Remember when the first Saturday of college football felt like Christmas morning at grandma's house and a steady stream of goodies would come for months and your team might be playing on Jan. 1, the sport's high and holy day?
Starting the season on an August weekend isn't quite the same, and Arkansas hasn't come close to a Jan. 1 game in years. My keenest Razorback memory on this date (Aug. 31) is a Little Rock game against Miami in 1991, the night after Michael Powell, dueling Carl Lewis in Tokyo, broke the 23-year world record of yet another American, Bob Beamon, in the long jump.
A Miami team that would win the national championship wore Big East jerseys, signifying the school's new conference affiliation, and won 31-3. Arkansas fared better on an October trip to Little Rock, beating Texas 14-13 in their "last game ever" before the Razorbacks joined the Southeastern Conference. I remember Arkansas Gazette employees, one day after the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi ceased publication, manning their assigned seats in the press box without a story to write. One of Jack Crowe's biggest coaching victories at Arkansas filled the pages of the first Sunday Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
No Labor Day weekend in Arkansas passes without a flashback to 1992. Mention The Citadel to a Razorback fan and watch him grimace. Arkansas writers used words like "unspeakable" and "hideous" to nutshell a 10-3 Fayetteville defeat to an NCAA 1-AA opponent. Returning from a game that I had not planned to attend, I spent the night in Fort Smith and thought about returning to Fayetteville the next day in case Frank Broyles erupted.
Home to Glenwood I came, sending a follow-up column to the newspaper -- only to have co-worker Mickey Doyle call in late afternoon with news from Fayetteville: "They just fired Jack." An immediate rewrite followed, and Mickey was soon off to Fayetteville for the swearing-in, so to speak, of defensive coordinator Joe Kines as interim head coach. Pretty soon, Danny Ford came aboard as a consultant, saying he wanted to help Kines replace the interim title but ultimately succeeding his good friend as head coach. For a 3-8-1 indoctrination season in the SEC, the Hogs beat Tennessee at Knoxville and crushed LSU at Fayetteville before a slim house on Thanksgiving Friday ... not bad, considering.
Arkansas and Texas ushered in the 1980s together in a Labor Day night game that I watched at a friend's house. Lou Holtz, starting his fourth season at Arkansas, sent his team to Austin after telling the state, "We're ready." They were not. Texas won 23-17 in one of that series' least compelling games. Holtz blew up at his staff, taking over the defense along with offensive playcalling before the next game. That team beat Tulane in what, offending some readers in my first year at the newspaper, I called the Hall of Shame Bowl in Birmingham.
I spent Aug. 30, 2014, at Jordan-Hare Stadium watching Bret Bielema's second Razorback team give up almost 600 yards to Auburn. From 21-all at halftime, Gus Malzahn's Tigers prevailed 45-21 under the lights after a rainstorm. It seemed inconceivable that those Razorbacks would shut out LSU and Ole Miss and win a bowl game against Texas.
On another Aug. 30, Arkansas avenged a 2000 bowl loss to UNLV with a 14-10 Little Rock victory in the next year's opener. Mike Tirico, play-by-play man for ESPN, called it "a pillow fight, but competitive."
Which brings us to Aug. 31, 2019, and an Arkansas home game against Portland State. Chad Morris' second Razorback team hopes to stir up excitement (and sell tickets) after the first 10-loss football season in program history. Arkansas usually names the score against such faceless opponents, although the same was expected before the 1992 Citadel game. This amounts to a guaranteed W in those 6-6 (or even 5-7) forecasts that I have heard this summer. Actually, one hears little on the street about this team.
Arkansas doesn't get much love these days from the national press. If Rece Davis, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit aren't talking about your team on ESPN, or it appears more often on the SEC Network than on CBS, and plays a lot of 11 a.m. games, right after the cartoon hour on Saturday mornings, consider yours a struggling football program.
One local fan said he would be happy merely if the Hogs bone up on fundamentals starting with punt returns (roll the tape of last year's North Texas game). Put me down for 6-6, which should carry with it a bowl invitation. Just don't ask for specifics.
Sports on 08/31/2019