In the days and weeks leading up to a 1965 showdown between defending national champion and No. 3 Arkansas and No. 1 Texas, there was a sign outside the First Baptist Church in Fayetteville on the corner of Dickson Street and College Avenue that read:
‘Football is just a game, spiritual things are eternal. Nevertheless, beat Texas!’
Arkansas won that game, 27-24, on its way to winning 22 straight in a decade where it could be argued that it was the best program. Although Texas, by virtue of winning the ‘Game of the Century’ four years later, would probably argue that its two national championships (in ‘63 & ‘69) would give it the nod.
Of course, the Razorbacks would still wage a yearly battle with the Longhorns for the next 22 seasons before Frank Broyles moved them to the Southeastern Conference ahead of the 1992 campaign.
Ranking The Arkansas vs Texas Rivalry
Arkansans know that while Texas is their No. 1 rival, they fall down the pecking order in Texas’ eyes. They grant that Texas A&M and Oklahoma mean more. But they’d still like to feel they fall somewhere in that 3 or maybe 4, at worst, range.
However, according to Ryan Kay of Longhorns Wire, they only crack the top five – and barely. He has TCU and Texas Tech ahead of the Razorbacks.
First of all, TCU, despite its rich history almost a century ago with Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien, was essentially an afterthought until Gary Patterson took over the program at the turn of the century.
And while Texas Tech has certainly fallen off as a program, in the 1980s and 1990s it held its own against Texas, winning four times in the 80s and then four of six games under Spike Dykes from 1993 to 1998. That set the stage for a Pirate to come in and lead the Red Raiders to even higher glory.
Recency bias, mainly directed toward that remarkable 2008 team that beat a Colt McCoy-led Longhorns team in the final seconds via a Graham Harrell-to-Michael Crabtree offering, probably led Kay to rank Texas Tech ahead of Arkansas. But even the late Leach himself would have probably argued his program paled in comparison to Mack Brown’s program at the time and definitely all-time.
Leach even refers to that in his viral rant following the last game he ever coached at Texas Tech, where he mentions that people in the Red Raiders’ program were happy that they played Texas ‘close’ in 2009.
Significance of Beating Texas for Arkansas
On a recent program highlighting the rivalry on KNWA’s Pig Trail Nation, Arkansas sportswriter emeritus Clay Henry talked about the annual showdowns he got to witness as the son of legendary Orville Henry and then as he started his own journalism career.
“It was the relationships between Arkansas people and Texas people like that, that was unique,” Henry said. “That doesn’t exist anymore anywhere in college sports. Pure hatred among fans. They saw Texas arrogance among their fans and were not treated right. Texas won most of the time. We celebrate those victories because of the way those fans treated us through the years.”
People who live in Northwest Arkansas nowadays wouldn’t know it, but at one point this area was small. Fayetteville was the only ‘big’ town in the area and had just 30,000 residents as of the 1970 census. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that things exploded up here.
The rest of the state, outside of Little Rock and its surrounding areas, has always been small. It was that blue-collar mentality and inferiority complex that led the Texas rivalry to become as big as it became. Texas was viewed as the large evil empire with its big cities and vast resources compared to the Razorbacks. The 1964 victory in Austin where Ken Hatfield’s 81-yard punt return still lives in lore was the catalyst to Arkansas winning its lone national championship, along with Texas natives Ronnie Caveness, Loyd Phillips and Jimmy Johnson.
Tight Bond Between Broyles & Royal
Plus, the rivalry took on a different life of its own because of the two characters that were intertwined with the programs – Frank Broyles and Texas’ Darrell Royal.
These two Hall of Fame coaches combined for 333 wins, four national championships and 18 conference titles, and were larger than life outside of coaching.
Earl Campbell, the 1977 Heisman Trophy winner for the Longhorns, spoke about the coach that recruited him to the Longhorns and his relationship with Broyles.
“They were very good friends, and I even learned a lot from them,” Campbell said on the Pig Trail Nation special. “You compete against one another, but you can be friends. And believe me, when Frank Broyles showed up around Darrell Royal, I would see a different smile. They really loved each other as grown men, and they were both pretty successful.”
Bob Holt, the longtime sportswriter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, saw their friendship flourish in later years as athletic directors who went into the College Football Hall of Fame together in 1983.
“I think they just had a lot of mutual respect and they loved golf and they liked to spend time together and the key was, they didn’t talk football,” Holt said on the special.
This November will be the 80th installment in the series. It doesn’t matter much to oddsmakers to Arkansas has won the last two meetings, the 31-7 Texas Bowl shellacking at the end of 2014 and then the 2021 victory in the second game of the season. Texas is still the heavy favorite heading into this one, according to books available through the betonline welcome bonus.
Texas hasn’t won since a 52-10 thumping of the Hogs in Austin in 2008 in a game delayed a week by Hurricane Ike in Bobby Petrino’s first season as head coach.
Even though Broyles and Royal have both since passed on from this life in the last decade, surely they’ll both be tuned into this year’s battle from somewhere upstairs. They might even have a friendly wager on the outcome.
Texas Football Rivalries
| Rival | Texas’ All-Time Record (winning percentage) |
|---|---|
| Oklahoma | 63-51-5 (.550) |
| Texas A&M | 76-37-5 (.665) |
| TCU | 65-28-1 (.697) |
| Arkansas | 56-23 (.709) |
| Texas Tech | 55-18 (.753) |
Odds on Winning the 2024 SEC Title
| SEC Conference Championship 2024 | |||
| 2/26/24 | 8/29/24 | ||
| Georgia | 2/1 | 33/20 ↓ (+165) | |
| Texas | 5/2 (+250) | 4/1 | |
| Alabama | 9/1 | 5/1 | |
| Mississippi | 13/2 (+650) | 15/2 | |
| LSU | 10/1 | 10/1 | |
| Texas A&M | 22/1 | 10/1 | |
| Missouri | 11/1 | 18/1 | |
| Tennessee | 9/1 | 18/1 | |
| Oklahoma | 50/1 | 25/1 | |
| Auburn | 50/1 | 33/1 | |
| Florida | 100/1 | 100/1 | |
| Kentucky | 80/1 | 100/1 | |
| South Carolina | 90/1 | 100/1 | |
| Arkansas | 125/1 | 250/1 | |
| Mississippi State | 200/1 | 300/1 | |
| Vanderbilt | 250/1 | 300/1 | |
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