What Larson can learn from past Indy 500-Coke 600 Doubles
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
The Memorial Day Double. Double Duty. The Indy-Charlotte Double. The 500/600 Double.
What Kyle Larson will attempt to do this weekend — contest the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar’s biggest race, and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR‘s longest race, on the same day — has so many nicknames that reading the list will leave you with double vision. That’s fitting. Because Larson’s goal will be not only to complete the Double, perhaps even win one or both ends of it, but also do what he can to ensure he and the two teams depending on him are not placed in double jeopardy.
To understand the difficulty of driving two races on two very different racetracks in two race cars that might as well be from two different galaxies, let’s look back at the two-lane road that was paved for Larson by his NASCAR/IndyCar double duty forefathers. A five-pack of drivers who have attempted — or will attempt — to wrap their two hands around the steering wheels of two dissimilar machines and depending on a fleet of other varied vehicles to get from one event to the other, all while staring at the weather radar, gloved fingers crossed.
The Early Years: 1911-93
The Indianapolis 500 took its first green flag on May 30, 1911, on what was then known as Decoration Day. The 500, like Decoration Day, was always on the 30th, no matter what day of the week that fell upon, and quickly became recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious sporting events. In 1960, NASCAR ran its first World 600, also scheduled around Decoration Day, but instead of the 30th it was held on the closest Sunday to the holiday.
The separate dates allowed for a handful of crossover moves. NASCAR stars such as Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Neil Bonnett attempted to qualify at Indy but came up short. Drivers such as Bobby Johns and “Chargin'” Charlie Glotzbach also chose to skip Charlotte to concentrate on Indy efforts. NASCAR legend Bobby Allison made a pair of Indy starts. In 1965, Ford flew in NASCAR’s famed Wood Brothers crew to pit the cars of Johns and Jim Clark. Clark won the race, which was a huge boost toward his second Formula One world title (Indy was included in the F1 schedule then).
From 1967 to 1971, a total of six drivers ran both races. The first was Cale Yarborough, suffering a mechanical failure at Charlotte and finishing 41st, and three days later finished 17th at Indy after a late spin. In 1969, LeeRoy Yarbrough won at Charlotte but finished 23rd at Indy. The most successful Double Duty racer was Donnie Allison, who won the World 600 on May 24, 1970, and finished fourth at Indy six days later. The next year he earned top-six finishes in back-to-back days, running sixth behind Al Unser in the Indy 500 on Saturday, finishing second behind Glotzbach at Charlotte, and then flying back to Indy for the awards dinner that night.
In 1974, following the standardization of Memorial Day as a Monday holiday, the Indy 500 permanently moved to Sunday, the same day as what was about to be renamed the Coca-Cola 600. Double Duty was parked.
“It was fun, but it would also kick your butt, even when the races were several days apart,” Allison remembered in January on the night of his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “But me and Cale and brother Bobby, we looked at running both as a badge of honor. Like, OK, you are a real racer’s racer if you can pull that off. And Kyle Larson certainly fits that description, though I don’t know how he’s stacking up that schedule to do it. Just tell him to get some fluids in him. I think I sweated out half myself, and I had time to recover. He won’t.”
The OG, John Andretti: 1994
Hydration wasn’t John Andretti’s problem on May 29, 1994. It was quite the opposite. The man needed somewhere to pee.
The modern-age Double Duty godfather had no plans to attempt both races in 1994. He had entered the season merely hoping to secure a ride for one or the other. On the NASCAR side, he had landed a ride with the sponsor-less and cash-strapped team of owner Billy Hagan. But he also had made a half-dozen Indy 500 starts and was riding a streak of three consecutive top-10 finishes. That’s why Charlotte Motor Speedway president and P.T. Barnum-esque promoter Humpy Wheeler called Andretti into his office that spring. Wheeler said he had done the math and believed it was possible for someone to run both races, all 1,100 miles, in one day, and he told Andretti that if anyone could pull it off, it was him.
The seed was planted. Andretti, son of Aldo and nephew of Mario, couldn’t resist. So, he went to his godfather, A.J. Foyt, and secured a car for Indy. Then he mapped out a schedule of 11 flights, crisscrossing the 580-mile distance between Concord, North Carolina and Speedway, Indiana. Then he cut a deal with a private jet company to manage that crisscrossing … and, oh yeah, the much longer, 2,220-mile trips the weekend before, between the Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway and Indy 500 qualifying.
On race day, Andretti finished a solid 10th at Indy after starting on Row 3 and running as high as third. From there, the real race was on.
In a striking contrast to Larson’s harmonic cross-series coordination efforts this year, in 1994, Indianapolis Motor Speedway refused to allow Andretti to land a helicopter at the racetrack. That cost him 20 precious minutes, going from a golf cart to a van and through race day traffic to a chopper blocks away from the track. Once he was in the air, however, he received help from air traffic controllers; a pilot who had once wheeled Air Force One; and Wheeler, who not only allowed Andretti to land inside Charlotte Motor Speedway but had a helicopter parked at the end of the runway in Statesville, North Carolina, and had it buzz the grandstand en route to a touchdown on the front straightaway to the roar of the crowd, all just as the national anthem was beginning.
“The good news is that we were smart enough to have IV bags on the plane so that I would be plenty hydrated and I felt great when we got there,” Andretti recalled in 2019, roughly a year before he died of cancer. “The bad news is that I was too hydrated and I had to pee so bad, but there was no time. They ran me to the car. I’ve never been one of those guys who can just pee in his suit during a race, so I was dying. The crankshaft broke halfway through the race and we were out. I was bummed, but I was also really happy because I could finally get to the bathroom!”
Smoke on the Water (he didn’t drink), Tony Stewart: 1999, 2001
Tony Stewart spent the mid-’90s juggling two big league day jobs as a full-time racer in the Indy Racing League and NASCAR’s Busch (now Xfinity) Series, winning the 1997 IRL championship while also making the transition into his first ride with Joe Gibbs Racing. So, when Gibbs gave Stewart permission to run the 1999 Indy 500 for his old IRL crew chief Larry Curry, the transition of getting back into an IndyCar was easy.
Running both races was not.
“Man, I was such an idiot that first year. Nutrition was not really my thing, and I sure proved it,” Stewart recalls, laughing, and reminding how proud he used to be of his three-trips-to-McDonald’s-a-day diet. “The morning of the 500, I think I had a couple of mini bagels. I put an energy bar in my car, but when I dug it out, it was all melted from the heat. On the plane to Charlotte, I drank a Gatorade and maybe ate a hamburger or something. That was it. I swear to you, when we got the final 100 laps of the 600, I was hallucinating. A piece of trash flew by the car and in my mind, it looked like a pink-spotted elephant running down the back straightaway.”
Still, he finished ninth at Indy, although four laps down, and followed that with a fourth-place run in Charlotte over a total of 7 hours, 13 minutes and 41 seconds of racing. When he climbed from his car, Stewart’s legs gave out and he collapsed.
“I said that night there was no way I was doing it again, but two years later I had the chance with Chip Ganassi at Indy. Joe said I could, but this time he was getting me help.”
Gibbs, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, called the Carolina Panthers and recruited a trainer to spend the entire month of May with Stewart, monitoring and coaching up his food and water intake, as well as his sleep habits. The racer responded with sixth- and third-place finishes, becoming the first and still only driver to complete all 1,100 miles.
“That’ll be the biggest challenge for Kyle, and it’s probably the part he’s not yet thought about, not the nutrition or any of that, but the length of the day,” Stewart says of Larson, who he believes could win one or even both races. “And the adrenaline spikes. He’s going to have one after Indy. He’s going to have one during driver introductions before Indy. He’s going to have one when he lands at Charlotte before he even gets in the car … but he’s driving a great race car at Indy [Arrow McLaren Racing] and he’s driving a great race car in Charlotte [Hendrick Motorsports]. He’s got a great group of people around him. You have to have the people to help you manage all of that. Like I did.”
Mr. Five-Time (sort of), Robby Gordon: 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004
Robby Gordon has won in stock cars, open wheels, motorcycles, sports cars and off-road trucks, so it seems only natural that he would be the racer who has attempted Double Duty the most. In fact, he’s the one who officially turned that phrase into racing jargon and even sold “Double Duty” fan packages to ride along with him on his flight from Indiana to North Carolina. Gordon has pulled off more two-race weekends than can be listed, from Indy Racing League/CART double entries that crossed over political divisions to NASCAR-to-Baja 1000 commutes that streaked across the U.S. map from Atlantic to Pacific.
The Californian’s first attempt was the second ever, when he ran both races in 1997, but the 500 was delayed two full days because of rain. In 2000, rain delayed the Indianapolis green flag three hours. Gordon decided to stay at Indy and let backup driver P.J. Jones start the 600. It was the right call, as Gordon finished sixth, then took over his stock car in Charlotte midrace and finished 35th. Rain also foiled his last attempt, in 2004, as Indy was red-flagged with a storm so strong it was assumed the event would be postponed, so Gordon left for Charlotte. However, the 500 was restarted; backup driver Jaques Lazier dropped out with a broken axle while Gordon finished 20th in the 600.
His other two Double Duty runs — the dry ones — were a mixed bag of finishes, although in 2002 he came within one lap of completing the full 1,100 miles.
“Unfortunately, rain is kind of the theme of my Double attempts,” Gordon recalled last month as he raced in the Stadium Super Trucks Series during IndyCar’s Long Beach Grand Prix weekend. “When I watch Larson, that’s the one thing I hope he doesn’t have to deal with. Not even the rain, but the decisions that have to be made because of the rain. For me, the childhood dream was always Indy, but for most of those years, my full-time job was in NASCAR with Richard Childress. So, making that call, of where to go when you can only run one, that’s no fun, man.”
The last Double (until now), Kurt Busch: 2014
After Gordon’s final Double Duty, Indianapolis made sweeping changes to its May schedule, including moving the waving of green flag for the first time since 1963, a full one hour later, from noon to 1 p.m. ET. Andretti, Gordon and Stewart had all cut it close to making it to Charlotte, missing prerace drivers meetings and literally running to their stock cars for the Coca-Cola 600’s 5:30 p.m. ET start. The move was made to grab a bigger West Coast TV audience (full disclosure: ESPN/ABC didn’t fight the idea), but it also eliminated the chances for Double Duty attempts from the likes of Indy 500 winners Juan Pablo Montoya and Dario Franchitti or even NASCAR aces Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.
“This is dumbest thing I’ve seen the Indianapolis Motor Speedway do,” Stewart said at the time.
When Indy finally did move its start time back to the traditional high noon, it didn’t take long for another Double Duty attempt to go on the books. Kurt Busch, who had tested an open-wheel racer for Bobby Rahal in 2003, drove for Andretti Autosport at Indy in 2014 and wowed the IndyCar regulars as he took his time, picked his spots, and worked his way up to a sixth-place finish and Indy 500 Rookie of the Year honors. His trip to Charlotte was flawless, having conferred with John Andretti and his new Cup Series car owner, Stewart. He soaked up a bag and a half of saline IV; drank a 20-ounce concoction of B12 vitamin, liquid oxygen, sugar, potassium and beet juice; scarfed down an energy bar, a bag of beef jerky and a box of raisins; and even sneaked in a 20-minute nap.
Unfortunately, none of that could help his No. 41 Chevy, which blew an engine two-thirds of the way through the 600. The next year he completed another sort of Indianapolis Double Duty, winning the Brickyard 400 for the first time.
“The way the racing business works now, at least the way it has worked as my generation was coming up, they want you to specialize,” Busch says now. “Us racers, we hate that. We want to drive everything before our careers are over. That’s the way that Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt and Cale Yarborough, all those old-school guys, did it.
“Kyle Larson has always been one of those guys. So, to see him do the Double, it will be fine. But it’s been a decade since I did it, and it had been a decade since anyone did it before me. Maybe this will open the door for guys who deserve a shot from being denied in the future.”
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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