Bowl games: Some happy, others not
My mother, with whom I watched a lot of football, had this to say about postseason bowls before they sprouted on every corner.
If your team isn’t playing on Jan. 1, it didn’t have a very good season.
Those were the days when one ushered in the new year with a football smorgasbord: Cotton Bowl and Sugar Bowl early with the Rose Bowl in late afternoon and Orange Bowl in prime time. Start on CBS from Dallas, seeing which Southwest Conference team was playing (if not Arkansas), then switch to NBC as darkness fell in Pasadena and finish in Miami.
It wasn’t Jan. 1 without Lindsey Nelson from the Cotton Bowl, sometimes under threatening skies, before sections of empty seats that surely would have been filled for a Texas-Oklahoma game. And Don Criqui, perhaps joined by Bob Trumpy or John Brodie, calling the action from the Orange Bowl, which on the first day of 1965 had Joe Namath and Alabama vs. Texas and in 1984 served up Nebraska and Miami. Tommy Nobis, a future No. 1 draft choice of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, stopped Namath short on a goal-line sneak, although Bear Bryant said of the man who would become Broadway Joe, “He says he got over the goal and he’s never lied to me.”
Brigham Young played in the Orange one year and my mom was upset because the announcers confused the coach’s name, Lavell Edwards, with that of BYU basketball coach Ladell Anderson. She would have made a great copy editor.
Nebraska’s Tom Osborne went for a two- point conversion against Miami one year when a tying extra point would have meant the national championship. Voting that year in the Associated Press poll, I regret not keeping the Huskers No. 1 despite their 31-30 loss. Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger, later to surface at Oklahoma, had a mustachioed look that reminded my mom of actor Dabney Coleman.
Miami carried coach Jimmy Johnson off the field in the 1987 game after beating Oklahoma for another national title, the coach’s usually flawless hair somewhat mussed on this night. “Somebody get that man to a party,” I said.
The Orange Bowl that Arkansas people hold dear took place on Jan. 2, 1978, and also involved Oklahoma. Trumping Sooner coaches Barry Switzer and Larry Lacewell, Lou Holtz was man of the hour in a 31-6 Arkansas victory over heavily favored OU. Leaving three offensive starters on campus under what the UA coach vaguely called the “do- right rule,” Holtz’s first Arkansas team popped an unprepared Sooner team. Hot Springs native Larry Jackson was defensive star of the game and Roland Sales, in a reserve role, set an Orange Bowl record (since broken) with 21 carries for 205 yards.
Arkansas people don’t dwell much on an Orange Bowl rematch with Oklahoma after the 1986 season, one of Switzer’s last Sooner teams running it up on Ken Hatfield, 42-8.
Except for an 18-17 Holiday Bowl triumph over Arizona State, Hatfield had rotten luck in six Arkansas bowl appearances. I remember walking the streets of Memphis before a Liberty Bowl game. The basketball Razorbacks, then coached by Eddie Sutton, had been stomped the night before in the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu. A siren pierced the air and someone in my party said, “They must have told Orville Henry ( Arkansas Gazette sports editor) the final score from last night.”
They served scalloped potatoes that night in the cramped Memphis press box and Bo Jackson, the next year’s Heisman Trophy winner, broke a long run late to swing it for Auburn, 21-15. (New year’s writing resolution: Refrain from non-sequiturs.)
Only because I had a story
to write — and a friend tagged along — did I not leave at halftime of the 2002 Music City Bowl in Nashville. Arkansas had wiggled out of a Independence Bowl date with Nebraska because, it was said, it wanted Christmas off. Ole Miss, then with Eli Manning, beat Nebraska 27-23 in Shreveport while Houston Nutt’s Razorbacks went through the motions in a 29-14 Music City loss to Minnesota, which went from Oct. 19 to Dec. 30 that season without winning.
A Wisconsin coach who would be heard from again, Bret Bielema, ended Arkansas’ uneven 2006 season with a 17-14 Capital One defeat in Orlando, Fla.
Arkansas fans liked spending New Year’s Day in Dallas, especially when the Hogs were representing the SWC in the Cotton. The 1964 team finished 11- 0, earning a share of the national title (although not in the wire-service polls), after beating Nebraska 10-7.
The 1965 team left a national title on the doorstep with a
14-7 Cotton loss to LSU, its 22game winning streak snapped. With Michigan State later falling to UCLA in the Rose and Nebraska to Alabama in the Orange, that was an especially gruesome ride home for Razorback fans.
Hatfield spent two dreary days in Dallas when Arkansas, for the first time since the Broyles era, made back-to-back Cotton appearances after the
1988 and ‘ 89 seasons. UCLA’s Troy Aikman, auditioning for the Dallas Cowboys (who would draft him No. 1, though Jimmy Johnson would coach him and not Tom Landry), toyed with the ‘ 88 Hogs, who started 10- 0 before losing to Miami. Tennessee, teeing off against a suspect Razorback defense, won the following year’s game in a shootout.
Arkansas people headed home after the Tennessee game looking ahead to Nolan Richardson’s basketball, which would reach the NCAA Final Four, and wondering if Hatfield would sign a contract extension. He did not, taking the Clemson job sight unseen, there replacing a chap named Danny Ford, whose name would come up for another Arkansas opening. One of Hatfield’s aides, Jack Crowe, with prior stops at Auburn and Clemson, stayed behind to coach Arkansas.
In happier times, Ford collected a Gator Bowl victory that was overshadowed by Ohio State coach Woody Hayes punching a Clemson player on the sideline.
Friday night, in one of the first college games of 2021, we had Clemson vs. Ohio State — Clemson coach Dabo Swinney once hiring an assistant who would coach at Arkansas. Same as with Crowe, it did not go well for Chad Morris at Arkansas.
Their Arkansas teams certainly did not play on Jan. 1 or in any other bowl. They simply weren’t good enough.