Tag: Hogs

For Arkansas football, the long arc from perennial contender to irrelevance

A giant Razorback flag hypes up University of Arkansas fans during a game at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

As we recorded the most recent edition of the 3 Old Geezers podcast, the subject turned to college football and the over/under for number of wins for OU and OSU in the coming season.

So, as a life-long University of Arkansas fan, I decided to weigh in with my over/under prediction for the Hogs.

“Why are we even talking about Arkansas any more?” fellow Geezer Ed Godfrey demanded. “They are irrelevant in football.”

Ouch! I went into defensive mode.

“They will be relevant … some day,” I stammered.

Then fellow Geezer Steve Buck challenged me with an insightful question.

“How is that going to happen, Jim?”

I grasped for the only credible answer that I could come up with.

“They buy players,” I replied. “If Texas Tech can buy players, why can’t Arkansas use some of that Sam Walton money and buy some good players.”

Whew. These are dark days in the Ozarks for the Razorbacks and their fans. They went 2-12 last year and ended the season with an interim coach after firing Sam Pittman midseason.

And in the last decade, the Hogs have gone 55-80 and had 5 head coaches, if you count two interim coaches over that span. Their best coach over the past 10 years might have been Brett Bielema, who went 8-5 in 2015 and 7-6 in 2016 before getting fired after a 4-8 season in 2017.

Maybe Arkansas’s athletic overlords didn’t realize what they had in Bielema, who has gone 19-7 over the past two seasons while leading lowly Illinois.

Or, perhaps, they didn’t realize that Arkansas was slowly becoming irrelevant in college football and Southeast Conference play.

Yes, I said the ‘i’ word.

I am an Arkansas native and fondly recall that the Hogs were a major player on the national college football stage under Frank Broyles in the ’60s and ’70s, followed by Lou Holtz in the ’70s and ’80s and then with Ken Hatfield from 1984-89.

But that was then. These are now the dark days for the Arkansas program, and the Hogs seem to have hit the bottom rung of college football. I mean, apparently Vanderbilt has passed Arkansas in the national pecking order.

By contrast, Texas Tech made itself a contender in 2025 by investing in a talented roster with the financial support of billionaire oil and gas entrepreneur and alumnus Cody Campbell. The Red Raiders went 12-2 last year and made the college football playoffs in the fourth season under Joey McGuire.

That makes me wonder why Arkansas can’t play that financial game and build a winner in the current free agent era of college football. Players are free to transfer to any other school after any season and can earn multi-million dollar salaries.

If athletes are willing to take their talents to the flatlands of Lubbock, Texas, I’m pretty sure they would love Fayetteville, Ark., by comparison. Arkansas has a beautiful campus with facilities that are on par with any peer school.

If only the pot of money was there.

So, I asked my friend Greg Spencer, a Springdale, Ark., resident, Arkansas alum and long-time season ticket holder, why haven’t the Razorbacks gone big into roster payroll, assuming they haven’t.

“I really don’t know,” Greg replied. “The rules have changed so much since the courts decided that the players needed to be rewarded to be there.”

Greg does have some thoughts on how players can be compensated in a manner that make more sense.

“Maybe the players need to be rewarded after they have performed,” he said. “How about a flat fee for showing up, and a reward for contribution?”

So, then Arkansas might become an ongoing success once again, I asked?

“Not on a continuing basis,” he said.

Oh, thanks for the optimism, Greg.

One caveat for Razorback fans is that the Hogs now play in the rugged Southeastern Conference, when the state of Texas was their most fertile recruiting ground back in their Southwest Conference days. Not sure how many talented Texas high schoolers are looking to the Ozarks these days.

However, I’m afraid that the window of roster-investment opportunity may be closing on the Hogs. Legislation known as the Protect College Sports Act is making its way through Congress with the potential to rein in spending, among other impacts.

The Athletic summed up the legislation’s potential in a recent newsletter:

“The bill would allow the NCAA to limit transfers and eligibility, enforce a spending cap, give conferences the ability to pool their television rights and prevent coaches from leaving their teams before the end of the season. It also includes language to limit future power-conference realignment and prevent a private equity-backed ‘super league.'”

Then again, all that might level up the playing field for the Hogs.

You can read more about the Protect College Sports Act here (subscription required)

So a new college football season approaches and brings optimism with it to fans everywhere, even in the Ozarks. Here’s hoping my Razorbacks begin the long road back from ‘irrelevance’ in the 2026 season.

Wait a minute. It just occurred to me that my fellow Geezers never let me actually predict Arkansas’ 2026 record. I’m predicting a dramatic improvement to 6-6 under new coach Ryan Silverfield, whom they lured from Memphis. Silverfield completed his Memphis tenure with a 50-25 overall record.

Take that, Geezers. Wooo Pig Sooie!

BONUS CONTENT — If you aren’t familiar with the 3 Old Geezers podcast, it’s produced by three (mostly) senior citizens who bring offbeat, grumpy and often times unintentionally humorous perspective about sports and world in general. The hosts are Steve Buck, who bills himself as Cameron University’s last college football play-by-play announcer, along with Ed Godfrey and Jim Stafford, two retired newspaper reporters. I invite you to sample an episode here.

Lou Holtz and the professional failure that haunts me today

Jim Stafford with then-University of Arkansas coach Lou Holtz at the 1982 Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston.

The recent death of long-time college football coach Lou Holtz on March 4 stirred a lot of memories for me. Not all of them happy.

I’m ashamed to admit it was the biggest failure of my professional career.

Lou was University of Arkansas coach when I graduated college in 1978 and took a sportswriting position with the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith.

So, I joined the SWTR staff in the wake of Arkansas’ stunning victory over OU in the 1978 Orange Bowl. Lou Holtz was riding high as Arkansas coach.

The 31-6 upset of the Sooners by the Lou Holtz-led Razorbacks turned him into an almost mythical hero among Arkansas fans. He had become head coach before the 1977 season, replacing Arkansas legend Frank Broyles, who retired from coaching to assume a full-time role as Athletic Director.

After that first season success, Coach Holtz became a much-sought after speaker across the nation. He even made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

I saw that appearance and was amazed by Lou’s magic trick where he tore up a newspaper, wadded it up and then unfolded the wad into a fully restored paper.

I’ve seen Holtz do that trick countless times over the years, and I never figured out where he stashed the paper that replaced the one he tore up, or what happened to the shredded pages.

Anyway, for the first couple of years at the SWTR, my main roles were covering high school sports and doing layout on the sports desk. Eventually, I began attending selected Arkansas home games and writing sidebar stories to the main story written by our Sports Editor.

But in roughly 1982, I became Sports Editor, a position that afforded the opportunity to cover the Razorbacks on a more in-depth basis. For instance, I usually drove to Fayetteville on Tuesdays to attend practice and get some interviews with Lou and certain players for pre-game features.

I wouldn’t say that I was a full-time Razorback beat writer, but I covered all home games for the 1982 season, as well as the season-ending SMU game in Dallas and the Bluebonnet Bowl victory over Florida in Houston.

All that led up to August 1983, when I was preparing the paper’s annual football preview special section, which a lot of newspapers publish annually.

I’m not sure of the date, but an SWTR photographer and I drove to Fayetteville to interview Lou for our tabloid cover story. He welcomed us into his office and we sat down for the interview.

Almost all of my questions were total softballs, asking about certain players he expected to lead the team and looking forward to upcoming games. But near the end of the interview I asked him about the fact that despite all of his success at Arkansas he had not led the Hogs to the Cotton Bowl as SWC champions.

That set Lou off, and he got angry and animated.

“I’m tired of being asked about the Cotton Bowl all the time,” he said. “I’ll tell you right now, this is going to be my last doggone year at the University of Arkansas.”

I was taping this interview. So, I asked him if he was serious.

“I am, but if you say anything I will deny it.”

Whoa! Lou had lobbed a grenade into my pocket. Or the story of the year for Arkansas fans.

I have to admit, I wasn’t up to the moment.

As I drove back to Fort Smith, all I could think of is ‘why me?’ I was not a regular, daily beat reporter for the Hogs. If I broke this story, my reporting colleagues would think that I’m just trying to make a name for myself.

So, I kept it to myself. Call it a lack of courage, if you will. Because that’s what it was.

Pro-tip to young journalists: Don’t keep everything bottled up inside you. And don’t be afraid to share your fears or misgivings with a mentor or an editor. I should have gone straight to Jack Moseley, the SWTR’s editor, and asked him how to handle it.

I wrote my season preview with no mention of Lou’s comments and we published our special section. Less than two weeks later, an opportunity came up to take a position on The Daily  Oklahoman sports desk, and I accepted it.

So, as I departed the SWTR, I left the tape of my conversation with Coach Holtz with a colleague and told him if Holtz did, indeed, resign at the end of the season, to write a story based on the interview.

I knew it would be embarrassing for me, but, well, I deserved it. And the story needed to be told.

Lou DID resign at the end of the season, and the SWTR published the story of his pre-season comments. I got a couple of calls from national college football reporters, who wrote about it, as well.

I’m so glad there was no internet or social media in 1983.

Today, it’s known that Lou Holtz did not resign at the end of that season. He was fired by Frank Broyles, in part because he had campaigned for Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who for decades opposed almost every advance in civil rights for African Americans.

But that doesn’t matter to me. I had the story. I sat on it. I paid the price in self-worth. It haunted me for the rest of my career, even if no one really knew or remembered.

Lou’s passing provided the opportunity to finally admit my failure in a public way.

It’s an important life lesson. Don’t be afraid to share your information or situation with a mentor. Don’t sit on the story.

Don’t be like me.