Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Of Arkansas’ Southeastern Conference rivals, Kentucky would seem the least likely, next to Vanderbilt, to have an edge over the Razorbacks in the all-time series.

After all, we’re talking about a program that plays football just to occupy the time between basketball seasons. We're talking about a program that couldn't retain Paul "Bear" Bryant as head coach simply because they honored the Bear's SEC championship one season by giving basketball coach Adoph Rupp a raise and a new car. Taking over a downtrodden Texas A&M program was more attractive to Bryant than staying any longer where football played second fiddle to basketball.

The Hogs and Wildcats have met just six times, though, and Kentucky holds a 4-2 edge.

Arkansas simply gave away three of the games, including the last two — Kentucky’s 42-29 win in Houston Nutt’s last year at Fayetteville, and the Wildcats’ improbable rally from 13 down to win 21-20 in Lexington over Bobby Petrino’s first Hog team. Both of those games had momentum-changing fumbles that turned the games to the Wildcats.

Then again, Kentucky players and fans were probably kicking themselves after letting the 1998 game get away. Then, there’s that infamous, seven-overtime game in Lexington in 2003, the second involving a Houston Nutt-coached Arkansas team, that eventually was rescued by Matt Jones and the Hogs.

Only the 1999 game in Lexington was one-sided, almost from the start. Kentucky walloped a flat Arkansas 31-20 after leading at one point 31-6 — and to think the Razorbacks went into that game favored to win.

The trend for this series is that nothing seems to go as expected, and it’s probably what we should count on Saturday in Fayetteville, even if Kentucky is down to its fourth quarterback and has three injured regulars in the secondary.

It sounds like the game plays completely into Arkansas’ hands: the much-maligned Razorback defense will be facing a fourth-line freshman quarterback, and quarterback Tyler Wilson should be able to pick apart the Wildcats’ defense.

And yet, those past six Arkansas-Kentucky games tell us to expect the unexpected rather than the obvious.

In 1998, the Wildcats were led by future NFL draft pick Tim Couch, who passed the ’Cats all over the War Memorial Stadium turf that night. Kentucky scored on its first drive and didn’t look like it would ever be stopped.

Yet, with UK in command and driving again early in the fourth quarter, Arkansas cornerback David Barrett turned the momentum with a pick and runback for a touchdown. Clint Stoerner and the Hogs’ offense got something going to gain the upper hand, and the Arkansas secondary, led by safety Kenoy Kennedy, saved the day in the waning seconds by denying Couch on the lip of the goal line.

That was the night, following up a 42-6 blasting of Alabama in Fayetteville the week before, that Houston Nutt’s program took root with Hog Nation. The golf course tailgate scene has never been topped (nowadays, the local cops run everybody off within an hour after the game has ended, but that night was a wild, late night scene of frivolity for Razorback fans and UA students). The surprising 1995 West title notwithstanding, that two-week period, and the ensuing weeks that led up to the showdown at Knoxville with Tennessee, was when Arkansas truly became a contender among the big-time powers in the SEC.