‘It’s a new chapter of hockey here’: What players, fans were saying after the Coyotes’ first ASU game
TEMPE, Ariz. — Charles Lutz stood at the top of the student section at Mullett Arena, the college hockey rink that will house the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes for at least the next three seasons. Below him were Arizona State University students dressed like a pineapple, a banana and a character from “Squid Game,” undulating to the beat of a drum line that provided the soundtrack for the Coyotes’ home opener against the Winnipeg Jets on Friday.
“People say there aren’t Coyotes fans. Well, yes, Virginia: There are Coyotes fans,” Lutz said, surveying the 4,600 fans in attendance.
He was a “day one” Coyotes supporter: a season-ticket holder at American West Arena in Phoenix and then in Glendale, where the team played 18 years. That was before the city refused to renew the Coyotes’ arena lease, necessitating the move to Arizona State University’s brand-new Mullett Arena. While perfectly monikered for hockey, the arena was named for a family that has financially backed Arizona State’s Division I men’s hockey program.
“The entire history of the Coyotes is ‘Where will we be next?’ or ‘Where will we play?'” Lutz said. “I think this is finally the turning point in the Coyotes’ history.”
For a franchise that has had more turning points than a cornfield maze, the move to an NCAA-sized rink is the latest twist. It has inspired reactions from around the NHL ranging from second-hand cringing to intense curiosity.
“It’s different for us, different for the away teams, but it’s great,” Arizona forward Christian Fischer said. “You hear all the stuff [that] teams probably don’t want to come here, for whatever reason. Well, that’d be great for us. Let’s use that as motivation to make it damn hard to play here.”
What’s it like to experience hockey at the Mullett? We asked fans and players as the Coyotes opened their temporary home in Tempe.
The student section experience
Jackson Dunn was an exasperated banana.
The Arizona State University student had purchased tickets to the Coyotes’ first game against the Jets along with some friends. The team is selling between 250 and 400 student-section tickets each game for $25 apiece — an incredible bargain, given there isn’t another seat in Mullett that sells for less than $100.
One friend was dressed like a penguin. Another like a pineapple. Dunn wore a sleeveless banana costume. All of them were rocking the commemorative mullets the Coyotes provided to each fan on opening night, with blonde hair cascading down the back, and “GO COYOTES GO!” and “YOU DO YOU” on the headband.
“First of all, I love the Minions. Their favorite food, in general, is a banana,” Dunn said, standing among fans who were wearing more jerseys than fruit. “Also, it’s Halloween [weekend] and we thought there would be more people in costume. But I guess not!”
Dunn is exactly the kind of fan the Coyotes find appealing at ASU: This was his first NHL game.
“I’m a Seattle Kraken fan. I’m brand-new to hockey. I’m not a Coyotes fan,” he said. “I went to the ASU game last week and it was a great atmosphere. The tickets are $25, so might as well.”
Coyotes president and CEO Xavier A. Gutierrez said the team expects to foster new fandom on campus.
“We have actually created something called Coyotes U, which has a specific student fan club in which they will have special-price tickets to be there,” he said. “We’ve wanted to expose hockey and our organization to the great students here. This is the largest public university in the country. We thought it was an incredible opportunity for us to bring them here, to have them be exposed and to make lifelong fans.”
In turn, the Coyotes get an infusion of youthful exuberance at each home game. Against the Jets, the student section started the game’s first “Let’s go Coyotes!” (pronounced “Kai-yotes”) chant and kept the energy going. The students imported some NCAA hockey game standards, chanting “You can’t do that!” on the game’s first penalty and “It’s all your fault” after Winnipeg goalie David Rittich surrendered the game’s first goal. They were whipped into a frenzy during T-shirt tosses.
Dunn and friends weren’t the only ones in costume in the student section. One of the drum line’s drummers watched a group of men dressed in matching checkered jumpsuits walk into the student section.
“That’s the dance team,” the drummer said.
“What’s the dance team?” I inquired.
“They’re a team and they have to dance. They have the music in them. Like how I have to play this drum,” he said, giving it a gentle wallop with his stick.
It turns out this was not, in fact, the dance team. It was a bachelor party from Boston, taking advantage of the low ticket prices to attend an NHL game while in Tempe.
Which is to say that not every fan seated in the student section was a student.
Mark Brezden, dressed in a suit jacket festooned with Jets logos, was seated with several Winnipeg fans. He didn’t know the fans giving him grief all game were mostly ASU students.
“Oh s—, is that what this is? The student section? I didn’t realize it until now,” he said, laughing.
Brezden explained that he has used the same Arizona ticket rep for the past 10 years when he and his friends would travel down from Winnipeg for games. “They’ve been good for us,” he said.
Fans of Canadian NHL teams would always populate the stands at Coyotes games in Glendale. Some fans in attendance at Mullett Arena wondered what the crowds would look like when teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs visit Tempe — how many of those 5,000 seats would contain visiting jerseys?
“The reality is Canadians love hockey,” Gutierrez said with a laugh, “and this is the second-largest Canadian snowbird market in the country. As a result, we have a lot of Canadian fans here and we welcome them — as long as they cheer for the Coyotes.”
When asked what they thought of the arena, Brezden exchanged an awkward glance with his friend and fellow Jets fans Ron Burley.
“I mean, it’s a means to an end, right?” Burley said. “There’s something bigger coming.”
The die-hard experience
Before the game, Lutz joined around 100 Coyotes fans outside Mullet Arena for a fanfest that included a DJ, a face painter and a “red carpet” arrival for players.
He was wearing a Robert Esche jersey, a goalie who last played for the then-Phoenix Coyotes in 2002. The front of his sweater was a sea of commemorative pins. He pointed to two of them that identify him as a “day one” Coyotes fan in their inaugural season. They were located near a red heart with the words “I’m special” in Braille that he wears in honor of his daughter, who is blind.
“I love this [arena], because it’s going to keep us in Arizona until the new arena gets built,” he said.
Like many of the fans outside the student section, Lutz was a season-ticket holder in Glendale whose seats were transferred to ASU.
“It was easy. They did the best they could to find your seats,” he said. “We were upper level, and as you can see, there really is no upper level here.”
The average ticket price at Mullett Arena is $170, $16 above the league average. It was about $90 for an average ticket in Glendale.
“We’re paying a few shekels extra. I had to sell my spleen and kidney, but I made it happen,” Lutz said with a laugh.
The longtime Coyotes fans with whom we spoke expressed concerns about ticket prices and the lack of accoutrements one finds in larger arenas. But uniformly, they all praised one thing: the geographical advantages of playing in Tempe.
The Coyotes’ first season in Tempe marks the first time Tim McKinstry will be a season-ticket holder. He has been a fan of the team for years but cited the same issue many have cited for the Coyotes’ failure to attract big crowds in Glendale: For 18 years, they played in an arena located a significant distance from their fan base.
“It would take me an hour to get to Glendale. I rode my bike here,” McKinstry said.
He said he’s “excited but a little bit nervous” about the team’s plans for a new arena in Tempe.
After Glendale opted not to renew the Coyotes’ lease at what’s now known as Desert Diamond Arena, they needed a new home. They entered into negotiations with Arizona State University to potentially share the Sun Devils’ men’s hockey team’s new arena while seeking to build their own building and entertainment complex in Tempe.
A vote from the city council will come on Nov. 29. Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports that the Tempe City Council is likely to refer the Coyotes’ arena and entertainment district proposal to referendum, leaving a vote in citizens’ hands.
“Sometimes the city makes deals and it ends up costing the taxpayers a little bit of money,” McKinstry said. “Overall, it’s promising. I guess we’ll see what happens.”
The Shane Doan experience
No one played more games (1,540), scored more goals (402) or tallied more points (972) as a Coyote than Shane Doan. The 21-year NHL veteran, who last played in 2017, was the Coyotes’ chief hockey development officer before taking a step back from the role before the season.
What would Shane Doan, the player, think about calling Mullett Arena home?
“You know what? It’s cool. It’s a unique experience that you don’t get very often,” he said. “It takes you back a little bit to where you played junior and where you played in college. And this is a great college or junior rink.”
Doan’s favorite aspect of the Mullett experience: Having fans right on top of the players.
“It’s going to be something that the fans won’t normally get to experience [at an NHL game],” he said. “They’re going to get to see some of the great players on the ice that are a level that you never get to see. And then you get to see all of our fans up close and personal.”
“It’s going to be a little more intimate. Everyone is going to see the reactions on the bench. You might even hear some people’s reactions. That’ll be fun,” Doan added. “We’ll see how it all works out. It’s going to be something that people talk about.”
As a player and an executive, he has seen some … let’s call it “stuff” through the years with this organization.
“What?” he said, laughing. “Nah, what are you talking about?”
Hypothetically, had someone told Doan several years ago that the Coyotes would be kicked out of Glendale and playing in a college hockey arena in Tempe, how would he have reacted?
“If you think that you can predict what’s going to happen, that’s usually when you’re a fool,” he said. “This has been an adventure. We’re trying to keep her going. The end goal is what we’re focused on. If we can get to that, then it’ll all have been worth it.”
Doan played a key role in the opening night festivities. He dropped the ceremonial first puck with his son Josh, an Arizona State player who was drafted in the third round last year by the Coyotes. Josh Doan actually flew from Las Vegas for the event before rejoining the Sun Devils on the road.
“He’s a huge fan of the Coyotes. Obviously getting drafted by them is crazy and unique,” the elder Doan said. “To have an opportunity to take part in something like this, in what’s sort of his building, it’s special.”
There’s no “sort of” about it: Mullett Arena is the home of the Sun Devils, and the Coyotes are temporary tenants. The ASU hockey logo is on every seat. There’s a giant “FEAR THE FORK” slogan on the wall behind one net.
“Personally, I never thought [this] would happen. The building was designed for Arizona State hockey and college hockey,” said Greg Powers, head coach of the ASU hockey team. “But I was selfishly excited about what this does for our program. You can’t walk into that arena and not know that it [belongs to] Arizona State. Our brand is going to get out there. That’s good for us.”
The relationship between the teams hasn’t been completely harmonious. The Coyotes are scheduled to play four home games, after six on the road to open the season, prior to the completion of an annex next to the arena. That building will house NHL-quality dressing rooms and other facilities. But for these first four games, the Coyotes are using the visiting locker rooms as their dressing area, while road teams are getting geared up in a temporary dressing room built on top of an adjoining ice rink in the building.
In other words, the Coyotes aren’t using the Sun Devils’ locker room.
“There are some NCAA compliance concerns with rubbing elbows with [NHL players], literally sharing a locker room,” Powers explained. “But for my standpoint, most importantly, you’re getting into this whole musical chairs thing, and that’s something I’m not interested in.
“They’re not going to take the building with them. When they leave, they’re going to leave behind a beautiful building with two pro dressing rooms and offices, a medical facility and some workout rooms.”
The visiting players’ experience
Winnipeg Jets defenseman Nate Schmidt was college roommates with Coyotes forward Nick Bjugstad and faced off against him in a college rink on Friday night as NHL players.
“I had a hell of a time in college. I’m a little too old to go back. Don’t have any eligibility left,” Schmidt joked. “You know, they’re making the best out of a tough situation here.”
While the annex is being completed, the visiting locker room at Mullett Arena consists of a few lines of weathered lockers contained within temporary walls, all of it atop an ice rink covered in black rubber mats. Some on social media likened it to a Nathan Fielder “rehearsal” of an NHL game, and it’s an apt comparison.
“It’s different. The ground is cold from being on top of the ice. When you take your shoes off, it’s a little chilly on the feet,” Winnipeg rookie Cole Perfetti said. “But we knew it was temporary. We knew what we were coming into. It’s unique. It’s pretty cool to be the first team to ever be a part of this. It’s weird. But it’s cool.”
From a game-play perspective, the visiting Jets echoed the comments made by Coyotes players leading up to the game: The boards were lively and the ice was tremendously fast.
“I think you go out there for pregame skate, and within your first 10 strides you know,” Arizona’s Fischer said. “When you go play in Edmonton you just step out for warm-ups and you’re flying out there for whatever reason. There’s also other places that’s not that case, and you notice that pretty quickly. I’d be curious to know how the Jets feel, but from our standpoint, we haven’t had the greatest ice here in the past couple of years, so that’s probably why you’re hearing that the most.”
How did the Jets feel?
“The ice was great. It was unbelievable. Even for warm-ups,” Perfetti said. “Coming from L.A. last night where the ice … well, it wasn’t the best. We were fighting the puck a little bit. But this ice was great. The boards were great. It was awesome.”
One interesting aspect of the Mullett Arena experience: Adjusting to the size of the rink.
“Everything felt tiny in the first period. Everything just felt congested and small,” Schmidt said. “Maybe because there’s no upper deck, I don’t know. It all felt very tight and then it settled down as the game went on.”
Blake Wheeler, who scored the winner in overtime, said the arena experience felt different.
“Five thousand people, man. It’s all right,” he said.
Did it remind Wheeler of his college days skating for Minnesota?
“I played in front of 10,000,” he said, smiling. “All in all, it was made out to be much worse than it was. As long as you’ve got a spot to put your gear on and talk about the game, it really is a beautiful college hockey rink. I’ve played in worse arenas, that’s for sure.”
The Coyotes players’ experience
As they left the ice on opening night, the Coyotes were cheered by the remaining fans in the student section. To the outside, it was a crowd of 4,600 fans, with capacity slightly reduced due to television broadcast and media overflow needs. To an Arizona player, it was something they rarely had in Glendale: a sellout.
“Just to see a full building, it’s a new chapter of hockey here, being in Tempe,” Coyotes star forward Clayton Keller said. “Hopefully they keep showing up.”
GM Bill Armstrong believes they will. The Coyotes aren’t expected to be contenders. Armstrong has acknowledged the importance of highly drafted players in ultimately building a winner in the desert. But he also wants his team to exhibit a work ethic that lays the groundwork for future success, while connecting with fans now.
“I think we can have a special flavor here. We’re a physical team. We’re a grinding team. I would like to think we’re one of the hardest-working teams in the National Hockey League,” Armstrong said. “If you come to see us play, you’re gonna get your money’s worth. And when you come to see us in this building, you’re gonna have one of the best seats in the NHL.”
Many of the Coyotes players on the current roster won’t be there when the team moves into its next home. But for now, they appreciate the uniqueness of their temporary home, especially as it compares to their previous one.
“I thought the energy of the crowd was great. Something that we’ve missed as players, especially guys that have been here for a while,” Fischer said. “It’s a fun place to play. There’s a lot of noise about the outside and the details of it, but we’re playing a hockey game. It’s loud, and the fans are cheering for us, that’s all we really care about. It’s a cool little rink.”
LOS ANGELES — Dodgers right-hander Brusdar Graterol will miss the first half of next season after having surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder.
The surgery was performed Thursday by Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the Dodgers announced Friday.
Graterol is expected to return in the second half of the 2025 season.
Graterol pitched in seven games during the regular season and three games in the World Series against the New York Yankees, which the Dodgers won in five games. He allowed three hits over 2⅓ scoreless innings in those World Series appearances.
The 26-year-old was slowed this season by shoulder inflammation and a hamstring injury.
Graterol, a hard-throwing Venezuelan, spent his first season in the majors with Minnesota in 2019, and the Twins traded him to the Dodgers before the 2020 season. For his career, he has a 2.78 ERA and 11 saves in 188 games.
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Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff Writer
At SEC media days in July, Steve Sarkisian inadvertently described a good portion of college football in a single line. “I feel like when you go to Arkansas,” the Texas Longhorns coach said, “I almost at times feel like they hate Texas more than they like themselves. That’s a real rivalry.”
Later that week, Arkansas Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman confirmed Sarkisian’s take. “We hadn’t played Texas for years,” he said, “and when we played them a couple of years back, it was the most excited our fan base has been in a while. So I would say he’s probably right.”
Houston Nutt can testify. Nutt grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He idolized legendary Arkansas coach Frank Broyles and watched him battle Darrell Royal and the Longhorns before playing for the Razorbacks himself.
“When Texas came to play Arkansas, it was this huge, huge thing,” he told ESPN in 2019. “I remember being taught at the age of 6 outside War Memorial Stadium [in Little Rock] how to do the Hook ‘Em Horns Down sign.”
Nutt beat the Horns as the Hogs’ coach, a 27-6 win in the 2000 Cotton Bowl, Arkansas’ first bowl win since 1985. He turned around, and threw the Horns Down to the Arkansas fans.
“It was a sea of red, and they were mostly doing the Hook ‘Em Horns Down,” Nutt said. “What did I do? I can’t help it. I’m right there with ’em.”
Conference realignment has broken countless rivalries through the years. There are no Oklahoma-Oklahoma State games on the schedule; Missouri and Kansas haven’t played since 2011; Cal has traded playing UCLA for playing NC State; Oregon-Oregon State and Washington-Washington State have been moved from the traditional bottom of the schedule to the top; Pitt and West Virginia play only sporadically, as do Oklahoma and Nebraska. But in the “thank God for small favors” department, this latest round of realignment at least reignited a few rivalries to replace the further ones we lost. Longtime Big 8 and Big 12 rivals Oklahoma and Missouri played this past Saturday for the first time in 13 years (and celebrated the occasion with a particularly wacky finish), and on Nov. 30 not only will we get our first Texas vs. Texas A&M game since 2011 but it also might have enormous College Football Playoff stakes.
While we wait for Aggies-Horns, however, we get a rivalry game that, for quite a while, outshined Texas-A&M and defined Southwest Conference football. On Saturday, Texas and Arkansas will play for just the fourth time in 20 years and will play as conference rivals for the first time in 33. Most rivalries fit into certain parameters — the dueling heavyweights that split the wins over time, the heavyweight against the aspirant that measures itself by how well it’s faring against the big dog, etc. — but over the course of a few decades, Arkansas-Texas fit into multiple categories. Arkansas was the aggrieved and aspirant underdog for much of the series, but for much of the 1960s, when Royal and Broyles were at the top of their respective games, this was the biggest game in college football. Whichever flavor it takes on at a given time, this game remains spicy.
Texas is 8-1 and listed as a favorite by more than two touchdowns Saturday, while Arkansas is 5-4, having handed Tennessee its only loss of the season but suffered two blowout losses in its past four games. The Razorbacks are volatile underdogs; the Longhorns are SEC title favorites; and, for at least a little while Saturday, Razorback Stadium will be an absolute cauldron. To prepare ourselves, let’s look back at 10 of the most noteworthy games in this revived rivalry’s history.
No. 3 Texas 20, No. 14 Arkansas 0 (1946)
“Steers Trounce Tough Porkers For 5th Victory” was the headline in the Austin American. At 3-0-1, Arkansas was off to its best start in 13 years, and for the first time these teams met as mutually ranked foes. But Texas, also unbeaten and the winner of three of the past four Southwest Conference (SWC) crowns, handled both the moment and the muggy conditions better. Future pro and college football Hall of Famer Bobby Layne threw a pair of touchdown passes — one to Hub Bechtol for 50 yards, one to Jim Canady for 47 — and the Longhorns had scored all their points by halftime. This was a pretty common result: Aside from a mid-1930s run in which Texas lost its way as a program and Arkansas won five of six games between them, UT dominated the early stages of this rivalry, winning 29 of the first 35 battles. It’s been a lot closer since then.
This was the high-water mark for the “Steers,” by the way, as they would fall via road upset to both Rice and TCU, handing Arkansas only its second SWC title. The Razorbacks would head to Dallas, where they endured a 0-0 tie with LSU in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 3 Texas 13, No. 12 Arkansas 12 (1959)
After falling apart under Edwin Price in the mid-1950s, Texas righted the ship by hiring Royal, a former Oklahoma Sooner, to lead the program in 1957. In 1959 the Longhorns embarked on a run of nine top-10 finishes and two national titles in 14 years. Royal won his first two games against Arkansas by a combined 41-6, but second-year head coach Broyles also had things up and running by 1959. The Razorbacks would enjoy eight top-10 finishes in 11 years from 1959 to 1969; in this tight loss, they served notice as to what was coming.
As with much of 1950s college football, this game was decided by disasters. Both teams lost four fumbles; Arkansas recovered a loose ball to set up its first touchdown, but with Texas trailing 12-7 in the third quarter, another future Hall of Famer, Lance Alworth, muffed a punt, which set up a winning touchdown pass from Bart Shirley to Jack Collins. Between 1959 and 1969, eight of 11 Steers-Porkers games would be decided by five or fewer points.
No. 8 Arkansas 14, No. 1 Texas 13 (1964)
Texas won its first national title under Royal in 1963; the Longhorns shined in big games that season, beating No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 2 Navy by a combined 56-13, but they managed only a 17-13 win over Arkansas in Fayetteville. They advanced their winning streak to 15 games early in 1964, but Broyles was building a title-worthy squad of his own by then.
For the third time in four years, this was a matchup of top-10 teams. The most famous members of the 1964 Razorbacks were future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and future college and NFL title winner Jimmy Johnson, but future Arkansas coach Ken Hatfield made the difference in this one. His 81-yard punt return gave Arkansas a 7-0 halftime lead, and after Texas tied the score in the fourth quarter, Fred Marshall found Bobby Crockett for a 34-yard touchdown to put Arkansas ahead once more. With about a minute left, Ernie Koy scored on a 1-yard plunge; Royal, entirely uninterested in a tie, elected to go for two points and the win, but a pass attempt came up short. Texas’ winning streak was over, and Arkansas would go on to finish 11-0 and score a share of its first national title.
No. 3 Arkansas 27, No. 1 Texas 24 (1965)
By October 1965, Arkansas had extended its winning streak to 16 games, winning its first four games of 1965 by a combined 114-33. But Texas had leapfrogged the Razorbacks to get back to No. 1, thanks in part to a 19-0 win over Oklahoma. That put the chip firmly back on Arkansas’ shoulder.
With the extra dose of motivation — plus, perhaps, some divine intervention: Fayetteville’s First Baptist Church famously posted, “Football is only a game, eternal things are spiritual. Nevertheless, beat Texas” that week — Arkansas raced to an early lead thanks to a pair of Phil Harris fumbles. Martine Bercher recovered the first one in the end zone, then Tommy Trantham took another one 77 yards for a score.
Arkansas went up 20-0 after a Jon Brittenum-to-Bobby Crockett touchdown, but Texas charged back. It was 20-11 by halftime, and David Conway’s 34-yard field goal made it 24-20 Longhorns with just five minutes left. Brittenum scored from a yard out with 1:32 remaining, though, and Arkansas had its second of three straight wins in the series.
The Hogs would run their overall winning streak to 22 before falling to LSU 14-7 in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 1 Texas 15, No. 2 Arkansas 14 (1969)
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Texas usually played Oklahoma and Arkansas back-to-back in early October, but Roone Arledge, the innovative head of ABC Sports, had an idea in the offseason. Texas had finished 1968 as the hottest team in the country, winning its last nine games and averaging 37 points per game with offensive coordinator Emory Bellard’s innovative wishbone scheme. Arkansas, meanwhile, finished 10-1 with only a 39-29 loss at Texas. The Longhorns and Razorbacks finished third and sixth, respectively, in the AP poll and headed into 1969, college football’s centennial season, as obvious national title contenders.
According to Terry Frei’s “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon’s Coming,” ABC publicist (and future ESPN analyst) Beano Cook pored over the schedules and determined that Arkansas, Texas and Penn State all had good chances of going unbeaten. “My recommendation involved Penn State and Arkansas finishing the regular season with perfect records and then playing for the national title,” Cook told Frei. “I said we should move Texas-Arkansas to December 6, because I thought Texas might be undefeated then, too.” Arledge told the coaches that former Oklahoma coach and politician Bud Wilkinson could make sure that new President Richard Nixon was likely to attend the game as well. It was going to be a spectacle unlike anything college football had seen.
Sure enough, the Longhorns and Razorbacks both reached December unbeaten (as did Penn State), and Nixon was there in the stands for a game that somehow lived up to all expectations.
With Texas’ offense discombobulated early — the Horns turned the ball over on their first two drives — Arkansas scored on a short Bill Burnett run and, early in the third quarter, a 29-yard catch by star receiver Chuck Dicus. Texas quarterback James Street scored on the first play of the fourth quarter, then scored on a 2-point conversion as well. (Royal decided before the game that he once again wanted to avoid a tie at all costs.)
With the score 14-8, Arkansas drove the length of the field and was on the verge of putting the game away until Danny Lester picked off a Bill Montgomery pass in the end zone. Then came “Right 53 Veer Pass”: On a fourth-and-3 near midfield, Street threw a bomb to Randy Peschel for 44 yards.
#TBT – 1969: Texas defeats Arkansas 15-14.#ThisIsTexas #HookEm pic.twitter.com/xoqn5cbhFm
— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) October 17, 2019
Two plays later, Texas went ahead with a short Jim Bertelsen touchdown. Arkansas drove near field goal range in the final seconds, but Tom Campbell picked off Montgomery to ice the game, and Nixon declared Texas the national champion in the locker room after the game. (This rather annoyed Penn State’s Joe Paterno, whose team was also unbeaten.)
College football’s explosion as a television product can be ascribed to countless things, but ABC’s innovative approach to broadcasting, followed by a couple of all-time classics — this and 1971 Oklahoma-Nebraska, to name two — in short succession certainly didn’t hurt.
No. 1 Texas 42, No. 4 Arkansas 7 (1970)
The sequel often fails to live up to the billing. Almost exactly a year after the 1969 classic, Texas was riding a 29-game winning streak, while 9-1 Arkansas was ranked fourth in the AP poll and looking for revenge on national television. It didn’t quite work out.
Texas rushed for 464 yards — Bertelsen and Steve Worster combined for 315 on their own, with five of the Longhorns’ six touchdowns — and picked off Montgomery three times. After a goal-line stand by the Longhorns’ defense prevented Arkansas from tying the score early on, the floodgates opened.
The tide had again turned in the rivalry. Arkansas would finally get some measure of revenge the next year with a win in Little Rock, but after winning four of seven over the Horns between 1960-66, the Hogs won only once between 1966-79.
No. 8 Texas 28, No. 3 Arkansas 21 (1978)
A generation ended when both Royal and Broyles retired after matching 5-5-1 seasons in 1976. They both ended up hiring their younger replacements — 38-year old Fred Akers at UT, 40-year old Lou Holtz at Arkansas — as their schools’ respective athletic directors.
Both led immediate rebounds. Holtz won 30 games, Akers won 29, and both schools finished in the AP top 12 each year from 1977 to 1979. In 1978, Akers’ Longhorns played a unique role, too: spoiler. They welcomed unbeaten Arkansas to Austin and ended the Hogs’ 11-game winning streak. Two Randy McEachern touchdown passes in the final minute of the first half turned a tie into a 20-7 Texas lead, and when Arkansas charged back to take the lead, Johnny “Lam” Jones caught McEachern’s third TD pass, and Johnnie Johnson picked off one pass and broke up another on a fourth down to seal the win. This was the first of four straight upsets in the series, with the lower-ranked team winning every year from 1978 to 1981. My favorite rivalries are the ones that make no sense.
Arkansas 42, No. 1 Texas 11 (1981)
And now for maybe the most shocking result in the history of the rivalry. Akers’ Longhorns entered the 1981 game No. 1 in the country, having just blown out Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma 34-14 to move to 4-0. Arkansas, meanwhile, had fallen out of the AP rankings two weeks earlier after a road loss to an awful TCU team that would finish 2-7-2. Surely a blowout was in store, right?
This was indeed a blowout, but not the one anyone expected. Two fumbles and a safety from an airmailed punt snap gave Arkansas a quick 15-0 lead, and the Longhorns never got closer. The Hogs led 25-3 at halftime and 39-3 after three quarters; Texas actually outgained the home team 421-323, but seven turnovers sabotaged all efforts. A turnaround in the series? Not so much. The last two Akers-Holtz battles ended up a combined 64-10 in favor of the team in burnt orange. But this one was an awfully big thumb in the eye, and it would prevent the Horns from winning a national title — they ended up second in the polls behind Clemson.
Arkansas 14, Texas 13 (1991)
“Ain’t no rematch. Best thing of all, ain’t gonna be no rematch.” That’s Arkansas head coach Jack Crowe, celebrating a Hogs win in the final SWC matchup between the two rivals. He had just weathered one of the silliest games in the series to secure permanent (well, permanent-ish) bragging rights. Arkansas led 14-0 at halftime after touchdowns from Ron Dickerson Jr. and Kerwin Price, but a 14-yard Phil Brown touchdown made it 14-7 heading into the fourth quarter, and a 55-yard burst from Brown tied the score. Or at least, it should have: The Longhorns missed the PAT, then missed a 39-yard field goal attempt with 3:45 left.
The teams weren’t particularly memorable, even if the game was. Crowe’s Razorbacks went 6-6 in their last season in the SWC, while David McWilliams’ fifth and final Texas team went 5-6. The teams had weathered ups and downs, splitting the previous six meetings and producing zero top-10 finishes from 1984 to 1991 as the SWC wobbled through controversies and discontent. In 1990, the SEC announced it was adding Arkansas as part of an expansion to 10 teams; the plan had originally included adding not only the Hogs but also Texas and Texas A&M, but the state legislature intervened, and only Arkansas was on its way out the door. So was Crowe: Broyles fired him (and then tried to get away with announcing he’d resigned) after Arkansas began its SEC tenure with a 10-3 loss to The Citadel.
No. 7 Texas 22, Arkansas 20 (2004)
Since 1991, this has basically been a series of pent-up aggression: Whichever rival takes an early lead when they meet just keeps wailing away for a while. Arkansas won two bowl meetings (the 2000 Cotton Bowl and the 2014 Texas Bowl) by a combined 58-13, Texas won a home game in Austin 52-10 in 2008, and Arkansas won a home game in Fayetteville, Steve Sarkisian’s second game in charge at Texas, by a score of 40-21 in 2021.
A 2003-04 home-and-home series produced some drama, though. Arkansas upset No. 6 Texas by a 38-28 margin in 2003, using an early 21-0 run to build some space, getting 217 combined rushing yards from Cedric Cobbs and quarterback Matt Jones and scoring every time it needed to down the stretch.
But with a young quarterback by the name of Vince Young taking over for UT in 2004, the Longhorns got some revenge. Texas built a quick 9-0 advantage with a safety from a bombed punt snap and a 49-yard TD from Young to David Thomas. And from there, it was the Cedric Benson show: The star running back produced 201 yards from scrimmage and scored via both ground and air. Texas held a 22-17 lead into the fourth quarter, and after forcing an Arkansas field goal with 9:58 left, the Longhorns’ defense forced three consecutive turnovers to ice the win. Arkansas would stumble to a disappointing 5-6 record, while Mack Brown’s Longhorns would finish 11-1 before winning the national title a year later.
The most recent Hogs-Horns game might turn out to have been pretty useful. “I don’t know what Darrell Royal did to Arkansas back in the day,” Sarkisian joked with reporters this week, “but they absolutely hate our guts. And I think we learned that the first time around when we went there.”
Texas knows what it’s walking into, at least. They know to expect a Horns Down or two, though we’ll have to wait and see if Sam Pittman gets in on the act.
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