Feature image above: Mark May speaks at the Broyles Award ceremony. (Photo by Steve Lewis)
Football standout and longtime ESPN commentator Mark May will close out the 2025 slate of guests at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, bringing his pull-no-punches style on the state of the game. May, who has become a familiar figure in the state through his regular spots on 103.7 The Buzz’s Morning Mayhem show and as emcee for the annual Broyles Award will be on hand Nov. 24.
Mark May, left, with David Bazzel (Photo by DeWaine Duncan)
A native New Yorker, May attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he played on the offensive line protecting future Hall of Famer Dan Marino. He was so dominant at guard that he did not allow a sack in either his junior or senior season with the Panthers, landing unanimous All-American honors and the Outland Trophy as the nation’s top collegiate interior lineman. Drafted in 1981 in the first round by the then-Washington Redskins, May would play on two Super Bowl teams and later be named one of the 80 greatest players in franchise history. He ended his career in 1993 after subsequent stints with the San Diego Chargers and Arizona Cardinals.
Following his playing days, May enjoyed success as a broadcaster and had various business interests. Now residing in Arizona, he does public speaking and has recently entered the restaurant business.
Arkansas Money & Politics caught up with the straight-shooting May to get his take on the state of the pigskin.
Arkansas Money & Politics: Have we seen the end of dynasties in college football?
Mark May: I think so. You look at Ohio State, everybody’s saying how good they are, just the best team money can buy, and they’ve been that way the last year or two, but true dynasties are going to be super hard to come by. Kids don’t really have that relationship with a school. Yeah, they want to play for a winner. Yeah, they want to play for a national championship, but the bottom line is if you’re at School A, and School B offers you seven figures, what are you going to do? So I think building a dynasty is going to be tough because everybody’s got so much doggone money.
AMP: Just for fun, what would Mark May have commanded in name, image and likeness money back in the day?
May: Oh, I’d have had deep pockets, especially in Pittsburgh. Once we signed Dan Marino, we knew he was going to be a star. Well, I had two years with Marino, and they had to have somebody to protect him, so I’d have been in that seven- to eight-figure range.
Desmond Howard, left, with Mark May
(Photo by DeWaine Duncan)
AMP: This season has seen coaches such as Brian Kelly, who’s 20 games above .500 at LSU, and James Franklin, who came within a field goal of advancing to the national championship title game last year, both fired midseason after a couple of bad games. What does that tell you about the state of coaching in college football?
May: The game has gone off the rails. You look at Billy Napier of Florida, he got fired after winning a game. You look at James Franklin; he took over that program when it was just coming out of the Joe Paterno era and what happened, and yeah, he didn’t win the big games. Yeah, he didn’t have a great record against top-five teams and struggled with top-10 teams, but the bottom line is he brought them back to respectability, and you can’t discount that just because he had a 3-3 record and he lost a bad game.
Major college football programs the last couple years have been complaining they don’t have enough money, they can’t compete in the NIL, they can’t go into the transfer portal because it costs them too much. Then all of a sudden, you’re seeing coaches being bought off who are good coaches with solid reputations and being paid $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, $60 million to walk away. It’s incredible.
AMP: A traditional line of demarcation between college and pro used to be that the NFL was a personality-driven league — the face of the NFL and all that — while college was still a program-driven league. Is that still the case?
May: I think [college] is going that way. I think that it’s basically going to be an NFL system in the next couple of years regardless. There’s going to have to be a commissioner in college football. It’s got to come down to that. I’ve said this for like four or five years now because they’re going to have to go to that system. The NCAA, they don’t have the teeth anymore. One, they’re getting sued by everybody when something goes awry, and, two, nobody really respects them. Let’s not forget this was the group that said 15, 20 years ago, if you were out there recruiting a kid and you bought that kid a pizza, that was considered an illegal benefit. I mean, how stupid is that?
Everybody says, “Well, it equates to the NFL.” No, it’s actually worse. The NFL has their free agency, but they have guardrails up, you know? The NCAA cannot handle this, and they haven’t handled this, and it’s just gotten worse and worse.
College football has got to start putting some guardrails up too. Now, at least, they’re moving the transfer portal to once a year in January. That’s one step. The other step has got to be you’ve got to stay at a university, I would say, at least two years unless the head coach leaves. If the head coach leaves and you want to transfer where the head coach goes, let them out of it. Otherwise, you stay there two years.
May in show prep
(Photo by DeWaine Duncan)
AMP: Something else that seems to have emerged over the past couple of seasons is the parity that appears to be coming to college football. A lot of former powers — Texas, the University of Southern California, LSU, Michigan, Oklahoma — seem to have come back to the fold, while upstarts like Indiana have asserted themselves.
May: In the past, guys would wait their time. The reason why you went to the university is because you loved the university, you loved the football team, you loved the head coach. That’s why he was in your dining room, talking to your mom and dad, and that’s why you signed there. Now it’s all about money, you know? There’s nothing that keeps a player there. There’s no allegiance to that school. When you have a backup player that isn’t making what the starter’s making, and he thinks that he can start and he can play, he can go someplace else, sometimes for more money.
When I look at Indiana, I think Curt Cignetti has done a terrific job through the portal. He’s gone after certain players in a certain way, and those players have panned out for him, and it’s lifted Indiana from a basketball school to a football school in two years, so it can be done. You’ve just got to have a model. Cignetti’s got an NFL background, and I think that if you’re looking for a head coach, I’m looking for a head coach with an NFL background because from now on, the successful college programs will be run like an NFL franchise. I think that’s the future of it.
AMP: The likely elephant in the room during your visit to the Little Rock Touchdown Club will be Arkansas’ coaching search, assuming the matter is not settled by then. How would you rate Arkansas as far as a coaching job?
May: I think, overall, it’s a very solid job if you get the right backing. You’ve seen that with [John] Calipari going into the basketball program — the right coach with the right backing, and they’re going in the right direction. If I was the athletic director calling the shots at Arkansas, I would be living day and night at Walmart headquarters. I would be finding some kind of way to get Walmart to be my biggest donor.
In the state of Arkansas, you don’t have another major college. You don’t have a professional football team. You are the top dog. You should be treated like that, so I think if you get the right support, you’re going to be right in the mix with everybody else in the conference.
AMP: What is your assessment of interim head coach Bobby Petrino’s performance since taking over for Sam Pittman?
May: Well first of all, and I don’t know if this is my tin hat speaking, but when they brought Bobby Petrino in and they signed him back, the first thing I said is, “Man, it’s going to be tough for the head coach to hang on to this job,” because if [Pittman] doesn’t do a good job, they’re going to slide Bobby right back in, and they did.
Take out last week against Auburn because their offensive line played horribly, and so did the quarterback — besides that, they were a little more effective on offense the prior two games. The bottom line is they’re finding ways to lose in the fourth quarter, and that can’t happen. I don’t know if it’s conditioning, I don’t know if it’s psychological, I don’t know if it’s mental toughness, but you’ve got to find a way to overcome that. Good teams don’t turn the ball over. They don’t have stupid penalties. They don’t have stupid mistakes. They find a way to win in the fourth quarter, and for some reason, this team hasn’t been able to do that.
May flashing his Super Bowl and Hall of Fame rings. (Photo provided by Mark May)
AMP: Do you think Arkansas has to land that household name, so to speak, the big bold play this go-round, or can Director of Athletics Hunter Yurachek get away with somebody who is talented but maybe the casual fan has never heard of?
May: I think they’ve got to go big. Go big or go home. I think if you’re Arkansas and you want to be big time, you’ve got to go big time. They did that in the basketball program with Calipari. Why not do it in the college football program? I’d go after Jon Gruden. Gruden said he wants to coach in the SEC. Well guess what? Here’s your chance, Jon. Step up to the plate. We’ll take you at Arkansas.
By the way, I’ve always had a great affiliation with the people in the state of Arkansas and had a great time being there, and for some reason the people seem to love me there, but there’s been one thing that I said on the air that got them riled up. One of the five coaches I mentioned that they should bring in, and this was like three weeks ago, was Jimbo Fisher, who won a national championship with Florida State. I don’t know what the deal is with Jimbo in Arkansas, but for some reason, that got them ticked off at me
The thing is, it’s got to be getting tough to find somebody because there’s so many openings right now. If Arkansas isn’t going to keep Bobby Petrino, they better get out there and get ahold of somebody in a hurry because as soon as the music stops, all these coaches are going to be gone because other schools are going to be looking to fill in the blanks. Just think if Lane Kiffin leaves and goes to LSU, then you’ve got to fill the Ole Miss job, and it’s going to be a domino effect. There’s not a big pool of coaches out there that aren’t coaching right now.
