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Most surprising results of Razorback football over last 60 years or so

Andy Hodges
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Most surprising results of Razorback football over last 60 years or so

During this downtime in the world of Arkansas sports is a good time to look back and wander a couple of times down memory lane for the best of times … and maybe some not-so-great.

We kick it off with the Top 10 Surprises of Razorback football.

Notice that doesn’t say top 10 top wins, but games that, well, didn’t exactly end up the way  I thought they would going in. The Hogs have had some surprising losses, too. Some of those were downright gut-wrenching for fans.

Oh, and these are my Top 10. The whole thing is subjective. It’s an opinion and my opinion is never wrong, despite the fact you may not agree (and that also means your opinion isn’t wrong, either).

For this I only included games I saw with my own eyes and I’m not relying on accounts.

1977 win over Oklahoma in Orange Bowl

Hands down, nobody expected No. 6 Arkansas to have a shot against second-ranked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. Well, maybe Lou Holtz and Monte Kiffin suspected it, but finding anybody else that gave the Hogs a shot in Miami weren’t speaking up.

Considering the Razorbacks were without several starters and had Roland Sales starting at running back, the sports books even took the game off the board for awhile in Vegas.

The stadium was a little strange, too. The game started late (the Rose Bowl rang long with Warren Moon leading a comeback win over Michigan), the Sooners had a fullback fall out of his stance after OU accidentally fired a cannon, it had rained … and neither side could believe how their respective teams were playing.

The Sooners were over-confident and un-motivated. Defensive coordinator Larry Lacewell had finally gotten coach Barry Switzer to look at the Hogs on film two days before the game and they both knew they were in trouble then.

Then Holtz threw a wrinkle into the mix, turning Oklahoma’s hard-charging defense against them and opening up huge holes for Sales and others with one semi-decent block on each play.

Arkansas finished No. 3 in the final polls and had as good of a claim to the title as anybody else, but nobody saw that win coming.

It’s going to take something big to top that.

1969 loss to Texas in the ‘Big Shootout’

To this day I still haven’t seen an entire state as electrified as Arkansas was the first week in December 1969.

Fayetteville took that to a level of anticipation and overall anticipation that I haven’t seen since.

And it’s doubtful so many hopes were crushed in just a couple fo hours, especially blowing a lead in the only game doing on in college football that day AND on national broadcast television.

That 15-14 loss haunted Frank Broyles until he died, reportedly without ever looking at the film or replay of the game.

1989 loss to Tennessee in Cotton Bowl

In Dallas, Arkansas appeared to be rolling through a season where they stumbled midway against Texas but had figured out a way to beat everybody else, including a fortunate pass interference call at Texas A&M.

On a cold day in Dallas, the Hogs turned the ball over too much, Tennessee got a big day from Chuck Webb and Andy Kelly had a career day. The Vols held off a late charge for what was, to me anyway, a surprising loss.

1968 win over Georgia in Sugar Bowl

Georgia was the typical SEC champion for that day and time … a defensive powerhouse that controlled the ball on offense and didn’t make mistakes.

Bill Montgomery and Chuck Dicus kept Arkansas rolling on a bright, sunny day, in New Orleans and the only points the Bulldogs got was a safety when Bill Burnett got tacked in the end zone.

It set the stage for the 1969 season.

2015 win over Ole Miss at Oxford

In a season with anticipation that was dashed after a 2-4 start, the Razorbacks stumbled into Oxford against an Ole Miss team looking for an SEC West title after beating Alabama.

Arkansas matched the Rebel’s high-flying offense and got the game into overtime before the legendary fourth-down play where Hunter Henry just threw the ball backwards, Alex Collins picked it up and got the first down set up Brandon Allen’s late heroics for an overtime win.

It was a win that ignited a big November for Bret Bielema in his best season with the Hogs.

1965 win over Texas in Fayetteville

After winning an off-brand version of a national title in 1964, Arkansas was trying to win one of the big ones the next year, but the Longhorns were in the way.

The Razorbacks built a 20-0 lead at halftime, then couldn’t stop the Longhorns from going on a 24-0 run as Frank Broyles melted down on the sidelines. He gave all the credit later to Jim Lindsey for rallying the team (“I was a babbling idiot,” he said later) and in one of the legendary drives, the Hogs drove down and scored on a 1-yard sneak by Brittenum.

Arkansas rolled the rest of the way until meeting LSU in the Cotton Bowl.

1974 win over USC in Little Rock

Arkansas didn’t have much chance against No. 1 USC as Broyles was struggling to put things together during a slump but it all came together on a September night in War Memorial.

The Trojans couldn’t do much right. Oh, Anthony Davis returned a Steve Little kickoff 109 yards, but that was about it. At one point, USC quarterback Pat Haden dropped back to pass … and set his plant foot on the back line of the end zone for a safety.

The Hogs started in the Wishbone with Mike Kirkland at quarterback, but that didn’t last the entire season and they limped to a 6-4-1 season.

USC won the UPI national championship. It was the end of a three-year series against the Trojans, who came to Little Rock twice in that time frame.

2010 win over LSU in Little Rock

Arkansas came in looking for a win to go to the Sugar Bowl in a tie with the Tigers for the second spot in the league (Alabama had fallen after beating the Hogs in Fayetteville earlier).

LSU didn’t have a whole lot of interest in playing the game, giving up a touchdown just before halftime on a Ryan Mallett pass and Bobby Petrino wasn’t playing it safe.

Quite frankly I didn’t think the Hogs had much of a shot in that game and LSU kept it close.

After a loss in the Sugar Bowl, Arkansas finished No. 12 in the final polls while the Tigers were No. 8 after blasting Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl.

2006 loss to Florida in SEC Championship

Arkansas had lost a shootout to LSU in Little Rock the week before, but had already secured the West title and all they needed was a win over the Gators to go to a national championship game after UCLA’s upset of USC earlier.

For awhile it looked possible.

Then Florida blocked a punt, Reggie Fish fumbled a punt taking my prediction of the Razorbacks going to a title game right along with it.

1965 loss to LSU in Cotton Bowl

No. 2 Arkansas was riding a 22-game winning streak going into a cold, gray, Dallas morning and LSU was 7-3 with little respect.

But quarterback Jon Brittenum was injured in the first half and we found out Ronnie South wasn’t quite ready to take over plus the Tigers had Joe Labruzzo and the Hogs couldn’t get him on the ground when they needed to, falling 14-7.

There were a lot of misty eyes all the way from Dallas back to Arkansas for a lot of fans after UCLA knocked off top-ranked Michigan State in the Rose Bowl and Alabama leap-frogged into a national title.

Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Upset you want, if Muss knows, plus Rashad Phillips

Tye Richardson
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Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Upset you want, if Muss knows, plus Rashad Phillips

Tye & Tommy on the football upset you want, if Muss knows about Mason/IJ, plus Rashad Phillips breaks down Mason and Isaiah!

???? HALFTIME POD presented by Jeff’s Club House ???? 3/23/2020

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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???? HALFTIME POD presented by Jeff’s Club House ???? 3/23/2020

Cancelling spring football could level fall’s field for Hogs … by just a little bit

Andy Hodges
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Cancelling spring football could level fall’s field for Hogs … by just a little bit

Yes, everybody is bored to death with no spring football going on as originally scheduled, but it might not be that big of a reason to worry for Arkansas fans.

I’ll spare everyone a recitation of the facts because we’re all aware of the global health concerns that have caused it. For Razorback fans, though, this could offer a benefit once games start back.

“Everybody will be in the same boat,” Hogs coach Sam Pittman said last week in a teleconference before this week’s spring break.

That means, simply, he and his coaching staff will be at roughly the same point when the season starts everybody else is and there is the possibility nobody will really have a clue what’s going to happen in September.

He pointed out several other teams will already know their players pretty well. Two other teams in the SEC West (Ole Miss and Mississippi State) are also breaking in new coaches.

What he didn’t say is the coaches know their talent after a full spring practice followed by player-led workouts during the summer that can’t be coached, but are handled with some guidelines from the staff.

Mainly it’s the spring practice and supervised conditioning and strength training where coaches get the barometer on their players.

Just these few weeks leading up to academic finals and a small break before summer classes (if that’s even a possibility at this point) will change the entire landscape of college athletics for this season.

Look at it this way: What schools have been building with few disruptions since World War II ended has now suddenly been halted. One thing that is true is it doesn’t take as long for something to fall apart after decades of building.

“The season is long as it is, so I don’t know,” Pittman said. “The kids will still need a break before that first August 1 deal because now we’re at 12 games, and some teams  are at 14, some at 15.”

Those are really just 14 teams. If you don’t make the playoffs you’ll play 12 … or 13 if you can manage to win half of the 12.

This is where coaching high school ball decades ago comes in handy for Pittman. That’s when a lot of high schools started over from nearly scratch every year and didn’t see much of them until August rolled around.

In the world of college football these days they get over a season’s worth of practices in August before the first game and you get the idea from Pittman the Hogs will be ready for Nevada on Sept. 5.

“I just don’t know if we can start much faster than we do now,” Pittman said. “I’m talking about practice. Obviously you are doing a lot in the summer with the lifting and 7-on-7s and those type of things, but you are not able to coach the 7-on-7’s.”

He’s taking a pragmatic approach. He can’t do anything about it, but he’s confident his staff will have a team ready.

“We’ll do whatever they tell us to, and we’ll do it and be happy about it,” he said. “I don’t know how we can go longer than what we are now.”

Fans, already starting to get antsy with a disruption that is less than two weeks old, will be squirming like the kid who got called out by the preacher for talking in Sunday service.

Pittman is just dealing with what comes every day. After taking a little break this week (they had already calculated some downtime for spring break), it’s a matter of getting some questions answered.

“It’s gone from when can we have our 15 practices to now it’s, can we get 10 in … can we get eight in?” he said last week. “What about the teams that have had practices before us? How long of a period do we need in conditioning before we got out there to practice?

“All those things have been talked about. I don’t know about when August starts and we roll out the ball and get ready.”

A lot of questions without answers coming … or even an idea about when the answers might arrive.

Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Mason on his decision, Marc Kestecher, and more!

Tye Richardson
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0
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Mason on his decision, Marc Kestecher, and more!

New faces in running backs’ room including coach, but Boyd still No. 1

Andy Hodges
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0
New faces in running backs’ room including coach, but Boyd still No. 1

When new coach Sam Pittman was hired in December, probably his first recruiting accomplishment was with a player already on the roster, convincing running back Rakeem Boyd to stay.

Yes, the No. 1 guy there stays in place but the depth picture will be completely different now and Jimmy Smith comes from Georgia State after a high school coaching career in Georgia.

He replaces Jeff Traylor, who got the head coaching position at Texas-San Antonio.

And apparently there wasn’t a lot of looking around.

“Jimmy was the first guy that came to mind when I was in the hiring process,” Pittman said on a teleconference Friday. “I needed to hire a great coach. I needed to hire a great recruiter. I have been as pleased as you can possibly be about how he has handled his room.”

He also can get players in the talent-rich Georgia.

“He is an exceptional recruiter and I needed a guy to recruit Georgia,” Pittman said. “We wanted to hire him when I was at Georgia, we just weren’t able to because we didn’t have a full-time job there, but he did interview there and was outstanding in that interview.”

He combined with former Missouri coach Barry Odom to recruit Dominique Johnson from the Fort Worth suburb of Crowley.

“(Smith) was the athletic director at his school as well so he knows how to handle people,” Pittman said. “He is an exceptional football coach and his future is bright, bright, bright.”

It will help that he’ll have Boyd and a supporting cast that could be an upgrade over the past couple of seasons.

“Trelon Smith has stood out,” Pittman said of the redshirt sophomore who sat out last year after transferring from Arizona State.

Just to give you a heads-up, to get Pittman’s attention in the early drills it’s a lot about effort and Smith’s work ethic grabbed the new coach’s eye.

“The guy is a phenomenal effort guy,” Pittman said. “He has a lot of talent. We don’t know if he can hang on to the ball or not. I imagine he can, but just the way that he works. The way he goes about his business. He’s a tough kid and I’ve really grown fond of the way he works.”

He will be joined by redshirt freshman A’Monte Spivey and, as usual, redshirt senior T.J. Hammonds. It feels like Hammonds has been around for a decade or so.

There’s no question who’s at the top of the list, though.

“Of course you have Rakeem,” Pittman said.

What could have been interesting in the spring is Pittman doesn’t exactly sit his star running backs down, which is a risk both ways.

In Razorbacks’ history, there have been running backs suffer season-ending injuries in the spring and August practices and other times they weren’t used to contact and fumbled too much in early games.

Pittman has a plan to be smart about it.

“He would obviously not get as many carries as some of the other kids that haven’t shown as much as he has,” Pittman said. “Nah, there wouldn’t be any limit other than that on him.”

But he wouldn’t be just kicking it on the side.

“If we were going to scrimmage we would limit (Boyd) some, have a limit on his number of carries,” Pittman said. “That would be the same with Smith, Hammonds and Spivey. We would have a number of carries we want them to get in the scrimmage.”

That position group has some depth this year, which is always needed in the SEC, but it is lacking in experience. That means, simply, we don’t know.

Pittman is optimistic, though.

“We’re pleased with a bunch of areas,” he said Friday.

Pittman wanting to make offensive line bigger … like he did before

Andy Hodges
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Pittman wanting to make offensive line bigger … like he did before

Sam Pittman has been in this position at Arkansas before with a group of under-sized offensive linemen … and he changed it.

“When I first got here seven years ago we weren’t a very big offensive line then, either,” Pittman said in a teleconference Friday. “We changed that fairly fast.”

Now he’s having to do it again, this time as head coach.

“That’s a huge deal,” he said. “Most people know I love big, athletic guys and I really don’t know who wouldn’t. We’ve put a heavy emphasis on strength, on gaining weight and gaining the right type of weight.”

Starting with bringing in the right players.

“We’re trying to do that in recruiting,” Pittman said.

The previous staff WANTED a good offensive line but apparently couldn’t get the right players in and struggled to develop them quickly enough. Granted, they started low on numbers and it got worse, but the result is Pittman was left with some guys with ability, but kinda small.

At least for the SEC.

“You know how it is in this league,” he said. “You just can’t survive without big people in the offensive and defensive lines. This is a big person league. It starts up front with both sides of the ball.”

Take Myron Cunningham, who may define the problem Pittman is facing as much as anyone. The redshirt senior is 6-foot-7, but a little light, even after gaining over 20 pounds.

“If Cunningham can get up to 310, 315, he’d be … he’s got a lot of talent but it’s going to be hard to sit on a bull at 285 pounds, especially when a d-end weighs 275 pounds,” he said.

That means, simply, he’s going up every play against big guys and you better be bigger or you’re going to be in trouble by the time the fourth quarter rolls around.

In the limited drills Pittman did get to see before things got suspended, some leaders were starting to emerge.

“The guys probably in that group that have stood out with their work ethic is Shane Clenin and Ricky Stromberg,” he said. “Ricky’s gained 25, maybe 28 pounds … he’s right at 300 right now. Clenin looks really good and, of course, Myron Cunningham is getting up around that 300 mark, too. Those guys have gained a lot of strength.”

And it starts with a new position coach as Brad Davis joined Pittman’s staff, coming from Missouri. He gets rave reviews from Pittman, who has been considered one of a small group of top offensive line coaches in college football the last several years.

“A, I trust him,” Pittman said. “He’s a great person. He’s as good of an offensive line coach as there is in the country.”

That’s also an opinion that apparently some others share, too.

“If you go by jobs he’s been offered, he’s as good as anybody in the country,” Pittman said. “He’s been offered a bunch and he’s been offered some since he’s been here.”

It does kinda go hand-in-hand that they are good recruiters because you don’t usually see a lot of good coaches that don’t have some pretty good players.

“They are good communicators,” Pittman said. “A guy who’s a good recruiter usually becomes a good football coach because he’s got better talent than everybody else.

“That’s the one thing about Brad, he’s a people-pleaser. He wants to please whoever he’s working with and he wants these kids to be as good as they possibly can be. It’s kind of in the makeup of who he is.

“He’s as good of a coach as there is.”

Talented group of wide receiver recruits, early impressions why Pittman kept Stepp

Andy Hodges
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Talented group of wide receiver recruits, early impressions why Pittman kept Stepp

When Sam Pittman started putting together a staff in December he probaby knew what he was looking for with position coaches long before he was able to start hiring anybody.

That’s what you get from coaches who have been around awhile.

That’s why other coaches talking to him about keeping wide receivers coach Justin Stepp at Arkansas got is attention.

“There were coaches that held me back after we were getting ready to leave (meetings) and talked to me personally about him,” Pittman said Friday in a teleconference with media members. “I don’t think he arranged that.”

Stepp also sold himself. He came in with the previous coaching staff and played a big role in landing big-time recruits such as Treylon Burks, Trey Knox, Mike Woods and others, but got Pittman’s attention quickly.

“Stepp volunteered to go on the road with me, which meant something,” Pittman said. “I saw how coaches looked at him, how recruits looked at him.”

The fact he’s a good guy helped.

“He’s a good person, good family,” Pittman said. “He fit that good man, good communicator role that I had kinda set for people that I want to hire, so we hired him.”

Having some deep recruiting ties in a border state also played a role.

“Obviously I’d seen what he’d recruited to the room before I got here and he had strong ties in East Texas and we need that,” Pittman said.

But he wasn’t the only option for the position.

“I had several guys I could have hired as wide receivers coach that would have done a nice job,” Pittman said. “But I just felt he was so good in the three days I was with him I felt like we needed to keep some continuity with the previous staff.”

Stepp is the only holdover on the staff, but Pittman said Friday he wasn’t necessarily disqualifying members of the previous staff.

“We were going to visit with everybody,” he said.

Some got other jobs. Others probably didn’t have what Pittman was looking for to win games in the SEC. They certainly hadn’t done that with the Razorbacks.

And what other coaches told him got his attention.

“They just felt very adamant that he was a good man and a good coach,” he said.

Pittman obviously agreed and kept the coach with maybe the deepest and most talented position group for the Hogs.

Pittman can’t control shutdown so Hogs’ coaches just keep working

Andy Hodges
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0
Pittman can’t control shutdown so Hogs’ coaches just keep working

Coaches don’t deal well with things they can’t control and it was clear Friday morning in a teleconference with new Arkansas boss hog Sam Pittman that he’s not really different.

He can’t control the ongoing shutdown over the national health emergency. But he and a coaching staff that still doesn’t know the shortcuts around Fayetteville are staying focused on recruiting.

If successful, that may prove as beneficial as spring practice.

“We are trying to put a stampede on recruiting,” he said.

The way it sounds, if what he’s doing works the first year was doing the best he could with the hand he was dealt, improving things for 2021 and taking a huge leap in 2022. At least that’s what it appears to be how it’s playing out.

“You can either sit around and not do anything or you can recruit,” Pittman said. “There’s a lot of ways to get out of where we are right now. The number one way is to recruit.”

That’s not a new phrase. Razorback fans have heard that through the last two coaching staffs, who proved for the most part they didn’t have a clue how to really accomplish that.

Pittman saw it up close as Bret Bielema’s offensive line coach and the best recruiter on that staff.

He had an offensive lineman from a bordering state whose parents packed up the family and made trips to Fayetteville — on their dime — for two separate weekends. Bielema wanted to meet him before allowing Pittman to extend an offer.

And Bielema disappeared both weekends, one of them when he didn’t tell anybody he flew out of town on a junket to a casino out of state.

While he won’t say it, it’s a good bet the many stories like that is why Georgia looked very attractive when Kirby Smart called in 2015.

That player, by the way, has gone on to be a multi-year starter in the SEC on an offensive line.

Based on what I’ve seen from the folks that follow recruiting, the Hogs have put out 165 offers for 2021 players that are high school juniors right now. Coaches aren’t going to get every player they offer, obviously, but they aren’t going to get any they DON’T offer.

But, apparently, they were running a little behind on 2022 offers to current sophomores.

“The last two, maybe three days we made a big push for 2022 kids,” Pittman said.

Again, the recruiting guys are saying Arkansas has sent out 55 offers to 2022 recruits and 10 in the past few days.

And in-state recruits appear to be a priority and he knows getting on them early is important to close the borders around the state.

“We just don’t want to miss anybody in Arkansas,” Pittman said, adding that he’s hands-on with those players. “We want to be right when we offer them, so I feel like on those I have to be every bit a part of that offer. I have to be on all of them.”

His focus on sophomores has apparently gotten other teams’ attention, too.

“There were other schools that followed suit right with us on the same eight people, so hopefully people looking at us in recruiting and what we’re doing and that would be a compliment,” Pittman said.

For fans starving for anything sports-related these days, hearing a football coach that actually has a plan that could work is refreshing.

But Pittman knows he’s gotta make it work.

Which involves continuing to work, although he is planning on some downtime next week. That was originally scheduled for spring break and was going to be a break from spring practice anyway.

“We are going to the Bahamas at my address in Fayetteville,” Pittman said. “I’m going to heat the pool up, to be honest with you. There might be a whale sighting out there. It’s just me, nobody shoot. It’s just me.

“I’m going to have a good time. We’re not leaving town.”

???? HALFTIME POD presented by Jeff’s Club House ???? 3/20/2020

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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0
???? HALFTIME POD presented by Jeff’s Club House ???? 3/20/2020

Pittman with first update after spring practice cancellation due to concerns

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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1
Pittman with first update after spring practice cancellation due to concerns

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman held a teleconference with the media Friday morning and talked about how he and his staff are continuing to work (especially on recruiting) after spring cancelled.

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