In an effort to generate some positive energy before tomorrow morning’s big game, we present to you some clips from two glorious Razorback Cotton Bowl victories. First off are some highlights from the 1965 victory over Nebraska, which completed an undefeated season and gave the Hogs their first and only national football championship. Much like yesterday’s posting, the footage is set to British classic rock; this time, the music is provided by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

The second set of footage is from the 2000 win over the Texas Longhorns. Once again, the clips feature music from a British group, though this one is of more recent vintage. It’s sad to see that all of the jobs providing musical accompaniment for Razorback highlights are being shipped overseas.

Enjoy, and have a safe and happy New Year’s.

D-Mac has been cleared to play in the Cotton Bowl (no big surprise there). Arkansas may never see another football player like him ever again, so let’s all be sure to enjoy #5 in a Razorback uniform one last time. It should be good.

I was talking to my friend Chope, a fellow Razorback expat, about the Cotton Bowl the other day and realized that I have two very distinct thoughts about how the game will turn out.

My head tells me that the Hogs will almost definitely lose. First of all, Razorbacks + bowl game = loss just about every time, so that’s a safe bet. On top of that, we’re playing a really good Missouri team…a team that came one game away from playing for the national title but instead wound up out of the BCS entirely (and angry about it). Plus, that Missouri team happens to be the exact type - ultra precise passing offense, lots of playmakers - that gives our defense fits.

And if that weren’t enough, the weeks between the LSU game and now have seen an almost complete turnover of the coaching staff, an often ridiculous and always drama-filled search for a new coach, and even late-breaking allegations that Darren McFadden won’t be eligible for the game. Any of these factors alone ought to be enough to make a thinking man pick against the Hogs, so my head says no way.

But…

My heart is telling me something else entirely. It’s telling me that in spite of all the insanity that has swirled around this team for the past two years, when they play up to their potential they are really good. As in, “can beat anybody at any time” good…when we last saw these Hogs, they were marching into one of the toughest stadiums in the country and beating the #1 team up and down the field.

And the majority of our coaching staff may have fled across the Mississippi to Oxford, but my heart believes that Reggie Herring is just the man to rally the troops for one last battle. And it remembers seeing Casey Dick complete big pass after big pass (and throw a big block) against LSU, and feels that, with David Lee having free reign to call the plays, maybe we’ll finally have that elusive offensive balance.

And most importantly, my heart is reminding me that any time Darren McFadden takes the field, just about anything is possible. Cliche, yes, but it’s also true. 300 yards? 4 TDs rushing and 2 passing? Proving that he’s the best QB on either team? None of it would really surprise me…and my heart would like to believe that, despite any possible urge to play it safe and not get hurt before the NFL draft, D-Mac will “bring the wood” to show ESPN, Tim Tebow and the world just who the best player in college football is.

So which is it? I’m a Razorback fan, so you know it’s not the head…I say we win in a shootout. Go Hogs!

You didn’t think The Who’s “Tommy” and highlights from Arkansas’ 31-10 victory over Georgia in the 1976 Cotton Bowl would go well together? Think again, my friend.

Check out the clip on YouTube.

In the most recent edition of The Arkansas Times, Bob Lancaster offers a hilarious review of 2007. Below, I’ve cut and pasted Lancaster’s two comments on Wally Hall:

Best Wally ride - In one of his sports columns in March, Wally Hall wrote of a traffic accident involving a Jeep Jerokee.

Best Wally bet - In one of his sports columns in May, Wally announced his patriotic support for “the war being wagered in Iraq.”

After his excellent commentary before and after the LSU game this fall, we once again turned to one of our favorite commenters, Tab Prewett, to get his thoughts on the Cotton Bowl. So, sit back and enjoy his take on Missouri, bowl traditions and the often-maddening addiction that is being a Razorback fan:

Arkansas versus Missouri in the Cotton Bowl, and I keep asking myself: Why don’t I care? Despite Missouri’s miraculous season, I’ve been mired in a post-LSU ennui, bored by Missouri’s history of mediocrity, and completely uninspired by the prospect of Arkansas losing another bowl game. I’d rather pound a pathetic Notre Dame or take another long shot at beating USC, or even engage damned Texas again instead of play Missouri and its surplus of offensive weapons led by Heisman nominee Chase Daniels. A great game needs a great traditional rival or a championship to play for. This game has neither.

Yet, Missouri represents a historical landmark for me, as in September of 1963 my father and I drove to Little Rock and I saw my first Razorback game, against none other than Missouri. Unfortuantely, Arkansas, a team with all the players who would win the 1964 National Championship, lost on a missed extra point 7-6. Skipping ahead four decades, the next time I recall Arkansas playing Missouri (and this is entirely by memory as my catatonia has prevented me from any research) was the 2003 Independence Bowl where Matt Jones and Cedric Cobbs outscored Brad Smith by some unmemorable score. That’s it, no rivalry, no bitter shirt-ripping-off, television-smashing defeats, no party-all-night wins, just two forgettable games and 40 years. That Missouri is not a traditional enemy leaves me without enmity. We might fear the unknown, but we sure don’t hate it.

Still, it is the Cotton Bowl, site of not only the 10-7 win over Nebraska in 1965 where we did secure our only football national championship, but also the Millennium destruction of despicable Texas, 27-6. Nor can we forget our allegiance to Dallas, where Nolan’s “Forty Minutes of Hell” teams romped and dunked their way through several NCAA regionals and NCAA tournaments. For the future we have the much-anticipated eight-year series with Texas A&M which will guarantee the Razorback presence in Dallas will grow even greater.

Dallas and the Cotton Bowl resonate with Razorback tradition, but Missouri, for me, is an uninspiring, if supremely worthy, opponent.

So I still don’t care. Why?

(Read on …)

Welcome to the final installment in our series of providing handy pre-game cheat sheets detailing why you should hate each one of the Razorbacks’ football opponents. If you need any help getting fired up for the Cotton Bowl, here’s your motivation:

1. They Think They’re Better Than the Cotton Bowl. To be fair, they have a legitimate gripe in this case…for reasons not really clear to anybody, the Tigers were passed over by the Orange Bowl in favor of their hated rival Kansas (a team they’d beaten decisively only days earlier). At any rate, the team and fans are not happy about it. Will they play with an angry intensity to show that they’d been wronged? Or will they come out flat and disappointed? Either way, we don’t really like this aspect of the situation.

2. They Can Score, Score, Score. It seems like we’ve written a variation of this one before nearly every game this season, but Missou’s offense has the potential to rack up some major points against our occasionally porous D. Led by Heisman finalist Chase Daniel’s 4,170 passing yards and 33 touchdowns, the Tigers are putting up almost 42 points per game. You don’t have to be an ESPN expert [sarcasm alert] to realize that the Hogs are going to have to put up some serious points of their own to win this shootout.

3. Without Missouri, There Would Be No “Blank Shark Eyes“. That’s right, the University of Missouri Journalism School spawned the world’s foremost authority on hating Bobby Petrino: Mr. Pat Forde. Thanks guys…without your proud alum we never would have known that our new football coach is nothing less than the 21st century Hitler.

4. It’s a Bowl Game. Arkansas always loses bowl games (granted, our last bowl win came against the Tigers so maybe there’s hope). It might just be an unbreakable law of the universe that the Hogs lose their bowl games, but maybe - just maybe - working up a little extra animosity against Missouri will help reverse this trend. It’s worth a shot…

5. Frankly, Missouri is a Little Boring. Last time we checked, Arkansas has bordered Missouri for a very long time. Yet, during that entire time the Tigers have inspired a sports rivalry with the Hogs hovering between slim and none (unlike our relationships with teams from fellow border states Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana). Obviously conference affiliations have something to do with this, but you’d think something would have been cooked up by now if they’d been an exciting opponent. Call that a reason for low-level disrespect rather than a reason to hate if you will, but that’s how we see it.

2007 has been full of drama for Razorback football fans, and the last days of the year don’t look to be any quieter: Questions are now swirling around Darren McFadden, a new Cadillac Escalade and a sports agent, possibly placing the Heisman runner-up’s eligibility for the Cotton Bowl in jeopardy.

* Update, courtesy of The Slophouse blog: KARK issues apology to Mike Conley for mentioning his name in the above report.

I’m paraphrasing the old song about going to San Francisco because it seems that Eddie Sutton has signed on to be the new coach of the University of San Francisco Dons, effective immediately.

The circumstances are a little odd - Eddie is taking over a team in turmoil (attendance is slipping, players are being ruled ineligible, etc) and will probably need nametags for the players when he coaches them against Weber State tomorrow night. But, the opportunity offers him a chance to hit the very elite 800 wins plateau (he’s currently at 798) and end his career on a better note than when he left Oklahoma State in 2006 after that drunk-driving incident.

On a personal note, I lived just a few blocks away from the USF campus for several years and can attest that it’s about as far away from the college basketball environments of Arkansas, Kentucky or Oklahoma State as you can get. It’s a small school situated in the middle of a typical San Francisco neighborhood, and the gym has a distinctly high school feel to it. But, the school does have some bball tradition (they won two national championships when Bill Russell was a student back in the 50s), so maybe Eddie can draw on that.

At any rate, it’s nice to have Eddie Sutton back in the world of college basketball, and we wish him the best of luck (and I hope he got a nice financial deal out of this…real estate in SF is a bit pricer than in Stillwater).

Borrowing a page from the John Pelphrey playbook, we here at RazorbackExpats had threatened to not let our staff go home for Christmas if the Hogs lost to Appalachian State. Like Coach P, however, we relented. And to help us keep the site churning during the holiday break, we have turned to one of our regular commenters, the always insightful Whit E. Knight. He and his wife have graciously agreed to provide their take on the basketball team. Without further ado …

Whit E. Knight (W): Mrs. Knight and I are thrilled that the Razorback Expats have asked us to give our impressions of the basketball team so far and how we think they may fare the rest of the way. Of course, our excitement is a little tempered after watching the Hogs suffer a disappointing loss to Appalachian State at Alltel.

Mrs. Whit E. Knight (M): The Hogs were outplayed; it’s that simple.

W: Neither of us was a fan of Stan Heath, so we were glad to see him go. I was tired of listening to TV announcers talk about how scary talented the Razorbacks were while they were en route to another mediocre season. Mrs. Knight was elated when it was announced that Dana Altman would be the new coach; Pelphrey she was not so sure about.

M: It wasn’t Altman so much as that somebody showed up to be the coach and then called the Hogs. And then he went away! So I was a little disappointed with the whole Razorback-basketball-coach thing, as I had been for a few years, and didn’t want to get my hopes up again. But Pelphrey’s been here — wow — the whole season, and I like a lot of what I’ve seen, so I’m onboard. I like his energy, as some might say. He is sort of like a tall terrier.

W: I think Pelphrey will turn out well. But so far he has not managed to shake the current crop of Razorbacks out of the Heath mindset. The holdovers appear to still be undisciplined underachievers. Their record is not bad at 9-3, but with their talent they should be 11-1 right now. The Providence loss was a total team effort - everyone looked flat. But they showed a lack of character in the end against Oklahoma, and you can blame the refs and Appalachian State having an incredible shooting night, but that is a game they have to win.

So credit Pelphrey with getting them to lift their game some, but I think he has a way to go to get them to play up to their talent level.

(Read on …)