Only one at ESPN puts Hogs in bowl … barely

Just one game into the season and folks are already putting the bowl projections out there and ESPN isn’t giving Arkansas much respect.

In the first week of projections for the postseason bowl games, only one of the two picking has the Razorbacks in a bowl game and barely at that.

Kyle Bonagura and David M. Hale made their projections Friday and Hale put the Hogs in the Birmingham Bowl against Memphis.

The Hogs have played two bowl games in Birmingham and one that will forever live in the minds of many in the media as the worst trip in school history.

Going into the final week of the season in 1980, Lou Holtz had guaranteed the bowl people in Birmingham the Hogs would beat Texas Tech to finish 6-5 on the season if they would take them.

Arkansas beat the Red Raiders, the Hall of Fame matched them against Tulane and everybody assembled in Birmingham on Christmas Day and the day after. Nobody was messing up the holidays for THAT matchup.

It was freezing cold, including the game when for some reason unknown to anyone there was no heat in the Legion Field pressbox for the game.

The Hogs won the game, 34-15, and some of the fastest stories in Razorback history were filed afterwards so everybody could get out of there and to some heat.

The only other time the Hogs played a bowl game in Birmingham was 1948, pulling out a 21-19 squeaker over William & Mary.

It is early and it will be surprising if the Hogs don’t creep up a little bit in those weekly projections, but it is interesting to see where they’re starting.