It might be said that, like bombed buildings from above, 6-6 football teams look alike.
Thus the Liberty Bowl outcome might swing on which team, Arkansas or Kansas, really wants to be in Memphis Dec. 28.
Regarding the 2014 Texas Bowl, matching Arkansas and Texas in Houston, that team was definitely not the Razorbacks' oldest football rival.
Bret Bielema, in a rare position for a Razorback coach in that series, left points on the field as time, at least for the Longhorns, mercifully expired late one Monday night in Houston.
The Longhorns, who once called the tune in Southwest Conference football, managed two yards net rushing in a numbing 31-7 defeat for Texas coach Charlie Strong, an Arkansas native who later went the way of John Mackovic (Fred Akers, too, the former UT coach seen in a Houston hotel lobby early on game day) in Austin.
Awaiting a flight home, I mulled the prospects that, after the ill-fated end to Bobby Petrino's time at Arkansas and the slapstick that marked John L. Smith's interim season as head coach, the Razorbacks might be on their way back in football. Jeff Long, the Arkansas athletic director who hired him, must have thought the same when he jerked loose Bielema from his Big Ten roots (played at Iowa, coached at Wisconsin) to coach in the SEC.
Bielema, like Sam Pittman in current day, seemed to like it here, saying at his first press conference that Arkansas would provide a better financial base to hire assistants than existed under Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin.
We know how that story unfolded. Bielema had a good offensive line (while Pittman was coaching the unit) but no Darren McFadden or Felix Jones to break the big one. He goes into history as the first Arkansas coach to win his first two bowl games -- Pittman can match that feat against Kansas -- but the program ran down noticeably before his firing after the Missouri game in late 2017.
That Thanksgiving Friday affair in Fayetteville marked the first brush -- and the last -- with one Julie Cromer Peoples of the UA athletic department. Declaring herself "on point" with the football situation, coach Julie, as I called her, served as interim athletic director in the aftermath of Long's firing weeks earlier.
Peoples, who has since left Arkansas, wears the scarlet letter of Arkansas sports for signing off on hiring Chad Morris to succeed Bielema. Morris, formerly at SMU, lasted 22 games in Fayetteville, and the next SEC game he wins (or against what's called a Power 5 opponent) will be his first. I was moved to write in print and ask others if it was that bad under Otis Douglas, back in the early 1950s with Frank Broyles interviewing for a job he wouldn't get for eight years.
Hunter Yurachek, fortunate to arrive late enough as AD to escape the Morris hiring, though canning the coach late in his second season, has lived a charmed life in Fayetteville. Pittman, getting a start as head coach in his late 50s, took the Arkansas job when outside interest seemed nil. Things were so bad then that after a 3-7 season (an 0-10 finish had looked possible), Arkansas fans saw Pittman as a conquering hero in 2020.
That sort of thing might not occur at any other SEC school. How long it will be for Pittman at Arkansas might come to light in 2023, his fourth season.
A 6-6 third season ended the coach's honeymoon with Razorback Nation to a degree. How could a team that started 3-0, with a good opening victory over Cincinnati and one against an SEC opponent (South Carolina), go off the rails so quickly?
November, which proved a cruel month for Bielema and Morris on the same job, saw the Hogs lose to Liberty, an unthinkable notion, and crater against Missouri. The Razorbacks did not score a second-half touchdown against Missouri, one of the SEC's weakest defenses other than themselves.
Pittman fired his strength and conditioning coach the day after the season ended, then saw his defensive coordinator and first staff hire (Barry Odom) take the open head job at UNLV. Dowell Loggains, a former UA deep snapper, left the staff to join Shane Beamer at South Carolina. Key players have since departed the program, making fans wonder what skeleton unit UA might dress for the Kansas game.
Arkansas fans may have been the past of caring when news broke Thursday that Petrino had joined Odom's staff. You might be surprised how many want Petrino back at Arkansas, either as head coach or offensive coordinator, disenchanted with Razorback OC Kendal Briles.
Kansas, which got ESPN GameDay to visit its campus in early season (the network program not having aired from Fayetteville since 2006), is the main selling point of this Liberty Bowl. If the Jayhawks come out with more fire than Arkansas, the Jayhawks might win the teams' first meeting since 1906.
At last check, Arkansas was favored by three points, indicating respect for quarterback KJ Jefferson and running back Rocket Sanders. It's up to you whether that's worth sitting in cold weather at the Liberty Bowl on a December Wednesday night in Memphis.