What a late former colleague would call a "sandwich" game for Alabama could be a mood swinger, if not a program definer, for Arkansas tonight.
Arkansas, 16-point underdog in the 6 p.m. clash at Bryant-Denny Stadium, has a chance mainly if Alabama, after burying Georgia on the road, is caught looking ahead to next week's College Station clash with Texas A&M.
Arkansas, with a bye week ahead, needs to "ring the bell," as Bobby Petrino would say, play its best game to date against a team it has not beaten on the playing field since Houston Nutt coached the Razorbacks. The Crimson Tide later vacated the 2007 Tuscaloosa victory over Arkansas, John Parker Wilson driving Nick Saban's first Alabama team to a late touchdown against Nutt's last Arkansas squad, which had Darren McFadden and Felix Jones but not much on defense.
Alabama has vacated one other win in the series (24-13 in 2005) and forfeited one (43-3 in 1993, when Danny Ford, then coaching Arkansas, said his alma mater could have scored 100 points if the Tide's Gene Stallings had been less compassionate). By anyone's count, Alabama has a comfortable lead in a series that might inflame passions this side of the Mississippi River but hardly within the Heart of Dixie.
Old-time Arkies held a grudge against Alabama because the Crimson Tide routinely poached the state's high schools for top talent. Paul "Bear" Bryant and Don Hutson left Fordyce (Moro Bottom, to be exact) and Pine Bluff, respectively, for legendary careers at Alabama, Hutson later becoming the pro game's first great wide receiver. Two of Bryant's then-record 323 coaching victories came against Arkansas, both in the Sugar Bowl with No. 1-ranked teams (1961 and 1979) that clinched national championships.
Bryant, both good and lucky, won his second national title at Alabama in 1964 when The Associated Press cast its final poll before the bowl games. Arkansas fans bristled after the Cotton Bowl-winning Razorbacks, 11-0, finished behind the 10-1 Crimson Tide, Orange Bowl losers to Texas in Joe Namath's final college game. AP voters, realizing their misstep in '64, delayed their final vote in '65 until after the bowls. Alabama finished No. 1 again, crushing Nebraska after Arkansas and Michigan State (both with a chance to win the national title) lost earlier on New Year's Day.
Stallings' 1992 national champions laid a 38-11 Little Rock whomping on Arkansas' first Southeastern Conference squad. Saban's 2009 and 2011 BCS champions looked the part in respective 35-7 and 38-14 conquests of the Hogs, although Petrino's 2010 Razorbacks scored on the second play of the game against a title-bound Tide team and went down hard in a 24-20 Fayetteville loss.
Arkansas is nowhere mentioned in "Yea, Alabama!", the school's stirring fight song, imploring "Dixie's football pride" to "send the (Georgia Tech) Yellow Jackets to a watery grave." Although Nick Saban, the most cautious of coaches, has said all the right things this week about Bret Bielema's Razorbacks, the Arkansas matchup is not one that the average Tide rooter generally frets about. Alabama seasons long have been defined by the team's success against Auburn, Tennessee before that, although the Tide faithful has become spoiled and treats anything short of a national championship unfulfilling.
Alabama revealed flaws against Arkansas last year in a 14-13 Fayetteville victory that might have made Bryant wretch. The Hogs blew an early chance when Kody Walker fumbled out of the end zone and later missed an extra point. Pinned deep by Tide punter JK Scott, the Hogs could not run in the second half and lost on a night that it held Heisman Trophy finalist Amari Cooper in check.
Arkansas fans haven't been especially chirpy this week even after beating what might be a bad Tennessee team. The 24-20 triumph, Arkansas' first at Knoxville since '92, marked the first road SEC win for third-year coach Bielema and three-year starting quarterback Brandon Allen. It did not remove the sting from the previous week's Texas A&M loss, 28-21 in overtime after leading 21-13 late.
Looking for positives, Arkansas mustered something of a pass rush against its first two SEC opponents after letting Texas Tech drive up and down the field, never punting, in a Fayetteville loss that sent Bielema's Arkansas approval rating to an all-time low. Allen might only be a seven-inning pitcher but has gotten Arkansas to the fourth quarter on top each of the last two weeks. Nothing takes a home crowd out of the game quicker than an opposing team chewing the clock with a fourth-quarter lead.
Can Arkansas win at Alabama? Probably not. But not only can it shock the nation and knock a two-loss Alabama out of the race for No. 1, Arkansas can change the fall foliage statewide about the time Mother Nature puts on her own show.
Sports on 10/10/2015