LITTLE ROCK (KATV) – Bob Holt, who covered the Arkansas Razorbacks for 43 years as a sports reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, died Wednesday evening.

Democrat-Gazette columnist Wally Hall announced the death on Twitter last night. Hall said Holt died at 10:38 a.m. Dec. 4.

Holt’s final line — a collection of vignettes about the Razorbacks’ loss to the University of Missouri in the finale of the 2024 football regular season — appeared in Sunday’s paper.

A graduate of Mizzou, Holt was a member of the Football Writers Association of America, a member of the board of directors of the US Basketball Writers Association and a voter in the Heisman Trophy and the AP Top 25 basketball poll, according to his official biography.

Holt, a four-time Arkansas Sportswriter of the Year and 2022 inductee into the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, was a colorful and affable personality.

He charmed coaches, athletes and fans alike with his folksy style and seemingly endless, probing questions.

The Alabama website AL.com once described Holt as “the most curious reporter at SEC Media Days and reluctant cult hero.”

“He is knowledgeable. He’s a gentleman,” then-SEC Commissioner Mike Slive told the site in 2014. “He’s someone I never forgot who he was when I met him. It was easy to remember who he was.”

Holt began covering Razorbacks sports in 1981, focusing exclusively on the Hogs. At press conferences, opposing coaches talked at length about their own teams, but when they were suddenly asked about the Arkansas Razorbacks, everyone knew it was Bob Holt asking the question.

“I don’t work for The Wall Street Journal,” Holt told AL.com. “I don’t work for The New York Times. You know, I don’t work for USA Today. I work for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and as Bill Clinton says, ‘It’s a small, wonderful state,’ but for that.” I mean, you always have to take the local perspective.

Holt has spent his entire career covering the Razorbacks and introducing his readers to the characters who brought them to life, from Lou Holtz and Eddie Sutton to Nolan Richardson and Ken Hatfield to the coaches who followed them, and the countless athletes who wore Razorbacks red. According to the Democrat-Gazette, he even “spent parts of three years in Dallas covering Arkansas interests in the state of Texas.”

“I really couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” Holt once said. “Sometimes you get tired or burnt out like everyone else, but I really can’t imagine doing anything else.”