Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Why is it when people talk about the expectations surrounding the Arkansas Razorbacks, it always seems to come with a grain of salt and a warning? It’s as though the nation’s sports media is telling Arkansas fans, “be careful, we don’t want you to get hurt. We’ve seen this before, you know, last season with Ole Miss.”

Why doesn’t anyone tell Auburn fans to be cautious? Why is it that Arkansas fans are the ones who need to be cautious of having unrealistic expectations? It seems like there are a number of programs that have high expectations for their team this coming season. What makes Arkansas different?

Is it the same thing that conditions a lot of writers to believe that the only reason the ratings spiked so drastically when CBS made the switch from the Arkansas-LSU game to the Alabama-Auburn game is because Alabama-Auburn is just a better rivalry?

From the digging I’ve done, the questions I’ve asked, the articles I’ve read, it really boils down to a specific mentality: Arkansas is Arkansas and Auburn is Auburn. Auburn has high expectations every year. Whether their team is great or terrible, their fans remain myopic and unrealistic.

It’s almost like that movie "She’s All That", the Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachel Leigh Cook, classic. There was this intense desire for all of the foils in the film to warn the naive cute little girl who turns into a bombshell when she takes her glasses off to “be careful” or else she might get hurt. This isn’t her world.

No one around the country looks at Arkansas and says they deserve to be there. It just isn’t their world. In many ways, the Razorbacks are like Boise St. except Arkansas is in a BCS conference. Everyone wishes at the end of the day Arkansas would just go away, be a 6 win team every year and leave the national title talk to the prom queen divas of college football.

Auburn may not be Alabama but they certainly aren’t Arkansas in the hearts and minds of college football programs. They are just a better program. Or so people would want you to believe. Mark Schlabach of ESPN had an article cautioning fans not to buy into the hype, just look at Ole Miss.

My argument has always been and shall remain. Buy it. Buy it like it’s cheap real estate. Every good team in the history of college football had a fanbase that treated them like they could go 12-0. No one has bought more stock in this team than Bobby Petrino.

“It’s taken us a while to get to the point where we have high expectations as a university and as a fan base and players,” Petrino said. “I think it’s a good thing. I think the one thing we can’t do is shy away from it. Let’s embrace it, let it motivate us, then let’s go out and do everything we can to make ‘em come true.”

Ultimately, you know Arkansas isn’t Ole Miss and aren’t going to fall on their faces. You know that hype can be a good thing and you should buy into it because they do. You can’t run from it, Houston Nutt showed us that, you may as well embrace it. That’s what the Alabama’s of the world do. It seems to have worked out alright for them, chances are it will work out for Arkansas too.

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TJ Carpenter is a journalism major at the University of Arkansas and host of The TJ Carpenter Show on ESPN 92.1 The Ticket in Northwest Arkansas, every weekday from 3 to 6 pm.