The last Razorback football team to start a season this late still gets talked about by people who were around then. Or in my case, on the way.
I was in my mother's womb, delivery coming in March, but have been told that I attended some of the games. Gotta start young fans early.
Nothing was expected of the 1954 team, 3-7 the previous year. They are forever known as the "25 Little Pigs" -- as one historian noted, do not ask for an exact number -- and blasted off Sept. 25 with a 41-0 thrashing of Tulsa. In today's parlance, that rates a crawler across the television screen, nothing more. A true bill, or not, surely would come the following week in the Southwest Conference opener at TCU, then coached by Abe Martin and five years before coming under Arkansas' heel.
Arkansas raised a few eyebrows beating TCU, 20-13, and Baylor, 21-20, but it took a 20-7 road win over Texas to get the Hogs noticed. The upshot of that game is that Texas began making steps that would lead to the hiring of Darrell Royal, which along with the hiring of an Arkansas coach a year later changed everything in the SWC.
The following week's matchup of top-10 teams in Little Rock remains among the most important regular-season games in program history, Arkansas winning 6-0. The game's only score famously came in the fourth quarter on the Powder River Play, Buddy Benson (a future Ouachita Baptist University coach) passing to Preston Carpenter. Arkansas athletic director John Barnhill, who hired Bowden Wyatt as head coach in 1953 when Kentucky talked Bear Bryant into staying an extra year, said the fans were reluctant to leave War Memorial Stadium lest the score would change.
The Ole Miss verdict shot Arkansas to No. 4 in the national polls, where it stayed after the program's only victory over a Bryant-coached team (14-7 at Texas A&M) and one against Rice. An underdog gone wild, someone described those Hogs.
Like other overachieving Razorback squads, one playing on emotion long after exceeding its talent, Arkansas hit a wall (run a check against Danny Ford's 1995 team, Southeastern Conference Western Division champions). By now getting their opponents' full attention, Wyatt's team lost the homecoming game to SMU and the annual border war against LSU.
Arkansas, as a surprise SWC champion, was off to the Cotton Bowl and not for the first time did its fans flock to Dallas with high hopes. A Glenwood auto dealer, I'm told, sprang for tickets (much cheaper then) for his sales force. Georgia Tech won 14-7 thanks in part to a dynamic young offensive coordinator, chap named Frank Broyles.
Worse news awaited the Hogs back home. As with Ken Hatfield after a Cotton Bowl, Wyatt would not coach another Arkansas game. Tennessee (the Cotton club for Ken's 1989 Hogs) essentially called Wyatt, an all-time Vols player, back home to coach. He went to Knoxville, legend has it, in a Cadillac purchased by Razorback fans as a reward for the '54 team's success.
Razorback Nation felt betrayed. Not many speak of Wyatt, who got the Vols moving but whose personal problems (surfacing at Arkansas) grew deeper and died young. (For the third time, one of college football's hottest young assistant coaches tried for the Arkansas job, chap named Frank Broyles. Barnhill, wanting someone with head-coaching experience, signed Jack Mitchell but remembered Broyles when Mitchell left for Kansas after three years. After one year as Missouri's head man, Frank took the AD's call and, as he fondly told the story, said, "Barnie, what took you so long?")
Which brings us to a new decade of Razorback football (mercifully, one might say) and another man from Georgia brought in to lead the helm. Actually, Broyles played and coached at Georgia Tech but Sam Pittman's connections with winning football, most recently at Georgia, are equally appealing.
For now, Arkansas people like Pittman for two reasons: He knows the territory, having coached the UA offensive line for Bret Bielema, and appears to want the job. At 58, Pittman might have despaired of becoming a college head coach, especially in the SEC. Call him a fall-back choice if you wish, a less sexy hire than Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss) or Mike Leach (Mississippi State), but give him time to prove he might be the right choice.
As was true of Broyles' 1958 Razorbacks (against Baylor), Pittman's first Arkansas game is against a conference opponent. At least the Georgia opener and Alabama closer are in Fayetteville, presumably letting the fans see one good team on the field at all times.
One reads that for as low as $216, one can secure a ticket for the Georgia game, which because of the COVID-19 pandemic few will attend. For what it's worth, people can watch the game at home free, my expected vantage point. Social distancing will be in effect, although that became a norm at Razorback home games late in the tenures of Bielema and, especially, Chad Morris.
No statues will be built outside Reynolds Razorback Stadium honoring Morris, fired with two games left in his second season, 4-18 overall, 0-14 in the SEC, nary a win over a power-5 team. Under the Morris regime, Arkansas football became irrelevant nationally. Forever undecided about quarterbacks, Morris watched an ex-Hog QB deliver the final blow when Ty Storey and Western Kentucky shamed the Hogs one November day in Fayetteville.
People with long memories reached back to Otis Douglas (9-21 in 1950-52) for a comparison, although Otis, with at least six players destined for long NFL careers, might retire the trophy for dubious coaching. We shall see if the players recruited by Morris can improve how the coach is remembered.
Jack Crowe, fired one game into the 1992 season (his third) after a hideous defeat to The Citadel, is better fixed in memory. Like Crowe, Morris did not play college football, the first tip-off that he might lack leadership skills.
If Arkansas must experience another woeful season -- 0-10 is not unrealistic -- many hope a bright spot comes against Morris' new team, Auburn. It was Morris to whom Gus Malzahn turned as quarterbacks coach in hopes of pepping up his offense like Morris is said to have done for Dabo Swinney at Clemson. Or something like that.
Georgia, with a quarterback quandary and perhaps looking ahead to Auburn, is ripe for an upset. It is possible that Morris redshirted enough players last year who can make an impact immediately. Getting another year out of Rakeem Boyd, an explosive but brittle running back, excited Razorback fans as much as anything during a long, hot summer that, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the season appeared in doubt.
Arkansas need not win the Georgia game to show progress. Just play smart football for 60 minutes or beyond. The Razorbacks' shocking lack of attention to detail under Morris was especially galling to someone who grew up watching Broyles-coached teams dote on fundamentals.
One of Arkansas' most famous plays under Broyles is an 81-yard punt return (Ken Hatfield) that, in the 1964 Texas game, 14-13 at Austin, helped beat the No. 1-ranked team and defending national champion. Morris is forever identified at Arkansas for a scoring play that Razorback defenders were fooled badly on a punt return. People watching at home supplied the laugh track.
That's the legacy Sam Pittman follows. He should not be judged on one game but whether the Hogs get "bettah," in Broyles' immortal words, each week.