I don’t know what Darrell Royal did to Arkansas back in the day, but they absolutely hate our guts. And I think we learned that the first time around when we went there.” — Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian
I have a good friend who worked for the elected attorney in Fayette County, which is smack dab in the middle of the Austin-San Antonio-Houston triangle, in the mid-80s. On Friday afternoons, he would climb into his boss’ pick-up truck and drive across the county line (so as not to be seen) and buy a six pack of beer. Then they would drive way out in the country and his boss would turn up “I’m Going Down” by Bruce Springsteen full blast. At which point the attorney would reach into the glove box and pull out a pistol. He would hold the pistol out the window, point it toward that big Texas sky and let off a few rounds.
And that is the way you want to feel after your team’s college football game on a Saturday. Like driving out to the country and engaging in a little bit of (mostly?) harmless gun play.
After Arkansas lost to Texas by the score of 20-10, I did not feel that way. Not at all.
Texas is the No. 3 team in the nation, the ESPN computer favorite to win the national championship and looks likely to finish atop the SEC regular-season standings. For the Hogs to keep the game close and have a real shot of coming out on top in the fourth quarter counts as a classic moral victory.
Which calls to mind a different Bruce Springsteen lyric from “Born in the U.S.A.”
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
That captures what it feels like to be an Arkansas football fan at the moment.[1] Before the game, I was hoping Arkansas wouldn’t suffer its second beat down in two games. And of course I had visions of the Hogs scoring another glorious victory over a second top-10 UT football team dancing through my head.
For that to happen, I knew Arkansas would need to have luck on that side. No fumbled balls by Texas bouncing straight out of bounds, as happened on the Hudson Clark strip late in the game.
It seemed like perhaps the Arkansas groundskeepers might have helped manufacture said luck when during the ABC broadcast of the game, sideline reporter Katie George told fans about the grass inside Razorback Stadium.
“The grass, actually, on the field is pretty long,” George said during the second quarter. “Texas player and coaches definitely noticed the length of the grass when they came out for pregame warmups. It was reiterated to the players by the coaching staff, ‘You need to go full speed in these warmups so you can get used to this kind of drag.’”
Texas Football Side Seeds Conspiracy
A few moments later, color analyst Jesse Palmer — a former Florida and NFL quarterback probably better known for his role on The Bachelor — sprinkled some fertilizer on the nascent conspiracy theory.
“We were on the field earlier in the game and it doesn’t feel or look like a normal SEC playing surface,” Palmer said. “Those are normally putting greens. When you think of places like Alabama and LSU and Florida. This feels like the collar of the putting green. Like, you really have to get the putter face through the grass if you’re going to attempt that.”
By the end of Texas vs Arkansas, this line of thinking had infested the minds of Bobby Burton & Rod Babers, the co-hosts of the popular Texas football podcast “On Texas Football.”
“There’s no doubt that that grass was made for Ja’Quinden Jackson and Braylen Russell and not for Jaydon Blue and Tre Wisner,” said Burton on Saturday night, referring to the how much less the bigger Arkansas backs rely on speed.
Babers chimed in: “That’s an old-school football trick, man, when you got to play against the team with a lot of speed. Let’s make sure that grass is real thick and high.”
However, it doesn’t sound like there was a grand conspiracy to slow down Texas’ athletes.
Longtime Arkansas reporter Trey Biddy actually spoke to a member of the grounds crew two weeks earlier and was told it had to do with the grass itself. The usual Bermuda grass had gone dormant, so they had to put down some rye grass.
In case you need further convincing, Sam Pittman pretty much laughed off the idea of such a conspiracy during Monday’s press conference.
“We didn’t have it up higher than anybody else we’re playing, I don’t think,” he said. The broadcasters “had to come up with something to talk about.”
I definitely didn’t feel like laughing after the game ended, even though I felt Arkansas saved some face in a respectable loss.
Frankly, I didn’t feel like doing a damn thing Saturday afternoon until I put the Boss on Spotify and got halfway through a pot of coffee on Sunday morning. Some people go to church on Sunday for absolution. I go to my local diner, drink a pot of coffee and listen to Bruce Springsteen.
Arkansas vs Texas Rivalry
I can be a bit of a troll. Texas football fans reading this would know that. In that column, I compared rooting for the University of Texas football team to rooting for Darth Vader and the Empire. Did I take text messages sent to me in private by Texas fans and use them to drive home a point about being a good college football fan? For sure.
More than earning the hard-won antipathy of Longhorn fans lifted me on Saturday, however.
Last Christmas, back home in Little Rock, my parents got me a copy of Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming: Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie’s Last Stand by Terry Frei. It’s essentially about the 1969 matchup between Arkansas and Texas, when the programs were the top two undefeated teams in the country and faced off to end the college football regular season. I devoured the book in three days, along with a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie. All three were fantastic.
Frei’s masterpiece weaves a great deal of American history into a story about the “Game of the Century.” After racing out to a commanding 14-point lead, the Hogs snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and lost the game 15-14.
The loss probably stings a little bit less because I wasn’t even an apple in my parent’s eye at the time. But it still stings.
Leading up to this year’s game, other outlets ran a number of stories about the rivalry. Arkansas loses more than it wins when the two play. But not always.
And that was why I was in a damn good mood by the time I finished my pot of coffee and Bruce’s “Glory Days,” appropriately, was ringing in my ears. Because I know at some point Arkansas football will get its act together. It may be with a different coaching staff, or it may be that our mixture of old and young coaches will figure it out in the near future. But at some point, we will be back on top of this rivalry. If only for a year. And that year Arkansas will have a chance of winning the whole damn thing.
It is just this optimism that led me to join the Arkansas Edge last week, the NIL collective for the University of Arkansas sports programs. In a lifetime of questionable financial decisions, I feel like this was one of my better ones. As the old joke goes – I spent half my money on whiskey, women and horses and the other half I just pissed away. I’ll just put the monthly draw to Arkansas athletes in the first column and call it day. Maybe more Arkansas fans will do the same and our staff can start shopping in the luxury department. At some point though, I firmly believe, the stars will align and the Arkansas football program will challenge to be the best team in the country.
And what more can a boy from Little Rock want?
[1] Unfortunately, Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green may feel the same way at this point in the season to some small (or large?) degree. Particularly in that putrid scoreless first half against Texas.
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