Which of Bell, Blaney, Byron or Larson will win NASCAR Cup?
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1 year agoon
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior WriterNov 3, 2023, 09:29 AM ET
Close- Senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com
- 2-time Sports Emmy winner
- 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year
From crazy finishes and fisticuffs to the impending retirements of legends and the resurrection of North Wilkesboro Speedway, NASCAR‘s 75th year has been a season full of milestones. Now, after nine months, it is time to crown a Cup Series champion.
Stock car racing’s 16 playoff participants have been pushed through a ringer of a postseason bracket, and we are now down to the Championship 4, who will race Sunday afternoon on the perfectly imperfect oval-ish 1-mile that is Phoenix Raceway. Forget all you think you know about NASCAR’s admittedly complicated points system. This one is easy: The highest finisher among this quartet will be anointed as champion.
So, who are they? How did they get here? How have they fared at Phoenix in the past? What’s their mindset headed into the weekend? How weird will it be when one guy running for the title is dating the little sister of one of the other guys racing for the title? Read ahead as we give you the stats, the path and a short Q&A with each member of NASCAR’s Championship 4 … four.
2023: 3 wins, 0 poles, 7 top-5s, 17 top-10s, 3 DNFs
2023 Playoffs: 2 wins, 0 poles, 3 top-5s, 5 top-10s, 0 DNFs
Playoff history: 7th appearance, 4 wins, 2 this year
Best championship finish: 7th, 2019 and 2021
Phoenix career stats: 15 starts, 0 wins, 6 top-5s, 10 top-10s, 2 DNFs, 11.9 average finish
ESPN: OK, first things first. You are a Star Wars nut. Quick “Ahsoka” series review?
Blaney: I loved it. It was great. It brought some nostalgia back for me too, which was good. Seeing Anakin, I was like, oh man, it was like when I was a kid.
ESPN: Bubba Wallace is your best pal. He just dropped a Star Wars paint scheme for Phoenix, and to unveil it he shot a commercial with Mark Hamill, at Luke Skywalker’s house.
Blaney: And he didn’t invite me! He texted me and was like, “You won’t believe where I am.” I was like, “Dude, you couldn’t just have me be on the crew, to be your social media photographer or something?”
ESPN: Well, the force was with you at Martinsville, a place you’d never won before and then you won your way into the Championship 4.
Blaney: It was special for multiple reasons. I grew up not too far from there, in High Point, North Carolina. As a kid I went there with my dad (former Cup Series driver Dave Blaney) all the time. And I drove for the Wood Brothers for a few years, who are based right there, around the corner in Stuart, Virginia. I have been so close so many times there, to finally get that win, that grandfather clock, and punch a ticket to the last four. That’s dream stuff.
ESPN: This is your first time racing for the Cup, but your team, Team Penske, has literally raced for every meaningful motorsports trophy on the planet.
Blaney: It’s an amazing resource. And yes, it’s a team that has won everything, but here we are with a chance to do something Roger Penske has never done, and that’s win back-to-back Cup titles. Earlier this year we won the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. Now, a chance to join Brad [Keselowski] and Joey [Logano] as Cup champions for Roger, that’s special.
ESPN: We sportswriters love to throw around the idea of pressure in the postseason …
Blaney: That’s real. I think any driver who tells you they don’t feel that as the playoffs roll on, they’re lying to you.
ESPN: And those who are honest will tell you it isn’t being on the track as much as it is the other stuff, the unforeseen stuff if you’ve never been there. So, does it help relieve that for you when you can walk across the hallway and talk to the guy who won it a year ago? “Hey, Joey, what am I in for?”
Blaney: Our relationship has just gotten better and better over the years. And, you know, when he was running for one last year and I wasn’t, I said, “OK, this is my job, to do the best I can to relay information, to help the overall goal of getting the team championship. Now I’m in and he’s not and he’s been the same way. He said, “Whatever you need.”
ESPN: And Dad? Does Dave Blaney get fired up? Because, I’m going to be honest, back in the day he was the nicest guy, but man, he was hard to interview. Dude keeps it close to the vest. Will he cut loose with his boy racing for a title?
Blaney: He’s a pretty quiet, reserved guy, but he does a good job of firing me up when he needs to, you know, and getting me in a confident mindset. So, I can tell even if he’s not showing it to people who don’t know him very well. It’s like I can tell that he’s excited. You get him in a room alone, he’s a different person.
ESPN: One more family-related question. Your younger sister, Erin, has been dating William Byron for years. He’s racing against you for the Cup on Sunday …
Blaney: I said to her earlier this week, “Man, you’re going to be conflicted!” She said to me she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I told her she’d never hurt my feelings. I also told her, if you think about it, she has the best odds of them all. The only two people at Phoenix with a 50% chance of winning a championship will be Erin Blaney and Rick Hendrick.
2023: 2 wins, 6 poles, 10 top-5s, 19 top-10s, 3 DNFs
2023 Playoffs: 1 win, 4 poles, 4 top-5s, 6 top-10s, 0 DNFs
Playoff history: 3rd appearance, 2 wins
Best championship finish: 3rd, 2022
Phoenix career stats: 7 starts, 0 wins, 0 top-5s, 4 top-10s, 0 DNFs, 14.4 average finish
ESPN: I remember last year we talked leading into Phoenix and you’d just won at Martinsville to make the Championship 4 for the first time. You talked about getting so emotional in the car. This time around you won a week earlier and you’ve experienced the championship weekend before. So, how do you feel this year?
Bell: Dude, it is just absolutely crazy. Last year our Phoenix prep was like literally 48 hours because the car has to leave early in the week to get across the country. This has already been so refreshing. I don’t want to say that we were putting off Martinsville, but Phoenix was already the priority for sure. But once we get there, it’s business as usual. I remember listening to certain drivers talk about how this race is a different race, and I found that very interesting because if you treat Phoenix like a different race, then that what’s that saying about the other 35 races? That you don’t take them as serious? You want to win Richmond 1, Dover 1, Charlotte 1, just as bad as you want to win Phoenix 2. It shouldn’t be treated differently because that means you’re not doing your job the other time.
ESPN: That’s interesting. It really is because I was never a race car driver, but everyone tells me you have to treat it the same way. But it’s not the same. So, there’s no way. But that’s the goal, right?
Bell: I will never get to experience being in the Super Bowl, but I would imagine it’s something similar to that or NBA Finals. The pageantry, the hoopla, are significantly greater than any other event we run throughout the year, and it is a little bit hard to put that behind you. But whenever I get into the car, whether it’s Friday for practice or Saturday for qualifying, I’ll be nervous as can be, but then as soon as you fire that engine, then it’s all normal. Like, OK, this is what I was born to do. This is what I do, this is my life. All that other stuff goes away.
ESPN: OK, so you’ve helmetized and it’s all normal. But in this particular race, can you focus just on you, or when there’s 50 laps to go do you want to know where the three guys are at all times? You’ve been there now, so what was and what will be your approach?
Bell: That’s a little bit different, too, because it really doesn’t matter where you finish. You have to beat the other three competitors to win the championship. Now, most of the time it comes down to the four guys racing for the win, and you know that. So again, it isn’t really much different than any other race because you’re out there expecting to have to win the race to win the championship. But, you know, I guess if there is a rare instance where the other guys aren’t as competitive as normal, then you’re like, “OK, you know what, I’m running third and I’m the highest-running championship guy. Maybe I’m not going to push as hard to try and win here.” Certainly, you’re not going to push as hard if that situation arises. But that’s just something that you have to play by ear as it comes up.
ESPN: So, just so I’m clear. Treat it like a normal race because that’s what it is and that’s what your mindset should be, even though it totally isn’t normal so your mindset definitely needs to be a little different.
Bell: Yeah, sounds like I have it all totally figured out, right? [Laughs]
2023: 4 wins, 2 poles, 14 top-5s, 17 top-10s, 8 DNFs
2023 Playoffs: 2 wins, 0 poles, 4 top-5s, 5 top-10s, 2 DNFs
Playoff history: 7th appearance, 9 wins
Best championship finish: 1st, 2021
Phoenix career stats: 18 starts, 1 win, 7 top-5s, 11 top-10s, 1 DNF, 11.7 average finish
ESPN: As if you didn’t have enough going on, at basically the same time you won at Vegas to join the Championship 4, you also bought the entire All-Star Race of Champions Circuit from Tony Stewart?
Larson: Yeah. [Laughs] I wasn’t busy enough, so …
ESPN: When you own a series and you’re in the track business, do you look at race weekends differently now? Weather and hot dogs and having employees and water trucks for all that dirt.
Bell’s late rally isn’t enough! @KyleLarsonRacin wins at @LVMotorSpeedway! #NASCARPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/nLiBHGxrdk
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 15, 2023
Larson: We’re going through building our schedule for next year right now. You definitely have to factor in the different seasons that each state kind of gets throughout the year. There’s just a lot to factor into the logistics of it, the travel for the teams and going back and forth and this and that, and you’re trying to make it make sense for everybody. It’s difficult, and it’s never going to make sense for everybody.
ESPN: Is that fun? That doesn’t sound fun.
Larson: No, I definitely think it is fun. I think anytime you have something challenging that you work on, and when you get it all completed and feel like you did a good job, then it’s rewarding, and that, in turn, is fun.
ESPN: Like winning a Cup Series championship.
Larson: Yep, that’s it.
ESPN: I look at the other three title contenders and you are definitely the wily old veteran of this Championship 4. Is your approach to a championship race different now as opposed to the first time you did or as opposed to 2021, the year that you won it?
Larson: The style of our sport, even vs. 2021, I feel like is different than it was then. And the style of racing is a lot different than it was when I was first in the Chase, what, seven years ago. Winning three weeks ago certainly helps. We went into Phoenix prep pretty much immediately. For Phoenix, I have, like, the same group of friends and family that are coming that we always do, nothing extra. We actually live in Phoenix a big chunk of the year, so it’s like a second home now. I think in 2021 our team did a really good job of keeping our heads in it and executing at the crunch time of the race on pit road and ultimately winning because of it. So, here’s hoping we can do all that the same, if not better, this time around.
ESPN: I remember we spent a lot of time together back in 2017 for an “E60” feature we did on you as NASCAR’s next big thing. And this is no slight to anywhere else you have driven, but you and I talked and your dad and I really talked about, man, what would it be like to drive for a Hendrick Motorsports? Well, it’s been three years now. Is it everything that you thought it would be, driving for Rick Hendrick?
Larson: I would say yes, and probably more. Well, 1, I never thought they would let me race sprint cars, and I especially never would have thought that they would let me race as much as I do. And then just how the culture is. From the outside, you know it’s good, but you never know until you’re in it. And it’s that way everywhere that Mr. H is involved. There’s a reason no one leaves. There are so many people here that have been here for decades. They all love working there.
ESPN: As do you.
Larson: I do. And there’s also accountability. You want to win races and championships for you, for sure. But now you really want to win those because you don’t want to let these people down.
2023: 6 wins, 3 poles, 14 top-5s, 20 top-10s, 3 DNFs
2023 Playoffs: 1 win, 0 poles, 5 top-5s, 7 top-10s, 0 DNFs
Playoff history: 5th appearance, 1 win, this year
Best championship finish: 6th, 2022
Phoenix career stats: 11 starts, 1 win (last race run there), 1 top-5, 6 top-10s, 0 DNFs, 11.9 average finish
ESPN: So, Martinsville. It was like 85 degrees outside. You never had a handle on it and had to race your way in and did it the hard way, starting 16th and finishing 13th. You described it as, what was it, hell in a bottle?!
Byron: We just missed it, man. We ran pretty poor there in the spring, so yeah, I was nervous going there because I felt like we needed to make a lot of improvements. We fired off the race and weren’t much different, so it was just, “OK, we’re battling.” So, yes, it was, it was ugly, but it worked out.
ESPN: Earlier this week, Marty Smith and I were saying that after the year you’ve had (series-leading six wins, ranked third or better in points since May) it would have been a shame if you hadn’t made the Championship 4. So, with a chance to fumble that away in one race, were you worried, panicked, what?
Byron: For us, the pressure just continued to increase as we got in the playoffs just because of our position and what we had done throughout the year. You have a lot of playoff bonus points, so that’s good. But when other guys are winning and punching tickets to Phoenix and you’re not one of them, there was definitely anxiety within the team.
Big win. Bigger burnout. #NASCARPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/66LAOJxmvS
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 24, 2023
ESPN: But you did win the last race run at Phoenix, back in March, and you did it by getting around Larson and holding off Blaney and Bell, so hey, this is already a done deal, right?
Byron: [Laughing] Totally. Like, why are we even running the race, right? The good news is that we have a good notebook on the car. We also know the blueprint of how to win and the restarts at the end and all that crazy stuff. The bad news is that they will all be better, too. And conditions will be much different when it comes to temperature changes, much warmer in the fall. But we have a lot of practice time and we’ll be ready.
ESPN: You’d better be. Because not only do you drive the No. 24 car, the boss man is the guy who used to drive that car and was one of the greatest of all time. So, is Jeff Gordon (now vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports) going to come over and put his arm around you like, “No pressure, but this is the first chance my car has had to win a title since I was in it …”
Byron: JG has definitely stopped by and given me a good pregame speech the last two weeks. He comes over by the window right before the net goes up and he gives me a little pep talk. So, I’m expecting the same this week. Honestly, it’s pretty nuts. I grew up a huge fan. And it’s so cool to me that the style of the No. 24 has stayed the same, and when I’m at the race shop, there are all the cars that won all those races that I watched on TV or in person and, I mean, I’m driving that car. It’s just super cool to have that connection.
ESPN: All right, speaking of connections, how does this work now with the Blaney situation? You’re racing against the guy for the championship, and you’ll be driving to the track that morning with his sister, your girlfriend, in the car. How does that work? I already asked him, so be honest.
Byron: I mean, it’s racing. It’s competition. We’ll race just as hard as anyone out there, and honestly, it’s fun for us because we’ve had good battles over the years. We both want to win, and I guess when we get to Thanksgiving, we’ll see how that goes. Someone is going to have bragging rights. And whoever wins, I guess we’ll have to buy dinner.
ESPN: And bring the big Cup.
Byron: That might be a bit much. But maybe not. [Laughs]
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‘They absolutely hate our guts’: The weird, wonderful games that define Texas-Arkansas
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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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