Arkansas Football: Why?
I don’t mean this existentially (although it’s fair comment on a state Mississippians shake their heads at). We’re doing another home and home with these sophisticates in 2008/2009.
Why do we continue to insist on scheduling these roadside jam-peddlers? Did the Freedom of Information Act requests for Nutt’s Blackberry (I’m going to make that the new Dirty Sanchez in the urban dictionary) also unearth some saucy text chat between DeLoss Dodds and Frank Broyles?
Blackmail is the only logical explanation.
Make no mistake, Razorback Fan values a win over Texas more than his common-law marriage. Their state has an intensity for this contest we couldn’t match if our team watched Houston Nutt spinning backfist Sally Brown during warm ups and then stomp a blind man’s seeing eye dog to death for wearing foam longhorns. We roll in like it’s a scrimmage with our “Too cool to care, we’re Texas” vibe and Arkansas is in full riot, switchblades in their tube socks, hiding WMDs in our Gatorade.
Consider the Laws of Non-Con Scheduling - Arkansas violates every one of them:
1. Prestige. Every team in college football is a worker at TGIF. Your wins are flair. In the minds of the media, out of conference wins over name opponents are the brightest flair of all. Arkansas offers no flair. Once Darren McFadden goes pro, they’ll have no national presence, continue to have no fan base beyond their fetid borders, no media interest beyond the Fort Smith Daily Shopper. Yet they are good enough to beat you when they play on a high (we’ve lost 2 of 3 in the Brown era). That is bad. High Risk/Low Reward is the methodology of fools.
2. Recruiting. Mack Brown predicates everything he does on recruiting - except when he schedules Arkansas. We schedule a Stanford or UCLA to show a Cali kid that there are areas of the country where college football is valued more than Ashtanga Yoga. We schedule a weak sister Florida school (UCF) to appeal to the four kids in Florida who don’t have THUG LIFE branded on their abdominals. Playing Arkansas gives them an entrance into our stomping grounds. There is no reciprocal benefit.
3. TV Sets/National Exposure. We have an athletic department that would sell the rights to their mother’s cervix to earn a sixpence, yet we play the shockingly untelegenic Hawgs at any opportunity. A Texas fan and an Arkansas fan watch Texas/Arkansas. A college football fan watches Texas/Ohio St. Comprende, DeLoss?
4. Road Atmosphere. Our fan base doesn’t have a very good time traveling to Arkansas. First, there’s the battery of Hep C shots. Then a five stop regional flight, where Ozarkian upper respiratory infections are distributed like peanuts. On the game day stroll to the stadium, there’s a general sense you’ve entered the Village Of The Insane like Kurt Thomas in Gymkata. 
Like most white trash, Hawg fans are massive conspiracy theorists. Even a lost coin flip is met with knowing jeers and catcalls about rich Texans payin’ off dem gol’ durned refah rees and altering the laws of probability. It’s a tiresome, ignorant fanbase. With any opponent, I’ve always been able to find a rival fan to exchange thoughts with in a cordial manner; to date, Arkansas and Mississippi St are the only exceptions.
5. Tradition. Overrated. Irrelevant. We used to play them in a league so shitty that the Big 12 was an improvement. Who cares? The whole point of non-conference games is to embrace the novel and non-traditional. Playing Ohio St, Michigan and USC was non-traditional. I kind of enjoyed it. You want SEC? Give me Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss. Those are goosebump worthy.
My next post on this subject will be Arkansas: What!?
Or maybe Arkansas: Clean Your Fucking Yards Up, You Prideless Crackers.
August 16, 2007 at 8:11 am
Every time we schedule Arkansas, God kills 1,000 kittens.
August 16, 2007 at 2:21 pm
My Grandpa kicked the shit out of Jimmy Johnson one time.
August 17, 2007 at 8:51 am
Do tell.
August 17, 2007 at 10:02 am
Yeah, seriously.
August 17, 2007 at 7:05 pm
He owned a bowling alley in Fayetteville near campus in the late 50s, early 60s.
During my childhood, he would often regale me with stories of his time running the place and how students would come in hammered, bowl, cut up and shit.
One of the stories was about an unruly lad he once kicked out of the place - a drunk, stocky, buzzcut cocksucker with baloney tits. I just assumed he meant Jimmy.
August 19, 2007 at 8:32 am
Why don’t you give the real reason you do not want to play the hogs? When the SWC broke up we took the high road(SEC), and you took the low road (Big 12). Every conference game we play, we play teams that are better than Texass with maybe the exception of Miss State. The conference you play in is a joke, but I guess thats okay if you like pummelimg much weaker teams to have a great win-loss record. If you played in the SEC, you would be middle of the pack at best.
Texas was scheduled for the old timers like
myself that still see Texas as a rivalry game. We don’t really need to play you, as much as you need to play us. We have owned you since we left the SWC, and except for one lucky play the record would be 3-0 instead of 2-1. I mean our weak defense in the Cotton Bowl held your highly rated offense to what was it 21 or 27 yards rushing. Why is that? Because the level of competion we face on a weekly basis has made us a much better team. In the days before we joined the SEC, I used to hope we would be lucky enough to beat Texass. I fully expect the Hogs to win the 2008 and 2009 games, and I will really be surprised if we do not win by at least two touchdowns each year.
August 19, 2007 at 10:23 am
I didnt grow up watching Arkansas and Texas play football. By mere chance, Arkansas/Texas 1991 was the first Hog game I ever attended, and it was also, of course, the last time we ever played as conference rivals. Consequently, I dont really give a shit about Texas. To me, it is a geographically fitting nonconference game with a little history to make it interesting. It is not about the 60’s, 70’s, and whatever the old farts still hold on to. It is just a nice ball game to watch.
I understand some of you sentiments about this game. No, we are not a top ten program. We dont offer anything to Texas that you dont already have. However, who really does? What is there, like ~25 million people in Texas and only one truly bigtime program? What else could you possibly need anyway? Do you really want Texas to play a current top 10 nonconference game EVERY year and risk losing a game that would keep you out of BCS title aspirations? Any team with any talent at all can win the Big 12 right now, yet the Big 12 still has the prestige to send its conference winner to the BCS CG despite its obvious depth issues. Arkansas packs a pretty solid punch. It is not a top 10 punch, but it is top 25. You know Texas should win 3/4, but you will have to bring your lunch box every time we come to town. What is so bad about that? Most young men will play less than 50 meaningful football games in their entire life and that is spread out over 8 years. If your coaches cannot get them prepared to play somebody meaningful, maybe you have a coaching problem. We are certainly not your problem, and a trip to northwest Arkansas is not near the nightmare you make it out to be.
You say that we offer no TV coverage. What a stupid thing to say. Everybody who follows SEC and Big 12 football will watch that game for sure, but it doesnt end there. Hell, I watched Ole Miss and Missouri last year, and they are for the most part dregs of both conferences recently. You and I both know that a lot of televisions will be on these games when it is played, and to limit it to Big 12 and SEC states is still not fair. Everybody outside the SEC sits in waiting for an opportunity to bash our conference. It is THE conference right now, and a lot of fans are anxious to see the SEC removed from that pedestal. BE, PAC 10, Big 10, and ACC fans will get in on the action to. That is why it will be a national broadcast everytime it is played from now until the end of time.
The rest of your blog is just trash talking Arkansas and Arkansans. Fine, it is all in good fun. I have lived in Texas, and there is no shortage of material for either side. As far as getting pumped up about playing Ole Miss….you really kicked your credibility in the nuts with that one.
August 19, 2007 at 10:59 am
we like playing the texa$$ longwhores, when we visit their stadium it makes appreciating ours so much better, as that horseshoe with ducttape is pretty said even with all the improvements. Course all our facilities are better than any the longwhores have. Sure we might only have 32 teeth collectively in our state, but at least we are not counting our cows teeth to prop our numbers up. Funny that uber recruiter Mack the Brown, can’t seem to out coach little ole lowly Houston Dale Nutt. Have fun falling back under OU shadow girls.
August 19, 2007 at 11:08 am
I live in Texas, grew up in Arkansas. Three things in your blog are completely innacurate and need to be clarified.
1) The SWC used to be the premier conference in college football. Maybe not in the last few years of its existence, but historically speaking the winner of the conference usually played for the national title. That doesn’t mean they were the best conference, but the top tier SWC teams beat all of the national powers.
2) Have you ever been to East Texas? Talking about the redneck, dirty yard, white trash stereotype must also include all of East Texas as well. I have lived in both…have you? East Texas is no different than Arkansas. And if you have ever been to Northwest Arkansas it looks nothing like your stereotype.
3) Arkansas fans over the age of 30 despise Texas. We remember the good ol’ days when it was usually us or Texas fighting for the title (any sport). That was a great rivalry…..and it used to invoke a lot of emotion on the LOnghorns side as well. Other than Oklahoma and ATM, the Hogs were a major nemesis. While playing Ohio State and Cali schools is sexier, don’t disrespect this great rivalry because at one time people in the east and west coast did watch this game…..every season
August 19, 2007 at 11:19 am
Your name should be “Stereotypio” instead of the one you chose.
Guys like you are a dime-a-dozen. No creativity. Just rely on hackneyed cliches to draw laughter from your weak-minded followers. What a bore!
Like your comment on “jam peddlers”. The only jam I peddled was that milky hog-juice that was last seen seeping between your wife’s teeth (and - no - she didn’t spit).
See? Anyone can come up with sophomoric comments guaranteed to make “his boys” chuckle, IF they want to drop to that “lowest common denominator” level. You’d be MUCH better off if you just stayed with your sports points without the cheap shot insults, for there is a valid point to be made from the Texas perspective without taking things down to “that level”.
But, there are also valid points in rebuttal. Overall, your posts suffers from a lack of perspective; to be expected from one so young and generally inexperienced in ALL areas, but disappointing none-the-less. And, in an enrivonment where ALL anyone knows or cares about is what you wrote, nothing else BUT the quality and depth of your writing skills matters.
For example: College football, more that probably ANY sport in this country (outside of, perhaps, pro baseball) is very steeped in tradition. New formations, coaches, players and inovations come along, but the history of playing for “the old Wooden Bucket” or Texas-OU in the Cotton Bowl or Georgia/Auburn in Jacksonville’s “world’s greatest cocktail party” are just a few among hundreds of traditional elements to the great college game. Not acknowledging the (fairly recent, by the way) historical draw of this game for many fans of both teams, as well as college football fans and sportswriters around the country is to demonstrate a gross lack of understanding of the college game. Yes - both schools have important conference games that exceed the “big picture” importance of the game, but it remains a marquee game with national interest when they play each other, and will for the forseeable future. Perhaps not on the scale of, say, Ohio State and Texas in terms of the overall perception of the teams these days (although Arkansas is clearly in the public consciousness the last couple of years); but, Texas and Ohio State have no history, and UA vs. Texas has LOADS of history (and not just 1969, by the way).
To each their own, and I can understand why some Texas fans - especially the younger ones - are not as excited about this matchup as they are with other “big name” non-conference foes. But you really need to learn to write about the subject at hand without making the rookie mistake of dragging out all the old cliches. Doing so does nothing but invalidate yourself to 90% of the public at large.
August 19, 2007 at 11:21 am
ben:
Your post may make me alter the part of my screed about not finding reasonable Razorback fans.
A couple of thoughts:
1. I think you overestimate the appeal of our matchup nationally. A Texas/Florida game would draw significant national attention - just like our matchup with Ohio St did. Texas/Arkansas is largely a regional matchup with regional interest (Big 12, SEC). Our home and home with Ohio St had substantially more televisions than Texas/Arkansas. In today’s world of the BCS beauty competition, national presence matters. The Hawgs trail LSU, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Georgia, & Florida in media interest by a substantial margin - and that’s with my choice for the Heisman in your backfield.
2. I want to play Ole Miss for the women and the Grove tailgate. You caught me.
August 19, 2007 at 12:46 pm
As far as #2, I anticipate you’ll also enjoy the lack of milky hog-juice.
August 19, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Interesting blog. Childish, and full of attacks on the people of Arkansas, and I could care less what you think about us. Arkansas no longer needs to play Texas period. We do not need Texas for recruiting anymore. We get enough national coverage for recruiting anyway. Case in point Casey, and Nathan Dick just to name a few. Im 41 years old, and remember the Arkansas/Texas game, and for your information it was one of the Top 5 Rivalries in the country matter of fact it was 2nd only to Michigan/Notre Dam.
As one of the replies noted Arkansas plays in the SEC where even a Vandy, or Miss. St. are a threat. Let me put it this way I would put my money on Vandy, or Miss. St. vs any Big 12 team, and that includes Texas. Tell you what I challenge Texas, and their fans to ask for more SEC non cons, and lets just see how they do. Texas vs LSU = Win for LSU, Texas vs Georgia = Win for Georgia, Texas vs South Carolina (tough one here but again) = Win for South Carolina. Seriously think about this for a sec who do you have in the Big 12… Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M. 3 good teams out of 12 . Pathetic. SEC - Alabama, Auburn, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee….10 good teams out of 12. Simply no contest here the SEC is the better of the two conferences by far.
Tell you what why dont you write, or ask your Texas Longhorn AD why he keeps asking Arkansas to play a home in home. Arkansas didnt ask for this one, or the last set Texas did. I ask you why is that? Maybe its Texas who cant let it go. Like I said earlier I did like the Ole Arkansas/Texas game, but I also know its time for Arkansas to leave Texas behind for good.
August 19, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Isn’t the distance between Fayetteville and Allen, Texas only about 250 miles? Seems like Casey and Nathan Dick could drive back to their hometown in the morning with plenty of time to return to catch the ending of Hee Haw on their dorm room TV that same night.
August 20, 2007 at 8:39 am
“As far as getting pumped up about playing Ole Miss….you really kicked your credibility in the nuts with that one.”
Something tells me Ben has never been to Oxford on gameday.
August 20, 2007 at 10:16 am
You are a dumb ass.
August 21, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Some of you Arkies take this blog - and maybe yourselves - too seriously. And yes, Fayettenam is an terrible, raucus away venue for Horn fans.
August 22, 2007 at 10:28 am
Very nice piece of entertainment, though a bit on the trashy side. I will try to be just as entertaining and stupid. (believe me, i will admit, i can be stupid according to my lovely wife) First, I am actually getting tired of hearing Longhorns complain about playing in a football game. Come on guys, you are the breadbasket of Football in this country. You should represent yourselves better than that.
I remember a time, when it wasn’t about the national scale of things. It was about the game. The National Scale came to this game. It was the game of the year for many. The game of the century for some. You always knew it was going to be a good game to watch and many times it did decide who won the conference and went on to a New Years day bowl game. Those boys just wanted to play like hell against each other. That is where a rilvary is at it’s best. Only after that does it carry’s over to the fanbase. Many never forget and many will never know. Either way, you still get a good football game! What is wrong with that? You are so pre-occupied with your better than thou WASP attitude, that you are sacrificing yourself to not ever enjoy this matchup. Are you so certain you are going to be a national championship contender every year? I think your Sooner pals learned that lesson a long time ago. Let the game be and instead of complaining because we actually come to a game to play or cheer hard, maybe you could do the same. It is a game. Last time i checked, if you really don’t want to loose, you will play your best instead of look past it. Maybe your AD see’s it that way. I admire him for making that choice.
Scipio, I bet you sit there and watch a football game and bitch and whine over everything you see happening on the field. I bet you’ve never said to yourself “Well I’ll be, that there was gooooood game!” Have you ever enjoyed a game ever? I bet you even bitched when you won the national championship. “Ahhhhhh man, we didn’t win that game, Vince Young was the only player we had, they gave it to us. blah blah blah!” Couldn’t find any happiness in that either could you?
I have a solution. Come down from your high chair seat, quit crying (they cheated!!), and look around your state. Do you see it? Your beloved stupid Sam Houston didn’t finish the job when he should have. I give Texas 10 years and they will no longer be a state, they will have been annexed back to the proud and cultured Mexicans. Your great Aggie and Red Raider siblings will have you to blame Longhorn as you are piss poor at representing your ways. You best decide soon, come down off your steer or continued to be swallowed by a 400lb gorrila. Man, did I used to love it when Rice beat you too.
And know when you are gone, it will make me sad cause i will have to choose Ole Miss as our most exciting game of the year(7th heaven). Well I think i’m done. I had fun doing this and please know it was just fun. As you have seen, i’m smart like a Longhorn fan. I just like to have a little fun. Oh, I would knock George Bush being a Longhorn, but i am smart enough to know you can come rigth back with the Clintons. I say uncle to that.
I live in Kansas City. Our BBQ kicks your BBQ’s ass any day. Oh nooooooo, not antoher rivalry for Texans to claim we are too good for it even be considered a rivalry.
Scipio, the great Roman Orator, lost everything he loved cause he made the wrong choice of words.
(I did enjoy your rip on the K-State Wildcates and Mizzou Tigers though. WOOOOOOOOOO PIG SOOIE!)