by Nate Allen,
NWAOnline.com (Northwest Arkansas News)
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FAYETTEVILLE - Here is a hallelujah for University of Arkansas alums.
A UA grad moves up and not out of the UA athletic department.
Razorbacks Athletic Director Jeff Long announced this week that Kevin Trainor has been promoted from associate athletic director for media relations to associate athletic director for public relations.
The title change entails more than mere semantics.
Trainor has been juggling two offices and two workloads.
Increasingly, Long wisely has had Trainor assisting with administration in the Broyles Center.
Meanwhile, Trainor still operated the sports information department that Long shuffled from the Broyles Center to Barnhill Arena after his arrival from Pittsburgh to succeed retired Athletic Director Frank Broyles.
The separate offices workload spread Trainor's time too thin, particularly from handling the day-today aspects of directing sports information like he always did so well.
The media will miss "KT" greatly. In the thankless, sometimes conflicting, task of serving his university and serving media seeking his assistance, Trainor was a beacon of courtesy and trust.
Trust is huge. A reporter could ask Trainor for background on a potentially exclusive story and know it wouldn't be relayed to other media or posted on the UA's website.
Credit some of that to apprenticing under Rick Schaeffer, the longtime former sports information director voted into the UA's Hall of Honor.
Most of it is just Kevin Trainor's common sense and common decency, plus an innate ability to know what a reporter needs, from relaying a changed postgame stat to fixing a computer about to sabotage a Saturday night deadline.
Trainor will be missed by media, but he'll still be one the UA looks to for major sports information decisions.
Clearly he will best serve his university with the expanded role in all PR facets and a myriad of interrelated administration.
He puts an Arkansas face in a Broyles Center too removed from Arkansas.
Other than the Razorback Foundation housing AD emeritus Broyles and Razorback Foundation heads and former Hall of Honor coaching icons Harold Horton and Norm DeBriyn and Barnhill Arena housing Hall of Honor member Dean Weber, the former longtime trainer now supervising equipment purchases, there are few faces to make old grads feel the University of Arkansas is still their Arkansas.
Among the suits occupying the Broyles Center, Trainor will be the one that Arkansans know, or quickly feel they know.
Though a native of Fredonia, Kan., Trainor is as Arkie as they come. He knew Arkansas before he attended Arkansas as the younger brother of Kendall Trainor, the 1988 All-America Razorbacks place-kicker still working in Arkansas.
Kevin has served the UA for 16 years, the past 10 as sports information director.
Normally that should be a major Arkansas plus.
Not necessarily with the current Razorbacks, though.
Upon former Chancellor John White's short-lived seizing of the athletic department once Broyles was compelled to retire, having UA on the resume seemed to be a major obstacle for those working or aspiring to work for the Razorbacks.
Nobody with Arkansas connections was considered to replace Broyles. The Razorbacks' staff exit doors have since been overrun with UA grads or those with longtime UA ties.
It's good for Arkansas to finally to see a good one rewarded.