Hogs lead A&M series, but Aggies riding high
A glance at the record books shows how decisive Texas A&M has been against Arkansas in football the last few years.
Arkansas leads A&M 41-28-3 in a series that dates to 1903 but that A&M, winning four in a row, is enjoying its greatest success since Homer Norton’s Aggies won six straight from 1938-43.
Someone of my age only remembers Arkansas taking the upper hand after John Franklin Broyles arrived in 1958, coinciding with the departure of Paul William Bryant, after four years in College Station, to Alabama (Bryant saying famously that “Mama called”).
Arkansas’ only victory against a Bryant-coached team came in 1954, 14-7 in College Station, one of many landmark conquests that season for Bowden Wyatt’s surprise Southwest Conference champions, better known as the “25 Little Pigs.” Broyles, after an 0-6 start in 1958, got into the win column at Arkansas for the first time against A&M, 21-8 at Kyle Field, triggering a 4-0 finish for the Razorbacks and ushering in a glorious decade for the Hogs.
Broyles won his first nine against the Aggies — Arkansas’ longest streak in the series — and 12 of the first 13. One of Arkansas’ last milestone victories under Broyles came in 1975 against a No. 2-ranked A&M team, coached by Emory Bellard, on a December Saturday in Little Rock. With a Cotton Bowl berth to the winner, Arkansas fooled a great Aggie defense with an improbable touchdown pass, Scott Bull to the unheralded but thereafter “immortal” (Broyles’ word) Teddy Barnes, in a 31-6 upset that gave Broyles a share of his seventh SWC title and sent his team to Dallas for a Jan. 1 thumping of Georgia.
Lou Holtz won his first six games against Texas A&M, the last against Jackie Sherrill after the Aggies, rebuffed by Michigan’s Bo Schembechler, paid the Pittsburgh coach big bucks to effect a turnaround.
Before recruiting violations got the Aggies in trouble with the NCAA, A&M and Arkansas had some of their biggest games in the 1980s, Sherrill and later R.C. Slocum in College Station and Ken Hatfield, running his flexbone offense, in Fayetteville. Arkansas ended the decade with back-to-back SWC titles and Cotton Bowl appearances, its first such parlay since Broyles’ 11-0 and 10-1 teams of 1964 and ‘65, winning thrillers from A&M three out of four years — 25-22 at Kyle Field on Thanksgiving
Friday 1989.
The Aggies won the last two meetings before the Hogs split for the Southeastern Conference, 13-3 at College Station in 1991 when the word was out about Arkansas switching to the Wishbone offense even after coach Jack Crowe closed practice that week. A “last ever,” the writers called it, Arkansas nipping Texas 1413 a few weeks earlier.
A&M hung on in the dying SWC until escaping to the Big 12 with Texas and some other former conference rivals. The Aggies renewed the series with Arkansas in 2009, losing three straight to Bobby Petrino-coached Razorbacks before a 2012 coaching mismatch (Kevin Sumlin, new at A&M, and John L. Smith, passing through at Arkansas) in their first meeting as SEC members.
Johnny Manziel, en route to the Heisman Trophy, triggered that 58-10 massacre in College Stadium, A&M’s biggest rout in the series, then led the 2013 Aggies to a 45-33 victory in an offensive tour de force at Fayetteville. It’s been all A&M since the series moved to AT&T Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, giving Dallas Cowboys owner and Razorback loyalist Jerry Jones his equivalent of Texas vs. Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl.
Kenny Hill in 2014 and Kyler Murray last year rallied the Aggies past Arkansas in overtime games that the Razorbacks led late. With Hill (to TCU) and Murray (to Oklahoma) having fled College Station, Trevor Knight has come from Oklahoma after being upstaged by Baker Mayfield. Knight, leading the Aggies to early-season wins over UCLA and last week at Auburn, can hurt Arkansas through the air, one reason why A&M is favored by a touchdown (up from 3 1/2).
Unable to beat A&M with Brandon Allen at quarterback, Arkansas tries anew with Allen’s younger brother, Austin, 3-0 as a Razorback starter but about to see a pass rush led by NFL-ready talent.
Arkansas fans wonder if Bret Bielema and his offensive playcaller, Dan Enos, have trick plays saved for the Aggies, who after beating Auburn and winning four straight from the Hogs could be overconfident. How about a flashback to the first play of the second quarter against 10-0 Miami in 1988 at the Orange Bowl: Barry Foster up the middle for 80 yards and a touchdown against one of Jimmy Johnson’s typically great defenses but keying on Quinn Grovey that day.
Arkansas can win with Allen going, say, 18 of 25 yards for 200 yards with no picks or sacks. Time of possession could mean something in this one.
In a line-in-the-sand game for both teams, but especially for Arkansas, give A&M the nod, 35-31. When in doubt, play the percentages instead of the law of averages.