Even before administrators and marketers for the Arkansas and Missouri football programs coined “Battle Line Rivalry” as the name of the yearly football game between the Razorbacks and Tigers, some proposed Arkansas fans turn their eyes north, anyway. Mizzou is a far better rival for the Hogs than LSU, Texas or Texas A&M.
The states and their fan bases simply have too much in common, with the latest shared turf being the fact both programs beat Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon. Missouri took care of business against the woeful Mississippi State variety 39-20 while Arkansas did enough for a 21-point win over the Louisiana Tech kind.
Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz, an Arkansas man born and raised in Alma and having coached for Gus Malzahn at Springdale High, has filled his roster with several Natural State high schoolers poached from right under the Razorbacks. Two years ago, it was tight end Jordan Harris from Pine Bluff High School.
Eli Drinkwitz’s Pipeline
Last year, it was Brian Huff from Valley View and yet two more recruits plucked from Pine Bluff. While losing Austin Dendy might have caused a wince among some fans, losing wide receiver Courtney Crutchfield was especially painful. Crutchfield was the state’s top-rated offensive recruit in the class of 2024 and represents the kind of fleet, in-state talent that Petrino was able to use so well back in his first stint on the Hill with the likes of Joe Adams and Jarius Wright.
While Petrino did make a good impression with Crutchfield in the weeks after his return last November, as he laid out in his interview with BoAS here, it was too little too late.
On December 19, Crutchfield announced his decision to go to Mizzou in December and in the immediate aftermath Eli Drinkwitz essentially rubbed Sam Pittman’s face in it with this low blow of a GIF:
That 41-0 score, of course, represented the low point of last year’s rendition of Arkansas vs Missouri game, which is also probably the nadir of Pittman’s head coaching career so far. It was Arkansas’ horrible finish to 2023 that prompted the hiring of Petrino as Pittman’s new offensive coordinator, after all.
Drinkwitz’s pugnaciousness, meanwhile, has of course rolled over into this season, even if the results so far aren’t quite up to par to last year’s 11-2 campaign.
Earlier this fall, he took a crack at Bob Stoops and in Saturday’s game vs Mississippi State, he apparently briefly went a bit unhinged from the sideline while watching his squad try to salt away the game from the 1-yard line up 39-20 in the last couple minute of regulation.
He delivered an NSFW message to the Mississippi State players jawing with his own:
It’s unclear what exactly prompted this conniption. It very well might have been Bulldogs players diving at the knees of Tigers, as some have pointed out. Even if that was the case, though, Drinkwitz could have chosen higher roads to deal with the issue than popping off with such profanity.
Or, maybe not.
Just as he did after the Crutchfield announcement, Eli Drinkwitz has shown over and over that he likes to fire from the hip without paying too much mind to how it’s received. As much as that chaps the hides of Arkansas football fans, you’ve got to admit his abrasive nature does ratchet up the intensity in rivalry game that was sorely lacking passion a few years ago.
As far as how Crutchfield is doing, he has yet to record a catch while appearing in all of two games.
None of the aforementioned Arkansans have created much of a wave with Missouri football to this point. They’re all in the first or second seasons on campus, too, so it isn’t quite fair to say they’re underachieving. Besides, Dreydon Norwood, a cornerback from Fort Smith who redshirted for one season at Texas A&M before transferring to Missouri, is one of the better cornerbacks in the SEC. Makes sense, considering his brother’s all-conference days at Oklahoma and three NFL seasons.
One reason for the Missouri-Arkansas pipeline of recent years has been the Tiger’s more sophisticated NIL game. Drinkwitz, athletic director Laird Veatch and Laurence Bowers, the West Memphis native who runs Mizzou’s NIL collective, have realized they have to maximize bang-for-buck to keep up with the truly elite in the SEC. After all, despite the success Missouri has had since joining the conference, no one considers the Tigers the same caliber of program as Georgia and few even consider them better than Florida.
Still, they are good enough to get the benefit of the doubt going into Saturday’s Arkansas vs Mizzou game, a tilt for which they are favored by 4.5 points according to major sportsbooks and offers to 1xBet affiliation.
Mizzou NIL At Least Trying
As 98% of the populace has begrudgingly come to admit, NIL is paramount to success in college football nowadays. Schools like Arkansas and Missouri, with modest-or-worse historical resumes (and do not start with how good Arkansas was in the 1970s; that was 50 years ago and is absolutely moot to football in 2024), must have cash in the coffers to attract, then keep, talented players, players that would allow the team to compete with the even more-monied bluebloods. Money equals power. Missouri, which is favored by 4.5 in Saturday’s game is at least covering all its bases.
Take those five Arkansas-native players, plus walk-on Jackson Daily, on the Tigers roster, again, of which Norwood is the only regular. Each player’s biography page on the school’s web site directly links to his Opendorse page. Opendorse is a company that helps players maximize their NIL value.. Fans can purchase shoutouts, the player’s posting on social media for the fan, an autograph or even a personal appearance. Costs are anywhere between $28 for the shoutout and $131 for the appearance. Not something every fan can afford, but something the kinds of fans who purchase tickets to the games can afford, generally. The players’ pages also provide links for fans to purchase Mizzou football apparel personalized with their favorite player’s name, presumably with part of the purchase funding that player’s NIL account.
No other school in the SEC is doing this. Alabama and A&M, the two biggest earners in the conference (well, pre-Texas and OU, anyway; it’s unclear how much money they will have made in their first year in the league), simply have generic links to player shops for jerseys. The big-money Longhorns and small-money Bulldogs, of the MSU variety, are equal here: they don’t have squat on their player pages. LSU’s pages are the most like Missouri’s, though less user friendly. And at Arkansas? It’s about what you’d expect. That is to say, nothing NIL-related. They still only have links to the players’ social-media accounts like it’s 2018 and people care about that, though.
Arkansas Is Like A Dog Chasing A Car
Certainly, with some extra poking around, fans can support their favorite players and programs with NIL money through other measures. Opendorse has pages for each of the schools that use its service. Here’s Arkansas’. Not shabby, but not well kept, either. Johnell Davis, a player who some considered the best guard on the transfer market over the offseason, is listed for the Hogs. His bio page doesn’t appear to have been updated since before he was old enough to legally drink.
It’s no secret that Arkansas has some catching up to do in NIL circles. They’re a school already on their second CEO-type when it comes to the university’s primary collective, Arkansas Edge. Much is made about Arkansas’ alumni base in DFW, but the school remains non-competitive in finances both from alumni and in-state folks who didn’t go to college or might have gone to, say, an Arkansas Tech or UAFS or SAU. Arkansas has the fourth-lowest median income in the nation. Combine it with general national apathy toward the program, a lack of modern success and the near-constant self-deprecation, it’s no wonder local athletes are (insert Donald Trump voice here) crossing the border at an incredible rate, like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Pony up some dough, Arkansas, and maybe one of next year’s issues is alleviated before it even becomes a problem. While Crutchfield may never quite live up to his four-star status, it would be no shocker to see him enter the transfer portal given the tenuous status of Mizzou’s quarterback position with Brady Cook heading out the door after this season.
Arkansas, meanwhile, is losing a bulk of its top five receivers. Only Isaiah Sategna will return, but it matters that Crutchfield already knows Arkansas’ OC Bobby Petrino and Taylen Green will likely return for Year 2 in Petrino’s system. Crutchfield already spurned the Hogs once, so it’s unclear how he feels about the school now (and, personally, I’m not sure how much a player wanting to leave six months after finishing high school because of a lack of touches should be sought, anyway; sounds familiar), but Arkansas could certainly use him, even if just as a competitor for a job. That isn’t going to happen without dollars. Fair or not.
Or maybe Crutchfield sees what is clear from the perpetual NIL and on-field struggles at Arkansas: it just doesn’t have its act together. And yet, this entire week, the Hogs fans who live terminally online will bark and bark about how Missouri isn’t a real rivalry. Maybe they’re right. Northwest Arkansas’ Ecclesia College can holler all it wants about Harvard going ‘woke’ and indoctrinating. Harvard just laughs.
Another Missouri win and the Tigers will be doing the same thing.
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Drinkwitz’s X Factor in Recruiting Arkansas
Drinkwitz’s biggest “X” factor weapon when it comes to recruiting Arkansas might just be Rick Jones, a coaching legend at the Arkansas high school football ranks whose connections and analysis are reaping major dividends.
Jones cemented a widespread reputation as one of the game’s brightest minds in charge at Greenwood High, where in 16 seasons he racked up eight state championships, three runner-up finishes and coached the likes of Tyler Wilson, Drew Morgan, Grant Morgan and Connor Noland.
Nowadays, he mostly works remotely to make sure Drinkwitz and the rest of the Missouri football staff stay on top of the games.
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