The SEC Network broadcaster knew this wasn't a pretty picture he was painting verbally. "You wouldn't hang this one in the Louvre," he said for starters.
And that was with one half to play in Saturday's Arkansas-Mississippi State game. Arkansas led 13-7 at the break in what a creative Little Rock headline writer would call a "sea of yellow." Razorback fans feared the worst, Mississippi State scoring a touchdown seconds before halftime and receiving the second-half kickoff.
The penalties subsided somewhat in the second half, though Arkansas finished with 11 for 78 yards, not what coach Sam Pittman cared to see in his team's ninth game and after a week off.
Bottom line: Arkansas scored with 21 seconds left in the fourth quarter to pull out a 31-28 victory over the Starkville visitors, ranked 17th in the first College Football Playoff rankings. It was Arkansas' latest winning touchdown since Greg Childs' 40-yard catch-and-run touchdown to beat Georgia 'tween the hedges in 2010, one of Bobby Petrino's splashier Razorback victories.
Cardiac kids to the finish, the Razorbacks took their fans to the rack before Nolan McCord, like a weekend hacker at Fayetteville Country Club, shanked a 40-yard field goal wide left as time expired. It was McCord's third miss of the day and Mississippi State coach Mike Leach, not the most tactful of post-game losers, announced an open audition for "anybody that wants to ... kick for Mississippi State."
Pittman, as his nature, was more gracious in his remarks. He even empathized with poor McCord, whom Arkansas kicker Cam Little (three made field goals) embraced afterward. So what if the victory lacked aesthetic qualities? For a team that went two years without an Southeastern Conference victory under a previous coach, any win against a lodge brother looks good. Upset because the Hogs didn't cover the 5 1/2-point spread? Hey, that's why they call it gambling.
"I told them after the end of the game when there's no time on the clock, all anybody cares about is who won," Pittman said. (That applies, of course, against Rice and Georgia Southern, much less Texas and Texas A&M.)
Arkansas has had much bigger -- yes, prettier -- victories but none lately so satisfying. A team from which little was expected but rose to No. 8 in the national polls before a reality check has achieved one preseason goal. It gets to shoot for higher targets.
"We didn't win the Super Bowl, but it feels like it and we're bowl eligible," Pittman said after Arkansas, with its sixth victory, qualified to play in its first postseason game since 2016. And this time with merit, moreso than last year's 3-7 squad that was to play TCU in the Texas Bowl before a COVID-19-related cancellation.
Playing in a bowl game has become slightly more prestigious than getting a telephone listing but shouldn't be downplayed. Any college-football team seeks visibility, especially the kind found from playing an extra game after a supposedly rewarding season. As a former colleague reminded, bowl eligible may not mean bowl worthy but watching other teams play on TV in December is no fun.
A quick check revealed some other teams that improved to 6-3 Saturday. Among them: Gus Malzahn's first Central Florida squad, Penn State (winner over Auburn, loser to Illinois) and Wisconsin. (Two of Bret Bielema's former schools are in. Illinois, his current employer, needs to win out to finish 6-6.)
One team of interest that is not bowl eligible but that Arkansas fans keep referencing is Texas. A fourth consecutive loss, to Iowa State, dropped the Longhorns to 4-5, removing further luster from a 40-21 Arkansas victory in September that propelled the Hogs into the top 25.
Through Saturday's games, Arkansas was one of seven bowl-eligible SEC teams. Pittman's squad is matched against five of the six others (excluding Kentucky), having faced No. 1 Georgia and with a Nov. 20 trip to No. 2 Alabama remaining. Nothing comes easy for the Razorbacks, who caught all the conference biggies (both division winners included) in Pittman's first season.
Where do the Razorbacks go from here, you ask? A smart aleck in the crowd would answer LSU in Baton Rouge -- Saturday night in Death Valley where, in the words of Tiger Stadium PA announcer Dan Borne, "the sun finds its home in the western sky" and the chance of rain is ... never.
After that, it's a trip to Tuscaloosa, where Bear Bryant's presence can be felt almost 30 years after his passing, and then a Thanksgiving Friday home game against Missouri, where Pittman's warriors can run through the A one more time and fans can cheer all the Bumper Pools and Grant Morgans who have entertained them so the last two years.
Beyond that, who can say, although projected bowl pairings will surface soon, each conference having several bowl tie-ins. An 8-4 Arkansas, presumed loss to Alabama, might look mighty attractive, the Razorbacks with fans who like to travel and haven't been bowling lately. The shine would be off a 7-5 team and don't think about 6-6, which nonetheless was the baseline figure for many in August.
Arkansas hasn't won the Golden Boot from LSU since 2015, when Bret Bielema's team won at Baton Rouge. A 24-17 Fayetteville loss in 2018 to the Tigers stung but not as much as last year's 27-24 decision, Jay Ward (he's still around) blocking a potential game-tying field goal with 1:24 left.
Ed Orgeron is 5-0 against Arkansas in what LSU has announced will be his final year as head coach. On character, the Tigers gave Alabama, a four-touchdown favorite, all it could handle, holding the Crimson Tide to 6 net yards rushing, before losing 20-14 Saturday night. Arkansas once ended LSU's regular season, like it did for years, but the Razorbacks were slotted after Alabama after the SEC's last expansion.
Except at the top, the SEC is ever changing. Texas A&M, beating Alabama and Auburn at home, looks like the team Arkansas expected last month at JerryWorld. Kentucky, a top-10 team not long ago, now has back-to-back losses, somehow losing to Tennessee after running 99 offensive plays and gaining more than 600 yards. Florida, which played a two-point game with Alabama, gets run over by a South Carolina team down to a third-string quarterback.
The tip here is just to sit back and, like the players are told, take them one game at a time. As for Arkansas, who can ask for more on one Saturday than becoming bowl eligible and climbing out of the SEC West division cellar?