Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

FAYETTEVILLE — Maybe beating Ole Miss and Houston Nutt means more to Bobby Petrino than he publicly lets on. Perhaps he feels no different about his predecessor than the rather, um, passionate folks that added their own commentary to our Arkansas Sports Blog this week.

Approximately 24 hours after it was posted, “Nutt Says Arkansas Fan Interest In Him Has Subsided. Has it?” had drawn triple-digit comments. But even if Petrino agreed with every one of the anti-Nutt posters on our blog, he would never make those feelings public.

Nor would any players that are holdovers from Nutt’s days in Fayetteville. The few Arkansas players that remain might secretly wish for victory based on slights they felt they endured from their former coach. They’ll never admit to those feelings with a tape recorder or video camera rolling.

As reckless as players can be on Twitter and Facebook, there’s little chance you’ll find any anti-Nutt sentiment there either. They’ve been too coached up this week not to give in to the incessant questions about this game being different because Nutt is on the opposing sideline.

Who can blame them? No Razorback coach or player should ever admit to it if they want to beat Nutt simply because he once coached here. That’d be reckless and needless.

But Saturday’s game better mean something to the Razorbacks. The line that this is “just another SEC game” is baloney. It’s hooey. And crap. Whatever term you like best can fit.

Hopefully Arkansas is as well prepared for playing the game as the Razorbacks have been for answering questions about it.

Because this now stands as the biggest game of 2010. This is the biggest game of Petrino’s career at Arkansas.

Want to know what a “must-win” game looks like? If you’re one of the fans fortunate enough to have a ticket to Saturday’s soldout game between the Razorbacks and Rebels, you’ll get a good look in person. The SEC Network is carrying the game at 11:20 a.m. Saturday if you can’t make it to Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Arkansas (4-2, 1-2) better be zeroed in for four quarters against Ole Miss (3-3, 1-2). This team absolutely has to play with pride and courage — two ingredients that more than one Razorback admitted were missing in some areas (special teams in particular) during last week’s loss at Auburn.

This is as important as a battle for last place in the SEC West will get.

Oh, you hadn’t heard? Arkansas is in last place in the SEC West. A familiar spot most folks thought were long gone when ties were cut with Nutt.