Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

If Arkansas manages to beat Kansas State in the AT&T Cotton Bowl on Jan. 6, the Razorback football program will still need 10 additional wins in a row to reach a .500 win percentage in bowl game victories.

Such a statistic standing 12-23-3 all-time in post-season bowls — is unheard of not just among among the college football elite, but for anyone fancying themselves as a Top 25 power.

And we all know how much Arkansas’ fans want to believe the Razorbacks are if not yet among the at least returning to a national stature last enjoyed more than a generation ago.

At one point, the Razorback program stood 8-9-3 all time in bowls, a reasonable mark for post-season participation. The program reached that mark in 1982, when Arkansas hit the end of an amazing run of national success beginning with Frank Broyles’ hiring in 1958. Lou Holtz took Broyles’ recruits in 1977, achieved Arkansas’ greatest bowl upset in a 31-6 Orange Bowl trashing of Oklahoma, and kept the program in Top 10 status through a 28-24 win over Florida (the ONLY Arkansas win over the Gators) in the 1982 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl.

Holtz was 3-2-1 in bowls: Between the mighty upset of then No. 2 Oklahoma on Jan. 2, 1978 and the comeback win over a loaded Florida on Dec. 31, 1982 in Houston, his teams tied UCLA 10-10 in 1978’s Fiesta Bowl with his preseason national title contender; lost 24-9 to Bear Bryant’s greatest Alabama team in the 1980 Sugar Bowl; crushed an outmanned Tulane 34-15 in Birmingham’s Hall of Fame Bowl, and his most up-and-down team was fogged out by a talented North Carolina 31-27 in the 1981 Gator Bowl.

That 1977-82 run (Holtz could not get his last Hog team into a bowl with a 6-5 mark and he was let go in December after claiming to be “burned out”) was the nadir of Arkansas bowl successes, even better than what Broyles managed (4-6).

The thought is, two fairly evenly matched teams are invited to a post-season matchup, and all things being equal, over the course of time one program’s record should be fairly close to .500.

You win some and you lose some, in other words.

Even a program that is not among the college football elite, but one that reaches a bowl on a regular basis, would still figure to be matched against similar competition and somehow break even in the wins and loss.

For Arkansas in the past 29 years, it’s been more of a “win one, then lose several” when it comes to bowls. The Hogs are a woeful 4-14.

And, in an era in which more that half of all Division I teams reach bowl games, Arkansas has missed bowls in 10 seasons, including a run of three straight years in 1992-94 and two years in 1996-97, with four of those seasons under Danny Ford.

Ken Hatfield’s Hogs never missed a bowl game but also went 1-5. Houston Nutt failed to advance his program to a bowl game in 2004-05 and in his seven trips, his teams went 2-5. Interim coach Reggie Herring laid a Cotton Bowl egg without Nutt around in 2007.