene County Clerk certified the property to the Arkansas State Lands Commissioner for nonpayment.

The commissioner’s office sent a certified letter to the company at the address in Tarzana, Calif., the owner’s last known address. Using postal service tracking data, the commissioner’s office noted the letter had been delivered Aug. 24, 2021.

A second certified letter was sent in June 2022 to the property address in Paragould. That letter was returned as undelivered.

“The brothers never knew their property was being foreclosed on until it was foreclosed on,” Newell said. “You’d think you could have some recourse, not just to have your $1.5 million property foreclosed for a $10,000 tax debt.”

The two men sued in state court but ultimately lost at the Arkansas Supreme Court, where the state argued that it fulfilled its constitutional and legal duties to notify BAS LLC and the Solnits about the debt and foreclosure.

A divided Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that the Land Commissioner’s office fulfilled the legal duty to notify the Solnits and BAS LLC of the seizure and pending sale of the property, satisfying the constitutional requirement of due process.

“The undisputed record here demonstrates that the Commissioner provided constitutionally sufficient notice before it proceeded with the challenged tax sale,” Arkansas Associate Justice Nicholas Bronni wrote for the court.

Associate Justice Shawn A. Womack, in a dissent, said the case is an example of “how messy” the state’s laws on sovereign immunity are.

“Because the right to property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, sovereign immunity, a constitutional sanction, cannot be an obstacle to a claim of this right,” Womack wrote.

As of Friday, the high court had not said it would take the case. If the case is taken up, Newell’s best estimate is it would be heard in the fall.

“There’s really no set timeline,” Newell said.