
A battle of unsurmountable proportions looms on the horizon for my Razorbacks this weekend. A battle of Good Vs Evil, Arkansas Vs Ole Miss. The problem is, which program is the good and which is the bad? Well that, comrade, is in the eye of the beholder. If you ask
Gregg Doyle, a "sports writer" for CBS sports, it's the
Arkansas fan base that should be wearing black and carrying a trident (by the way Gregg we will be wearing black, but in more of a Johnny Cash sort of way). If you ask most Hog fans and a few former 5 and 4 star recruits, Ole Miss should be promising a golden fiddle to anyone that can stop them (yes, a
"The Devil Went Down To Georgia" reference). So who's right and who's wrong, and if so will good triumph over evil?
According to Doyle, Nutt should run up the score on Arkansas. Nutt is the good guy and he should do all he can to humiliate the fan base that FOI'd his cell phone records, dug up tidbits that indicated Nutt was having an affair with a
half way decent looking northwest Arkansas news anchor, and had ordered a "code red" on a certain 5 star recruit that now rides the pine at USC. Oh and found an email from Nutt's wife stating she
wishes she had been present when that certain QB's mother was beat with a 4x4 by tenants of her rental property. In the end, the evidence against Nutt was pretty damning. But I believe it's the fervor with which Hog fan's pursued him and the fact that Nutt had come off a 10-4 season that had most people outside of the Razorback nation baffled. Most college sports fans and the media (outside a few who would later face the consequences of vocalizing their opinions) just didn't understand why Razorback fans could be so upset with the SEC COY. But then again, most college football fans outside of Arkansas alumni and people inside the state don't keep up with the Hogs.
Most don't know that the program dominates the state and for every ten people in the state, 9.8 people have been born and raised cheering on the Hogs. The .02 is to account for all the Yankees WalMart has imported from the North. People other than Hog fans don't realize if you list Div 1 schools in order of most all-time college football rankings (the number of times the team has been ranked in the top 25 nationally)
Arkansas is #19. That's not too piss poor for a college that has mostly depended on instate talent with the few detractors from Texas every now and then. Doing a little research one will find that in most rankings of the top NCAA football programs of all time Arkansas typically comes in anywhere from 14-20. Not too scrappy, Hogs.
Obviously Gregg Doyle isn't aware of this, because he seems to think the Hog fans are a bit "big for our britches". Okay Doyle, I'll just assume you didn't have the time to do any research what so ever prior to your article. You were probably busy picking out those cool circa 2000 black rimmed glasses that make you look like you MUST know what you're writing about. Just some advice, man to man, the goatee cancels out the glasses, moving on. I'm sure Doyle thinks he has to be right because apparently Dennis Dodd and Pat Forde feel the same (even though I think Forde's animosity towards Arkansas has much more to do with his disdain for Petrino and not with Arkansas' program). So if the "big boys" of college "sports writing" say so, it's got to be true, right?
Unfortunately for Hog fans, the national media has followed poor ol' Houston's tragic story and feel that we ran off the best thing to happen to us since sliced bread. I mean really, who beyond Nutt did we have coaching us that was all that great? Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz, Ken Hatfield? Yeah those guy's sucked. None of them brought us a National Championship or outright SWC Championship. We never won any real bowl games under those guys, right? Thank you for righting our ship, Mr. National Media! We really did have our expectations set too high! The gall of us to expect a BCS bowl with a team that had seven players taken in the NFL draft, three that went in the first rounds, or was it four? Oh, who's counting? No coach in the country could have went to a BCS bowl with Peyton Hillis, Felix Jones and Darren McFadden in the backfield. Surely not if they were forced to deal with an offensive line with guys like Tony Ugoh and Jonathan Luigs blowing protection. Even worse, Jamal Anderson and Chris Houston suckin' it up on defense. Or if you had a pretty damn good Gatorade Player of the Year true freshman calling your signals muddling it all up. How well does sarcasm come across in print?
Nope, we were really setting our sights too high. We ran off a great coach. It doesn't matter that he received more than 3.3 million dollars to remove his "golden handcuffs" or that he loved the Hogs so much that he couldn't bare being further than Oxford, MS. Disregard the fact that he loved "the helmet" so much that he wrote an
open letter to the Razorback Nation and pledged his allegiance over and over. These things do not matter. He was the best we could get, better than we deserved. I for one am glad ESPN and CBS are around to keep us grounded.
So, Hog fans, I think to most of the nation, we are the bad guy this weekend. We are the ones that should reminded of our inferiority, reminded that we ran off the best cheerleader to ever wear Razorback red, reminded that we hoped for a little too much when we expected championship rings (not of the Western Division sort) and national respect. We are the Bad, Houston is the Good. Problem with this is, I don't really give a damn what the rest of the country thinks. I don't care what ESPN will bill this game. I care about winning. I care about the players on the field that have played pretty good football as of late. For 3 quarters a game at least. I care about marching down the field, beating Houston with his own running game, with his own recruits, all while wearing the helmet he professed to "love". I care about throwing a couple of vertical passes, just to prove that it can be done on the field at RRS. I want the win. If we falter, if we fail to beat Houston in his first return to RRS, it will royally suck. I'll be pissed for a good 2-3 days. And then I will focus on next weeks game. I will also circle Ole Miss on the 2009 schedule. If Houston ever plans on beating Arkansas, he better do it this year. I'm afraid it will be his last shot. As Orgeron's recruits leave and Nutt's appear maybe the nation will see what we've seen for the past ten year-a mediocre coach with a knack for winning a big game here and there and losing the ones he should win. Good Vs Evil. Good may lose the battle, but we will damn sure win the war. GHG!