Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Older Arkansas Razorback football fans like to point out that the 1964 season, and the post-season bowl results that resulted in the Hogs being the only undefeated football team left standing, led The Associated Press to change when it took the final national poll to determine the national champion. And, one of the worst officiating calls to decide a Hog football game led to college football's change in the way an interference penalty was assessed.

What do you want to bet that we've seen the last time a player or players can play in a post-season bowl game while already suspended from competition effective the following year?

No one outside of Ohio State's now former football coach Jim Tressel, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney and the Allstate Sugar Bowl officials thought it was right and just that five Buckeyes, including quarterback Terrelle Pryor, were ruled ineligible by the NCAA for the first five games in 2011 but were still eligible to play in the bowl game against Arkansas.

Without Pryor and the other four players, Ohio State was likely no match for Arkansas, most believe (though somebody still had to account for stopping the incredibly dominant Buckeye Cameron Heyward on defense, a one-man wrecking crew). But, even though Bobby Petrino didn't understand while the players could compete in the bowl game while suspended to begin the 2011 season, the Arkansas head coach also said he wanted Ohio State at its very best when the teams clashed. So too did ESPN, which was televising the game against no other football competition, and the Allstate Sugar Bowl people, who wanted a crowd that was revved up for a good matchup and not a short-handed Buckeyes squad.

So, it was with the promises by the junior Pryor and the other players that they would return for the 2011 season, even sitting out nearly half of it, that Tressel was fine with his suspended Buckeyes playing in the bowl game.

It seemed to some a lot of naivete on the part of Tressel them, that Pryor actually would return for half a season of college football.

Maybe until everything blew up in Columbus, Ohio, on Memorial Day, the lightning-rod Buckeyes quarterback still would have hung around to suit up for Week 6 this fall.

But now, Pryor is gone, as so many national columnists figured would happen back in late December, when tattoo-gate first broke and led to the suspensions. Many of those scribes wondered how anyone could let the players compete on the bowl stage while being admitted rule-breakers, and it was still being asked last week as Tressel stepped down with the memorabilia-selling suddenly leading to worse reports about a football program out of control.

We figure the next bit of legislation soon to be drawn up by NCAA presidents in cooperation with the BCS and the bowl officials is that players suspended by the NCAA for any competition may not be allowed to play in a BCS (or lesser) bowl game.

It should have been handled that way in the first place.

It's no surprise Arkansas ends up being the victim that gets no justice. At some point, Ohio State will vacate the win and probably all 12 of its 2010 victories, and Pryor will send back his Miller-Digby Trophy as the bowl's most valuable player. It won't go to Arkansas' Knile Davis or former quarterback Ryan Mallett, and it still remains a loss forever on the Hogs ever-worsening bowl record.

Nobody can take back the 43-yard interference penalty that official Horton Nserstra called on Arkansas' Nathan Jones back in 1982 on the Texas Stadium turf that led SMU out of a hole and on to a tying touchdown in the 17-17 epic. We saw that game replayed a few months back on a cable network, and hearing broadcaster Keith Jackson again calling foul on the flag -- not just when it was thrown but throughout the game's last six minutes. Jones had SMU's Jackie Wilson well defended on the deep ball, so Wilson ran up Jones' back and feigned contact that the official bought as defensive interference. Wilson after the game went so far as to admit it was acting.