The First Fan

As student-council president back at Ruston High, Thurman's great achievement was to repeal a school rule banning short pants. We don't yet know what Clinton's legacy will be, but on his visit to Fayetteville the First Fan did receive from the team a pair of Razorback uniform trunks, cut generously in the seat, per the prevailing style. Richardson urged the First Fan to consider them for his morning jogs in place of what Richardson called "those Marilyn Monroe drawers" in which the President is usually espied. Sure enough, there was the Prez, on the beach at Hilton Head, S.C., a few days later, "saggin'," as this particular sartorial style is known, his baggies flapping in the breeze.

But this Razorback team and its biggest booster have a more ambitious goal than raising the nation's culotte consciousness. Arkansas's 90-78 loss to Kentucky last Saturday afternoon left all parties homing in on what's really important: It's the tournament, stupid. Clinton has given some thought to the Hogs' NCAA prospects, although he gets his pronouns jumbled again. "I still think we've probably got a better chance to win the tournament than anybody else," he says, "because of the discipline of their pressure defense and because they have so many different ways to score. The only thing that concerns me, basically, is that they're young."

Sitting unopened in the Arkansas basketball office is a bottle of champagne that then Governor Clinton and his wife, Hillary, sent Richardson in 1985, soon after he took over the team. "I hope he'll open it if he goes all the way," says Clinton.

Might Bill and Nolan be sharing that bottle on April 4? "I hope I'll be down in Charlotte with him," says the President. "If they go, I'm going."

If not, Clinton offers something to measure his fandom by. "I just may go anyway," he says.