The Montagues and Capulets never carried a real reason to feud. The families simply hated each other. Had one lived outside of the same region of Italy, chances are each side wouldn’t have even known of the other side’s existence. Proximity definitely helps stoke a genuine rivalry, but so does self-loathing.
Indeed, this is part of the reason a bulk of Arkansas football fans have yet to commit to the very real rivalry with Missouri. After all, if you think you’re better than someone and end up constantly losing to them, delusions have fogged your brain so much that it can’t create anything to fall back on except that feeling of inadequacy, usually manifest as a related person’s fault. With the Razorbacks, that means athletic directors Jeff Long and Hunter Yurachek and coaches Bret Bielema, Chad Morris and Sam Pittman.
Arkansas and Missouri Football Programs Are Real Rivals
Despite some fans’ continued protestations, the factors for strengthening the rivalry between the Hogs and Mizzou continue to grow. Take, for example, Jalen Catalon. The former Arkansas safety was a Freshman All-American in 2020 by the Associated Press and his NFL Draft stock was sky-high. A shoulder injury sapped half his sophomore season and all but the opening game in his first junior year. He hit the road for Texas immediately after and played last year at UNLV, becoming a first-team All-Mountain West performer and AP third-team All-American. Finally, heading into his last season (theoretically) of college football, Catalon is back in the SEC at Missouri.
By this point, after seeing the likes of Joe Foucha and Greg Brooks go to LSU, or Catalon go to Texas, or Chris Paul and a third of last year’s Hogs team go to Ole Miss, the idea of Catalon again going to a regional foe sort of feels ho-hum, just another increasingly common occurrence in modern football.
And yet.
It also represents the latest tightening of the Arkansas-Missouri football rivalry screw. Arkansas has beaten Mizzou a grand total of once since 2015. Usually, that sort of lop-sidedness would lead to boredom and the cooling of any nascent rivalry embers.
Several Events Have Led to Rivalry’s Growth
But in this case, the intensity has only grown hotter despite the nearly predictable outcomes over nearly a decade. That’s a very rare dynamic in college football. Some of that is due to a lot of close outcomes and a lot of it derives from all the cross-pollination between the states.
Things began in earnest in 2016 when Missouri linebacker Eric Beisel referred to the Razorbacks as “Ar-Kansas,” poking fun at the Hogs for being a similarly down-on-its-luck team as Missouri’s more traditional rival, the Jayhawks. Since then, it’s been a veritable blow-by-blow:
- The Tigers poached Damarea Crockett and Akial Byers from Natural State high schools in 2016
- Arkansas blew a 17-point halftime lead and lost before dropping another to the Tigers in 2017 by a field goal in a game that saw Bielema fired immediately after.
- In a 2019 move that preceded the now-ubiquitous intra-conference transfers, Arkansas’ leading wide receiver Jonathan Nance left for Columbia – and helped convince Clemson transfer quarterback Kelly Bryant to follow him there instead of Fayetteville.
- Missouri hired Arkansas native Eli Drinkwitz in early December 2019.
- The Razorbacks countered by hiring former Missouri coach Barry Odom as defensive coordinator weeks later.
- Tre Williams and Markell Utsey transferred from Mizzou to Arkansas around the same time.
- Arkansas snapped a five-game skid to the Tigers in 2021.
- Missouri bounced back with a two-point win in 2022 after which Drinkwitz spread cigars among his team, seemingly rubbing it in Arkansas’ face.
- Linebacker Jordon Harris signed with Mizzou in 2023 out of Pine Bluff.
- Four-star wideout Courtney Crutchfield followed him from PBHS in 2024 before transferring to Arkansas.
Mizzou’s Domination is Real
Much like those infamous families in “Romeo and Juliet,” If Arkansas and Missouri didn’t play each other every season, the magnitude of these moves would be lessened. Nevermind the geographical proximity of the schools and their respective states similarities, too (outside of St. Louis, anyway). But unlike the Capulets and Montagues, Arkansas and Missouri are hardly two sides of the same coin on the field.
The Tigers are 9-2 against the Hogs since their yearly meeting with Arkansas starting in 2014. They’ve had just two losing regular seasons in that time, both in the first two years of that year-by-year meeting with Arkansas. Mizzou has also been ranked in the College Football Playoff in five seasons and will have finished in the AP Top 25 three times. Arkansas, on the other hand, finished with losing seasons five times since 2014, have been ranked in the Playoff two times and have finished in the Top 25 just once. Two houses unalike in dignity.
Rivalries should be made of sterner stuff, but the most similar teams, results-wise, to Arkansas in the SEC (Ole Miss and Mississippi State) don’t think about the Razorbacks much. And the teams Arkansas fans consider their biggest rivals (LSU, Texas and Texas A&M) consider the Hogs less than 10 percent of the time. As the Righties are fond of saying: wolves don’t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep.
Even Academic and Scientific Data Backs Up Eye Test
A look at the data collected by Dr. David Tyler at the University of Massachusetts and Dr. Joe Cobbs at Northern Kentucky University shows that Arkansas and Missouri have the most similar scores when it comes to mutual antagonism. The chart shows Hogs fans rate Missouri as the fifth-biggest rival, aggregately, but Missouri actually responds to Arkansas with a slightly higher level animus, leading to the mutuality score rating higher between the two than Arkansas fans’ fourth most hated school, Ole Miss.
It’s hard to call it ‘hate,’ though. Arkansas football fans, by the data, don’t engage in schadenfreude for Missouri. They save those feelings most passionately for Texas, which tracks, considering the old chestnut that Arkansas fans hate Texas more than they love themselves. Hate isn’t necessarily a component of a good rivalry, anyway. Brothers don’t hate each other (usually), but have you met a pair that didn’t want to one-up the other in some form or fashion? Catalon won’t hate his Arkansas kind, nor will Crutchfield his Tigers’. That equal footing, or relatively equal footing, plus the proximity measurements play far more into the rivalry’s intensity.
That intensity has grown exponentially over the last decade for Arkansas and Missouri. They wouldn’t have shown up on each other’s rivalry chart whatsoever before 2014. It’s part of why so many Arkansas fans felt the Battle Line Rivalry, as a trophy game, was force-fed. And considering the near-constant shuffling of personnel combined with the timing of the game on each team’s schedule, it’s easy to envision a future that sees Hogs/Tigers take over both fan bases’ worlds on the football field.
Arkansas vs Missouri History
Here’s a look at the short history of the Arkansas vs Missouri rivalry, with the Tigers leading 12-4:
- 1906 – Missouri 11, Arkansas 0 (Columbia)
- 1944 – Arkansas 7, Missouri 6 (St. Louis)
- 1963 – Missouri 7, Arkansas 6 (Little Rock)
- 2003 – Arkansas 27, Missouri 14 (Shreveport, La. – Independence Bowl)
- 2007* – Missouri 38, Arkansas 7 (Dallas – Cotton Bowl)
- 2014 – Missouri 21, Arkansas 14 (Columbia)
- 2015 – Arkansas 28, Missouri 3 (Fayetteville)
- 2016 – Missouri 28, Arkansas 24 (Columbia)
- 2017 – Missouri 48, Arkansas 45 (Fayetteville)
- 2018 – Missouri 38, Arkansas 0 (Columbia)
- 2019 – Missouri 24, Arkansas 14 (Little Rock)
- 2020 – Missouri 50, Arkansas 48 (Columbia)
- 2021 – Arkansas 34, Missouri 17 (Fayetteville)
- 2022 – Missouri 29, Arkansas 27 (Columbia)
- 2023 – Missouri 48, Arkansas 14 (Fayetteville)
- 2024 – Missouri 28, Arkansas 21 (Columbia)
Arkansas wins in bold | One-score games in italics
*Game actually played on Jan. 1, 2008, but it was following the 2007 season
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The states are legitimately similar. Arkansas is moreso with Oklahoma, probably, but let’s not pretend the Razorbacks are on the Sooners’ level.
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