Kane Webb: Heartbreakers – Razorback Fans Are Used to This

 

Here’s a representative text-message exchange late Saturday afternoon, circa seconds after Texas A&M’s one-play touchdown drive in overtime against Arkansas at JerryWorld in Dallas:

Me: Hog fans have seen this movie before.

Bro-in-law: My whole life — typical Hogs.

Have you ever read Bill Simmons’s “Levels of Losing” column that defines and ranks the worst possible losses from bad to cry-in-your-beer? Simmons is notorious these days for having been suspended by his employer, ESPN, for calling NFL Commish Roger Goodell a liar and daring his bosses to do something about it. They did. (An aside: Simon, I promise to behave. For now.) But long before he became famous/infamous for being banished, Simmons was famous/infamous for writing oddball columns; in one of his best, he identifies 16 levels of losing. 1

You can read Simmons’s Levels of Losing here. 

Warning: They’ll sound eerily relatable for the lifelong Hog fan. Granted, some don’t apply, and some will change over the years. That “crushing” loss to Florida and Tim Tebow back when Ryan Mallett was spinning it for the Razorbacks? Barely registers now. But then there are those games that linger … and linger … and fester … and worsen … and Just. Won’t. Go. Away.

I bet that won’t be the case with the Razorbacks’ overtime wheeze against Texas A&M, but that last quarter-plus had a certain deja vu-itiveness to it, didn’t it? Or as my brother-in-law said the next day, the game inflicted a “familiar, non-specific pain.” Almost like seeing an old friend (that you hoped had gone away forever).

 

Let’s get the worst out of the way first:

Level I: That Game. Simmons, a Boston native and Red Sox fanatic, naturally points to Game 6 of the 1986 World Series — you know, “little roller … it GETS THROUGH BUCKNER!” — which the Sports Guy provincializes as “maybe the most catastrophic sports loss of our time.”

He’s wrong, of course. For Arkansans of almost any age — because if you didn’t live through it you’ve heard about it or read about it or seen replays of it — the most catastrophic loss is:

1969. No. 2 Arkansas vs. No. 1 Texas at Fayetteville. The Big Shootout. The original Game of the Century. Whole books have been written about this game. Documentaries have been made about this game. Hell, I’ve spilled a few gallons of ink on it myself. So I won’t rehash the painful details of the Hogs’ 15-14 loss to Texas in front of God, Richard M. Nixon and everybody. But I will share a telling anecdote. This was 1999, and I was on the editorial page at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The boys in Sports were working on a 30-year retrospective of the game, and somebody had secured a videotape of it — complete with the old commercials. (Timeout: Back then, commercial breaks during games lasted about 30 seconds, maybe a minute. One ad! Tops. ONE!) As the game went on, the crowd in front of the TV set in the Sports Department grew larger. Arkansas scores! Cheer! Arkansas takes a commanding lead! Cheer! Then, as ABC breaks to sell some razors or shaving cream — but that’s all! — before the start of the fourth quarter, the veterans in the crowd start to disperse. I corral an exiting Jim Bailey, the razor-sharp sportswriter for the Gazette and the DemGaz, and ask why everybody is leaving just as the real drama sets in. Always one to choose his words wisely, Jim looks at me, shakes his head, and says, “We know how this one ends.” 2

Ultimate heartbreak, thy name is the Big Shootout. It’s the touchstone of pain for Razorback fans.

But in the 45 years since, oh, how Hog football fans have gotten in touch with their inner-Cubs fan. (That’s shorthand for Long Suffering.) Let’s go through a few other miseries and see how the Simmons Levels of Loss apply. What? Why are we doing this? Because it’s cathartic, that’s why. And because the Hogs play B.Y.E. this week preparatory to what could be a stomach-punch Saturday matchup against Alabama in Fayetteville.

Speaking of all-time stomach punches…

Level II: The Stomach Punch. Here is Simmons’s definition: “… any roller-coaster game that ends with (a) an opponent making a pivotal (sometimes improbable) play or (b) one of your guys failing in the clutch. … Always haunting, sometimes scarring.”

1998. No. 10 Arkansas vs. No. 1 Tennessee at Knoxville. The Stoerner Stumble Fumble. Yes, children, once upon a time both Arkansas and Tennessee were ranked in the top 10 at the same time. This missed opportunity for the Hogs, and first-year coach Houston Nutt, followed the typical plotline: Underdog Arkansas jumps to a big lead (21-3), sees it melt away as powerful opponent awakens, sets up anticipated heartbreak. But wait! This game has a surprise twist. With UT threatening to take the lead late in the fourth quarter, the Hogs force a turnover on downs near midfield. Just minutes remain! All the Razorbacks and quarterback Clint Stoerner have to do is run out the cloc— . . . Nooooooo!

Remember how the Hogs upset the Vols the next year in Fayetteville? Remember how it was going to make that previous year’s loss go away? Realize how dumb that seems now? Funny thing about devastating losses; they last so much longer than the redemptive wins.

* * *

I submit that ’69 and ’98 stand apart from the rest of the heartbreakers, though with a gulf of distance between them. If 1969 is the Everest of near-misses, 1998 is more like Pinnacle Mountain. Using as our timeline the 50 years since the Hogs won their only national football championship — goodness, we are approaching Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Everything territory — let’s rank some of the more memorable disappointments on the Simmons Scale, from least painful to most painful:

 

Level XVI: The Princeton Principle. Defined by Simmons as “when a team hangs tough against a heavy favorite, but the favorite somehow prevails in the end (like Princeton almost toppling Georgetown in the ’89 NCAAs). … This one stings because you had low expectations, but those gritty underdogs raised your hopes.”

2013. Arkansas vs. No. 17 LSU at Baton Rouge. Oh, what’s a 99-yard, last-minute, game-winning touchdown drive engineered by a substitute freshman quarterback between fans and their gritty underdogs?

 

LEVEL XIV: The Alpha Dog. Defined as “a devastating loss, but at least you could take solace that a superior player made the difference in the end. … Unfortunately, he wasn’t playing for your team.”

1977. No. 8 Arkansas vs. No. 2 Texas at Fayetteville. Better make that Arkansas vs. Earl Campbell at Fayetteville. Best college running back ever. End of discussion. You there! I said end of discussion. Good day, sir.

Yes, I know, the officials missed a facemask on QB Ron Calcagni that would have given the Hogs a first-and-goal. Doesn’t matter. Campbell would have found a way to carry the Horns to victory. Earl was Da Man before there was a Da Man. Watch this.

 

LEVEL XIII: The Rabbit’s Foot. Defined as “those frustrating games in which every single break seemingly goes against your team. … You know that sinking, ‘Oh, God, I’ve been here before feeling when something unfortunate happens, when your guard immediately goes shooting up?”

1982. No. 9 Arkansas vs. No. 2 SMU in Dallas. PASS INTERFERENCE?!? The game that spawned a fairly graphic bumper-sticker. (It features a Razorback running from a sharp piece of hardware. One word: Ouch.)

Memory says the Hogs didn’t suffer from every single break going the Mustangs’s way, but they did suffer one bad break that cost them the game, the Southwest Conference title and pretty much the season. Less than 5:00 left. Arkansas up a touchdown. SMU desperate. A long pass to a Mustang receiver. Bodies tangle. Incomplete. Flag goes down. It’s the textbook definition of offensive pass interference. And, yup, it is called against Hogs d-back Nathan Jones instead. Say it together: “THEM DAYUM TEXAS REFS!”

This one fairly ended the Lou Holtz era of plenty in Fayetteville. This one is also an outlier, since the game finished in a 17-17 draw, not a loss, though Hog fans, and players, took it as such.

 

LEVEL XII: The Sudden Death. Defined as that one-play loss that “feels 10 times worse than winning feels good.”

1987. No. 15 Arkansas vs. Texas at Little Rock. Texas wins what is otherwise a real snoozer on a thrilling touchdown pass on the game’s last play. It went like this: Completion. Final gun. 00:00. Texas 16, Arkansas 14. Ken Hatfield’s Razorbacks, forever stuck in Flexbone, don’t throw a single pass in the second half. Some yahoo fan verbally assaults Hatfield from the stands as he leaves the field. That wasn’t a typical Texas team, which entered the game at 2-3, but for Hog fans that was typical Arkansas-Texas, Lord-why-can’t-we-beat-these-guys? agony. 3

 

LEVEL XI: Dead Man Walking. Defined primarily for baseball and basketball playoffs as any “series in which your team remains ‘alive’ but it just suffered a loss so catastrophic and so harrowing that there’s no possible way they can bounce back.” But I think it works for a football season, too. Case in point…

1998. Arkansas vs. Mississippi State at Starkville, Miss. A week after the Stumble Fumble game. Nutt, showing the kind of backbone we didn’t see much of again, suspends his starting placekicker for an off-field screw-up. Hogs fall behind big, then rally but lose on, yes, a field goal in the final seconds. No SEC West title. No redemption game against UT. No fun. Looking back, this game was over as soon as the Hogs left Knoxville.

 

LEVEL X: The Monkey Wrench. Defined as “any situation in which either (a) the manager/coach of your team made an idiotic game decision or (b) a referee/umpire robbed your team of impending victory.”

1971. Arkansas vs. Tennessee in the Liberty Bowl at Memphis. Arkansas led 13-7 in the second half when all-American Bill McClard lined up for his third field goal, this one from 48 yards out, to ice the game. It looks good aaaaand … take it away, Orville Henry: “The scoreboard read 16-7, Arkansas. But an official called tight end Bobby Nichols for holding on the kick; the scoreboard went back to 13-7. Still, Tennessee could not move, and Arkansas was using up the clock when (Jon) Richardson fumbled after catching a screen pass. Razorback Tom Reed came out of the pile with the ball, but the official who had also called the holding penalty, Preston Watts of Memphis, insisted to referee Burns McKinney that it was UT’s ball. Tennessee score in three plays (and) won, 14-13. Arkansas players almost literally chased the officials out of the park, an unseemly display, but no one would ever convince them that Watts did not err grievously on his two late decisions.” — from The Razorbacks by Orville Henry and Jim Bailey. 4

Also qualifying: the aforementioned pass-interference game against SMU in 1982.

 

LEVEL IX: The Full-Fledged Butt-Kicking. Defined as those times “you can tell right away when it isn’t your team’s day. … And that’s the worst part, not just the epiphany but everything that follows. … You just want it to end, but it won’t end. But you can’t look away. It’s the sports fan’s equivalent to a three-hour torture session.”

1987. No. 10 Arkansas vs. No. 3 Miami at Little Rock. Final: 51-7 Hurricanes. And it wasn’t that close. The epiphany came in the first quarter when Miami drove 97 yards in three plays in less time than it took to comb Jimmy Johnson’s hair.

Also qualifying: most of the 2012 & 2013 seasons.

 

LEVEL VIII: The “This Can’t Be Happening.” Defined as the “sibling of the Full-Fledged Butt-Kicking. …You’re supposed to win, you expect to win, the game is a mere formality.” But …

2012. No. 8 Arkansas vs. Louisiana-Monroe at Little Rock. Holy crap! You mean John L. Smith really is the coach? All season?

 

LEVEL IV: The Guillotine. “Your team’s hanging tough (hell, they might even be winning), but you can feel the inevitable breakdown coming, and you keep waiting for the guillotine to drop, and you know it’s coming — you know it — and when it finally comes, you’re angry that it happened and you’re angry at yourself for contributing to the debilitating karma.” All post-1969 Razorback heartbreakers seem to involve some form of The Guillotine. Indeed, the Big Shootout kind of invented it.

2014. Arkansas vs. Texas A&M at Dallas. Mostly on Saturday evening and Sunday, not so much by now. By season’s end, it may well be off the list. But as my dental-hygienist-the-football-genius A. put it so astutely, first Bret Bielema’s teams “need to learn how to close.” 5

 

* * *

 

Heartbreaks in brief

Here’s how one house full of Arkies, in the wake of the A&M game, ranked the Razorbacks’ more heartbreaking losses of recent vintage:

 

1969 — Texas at Fayetteville. It stands alone.

_____

 

1998 — Tennessee at Knoxville, Tenn. So does this one.

_____

(in no order)

2006 — Florida for the SEC title.

2003 — Auburn at Fayetteville.

2011 — Alabama at Fayetteville.

2012 — Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

2011 — LSU at Baton Rouge for the SEC West title.

1998 — Mississippi State at Starkville, Miss.

1971 — Tennessee in Liberty Bowl.

1987 — Texas at Little Rock.

 

What’s on your list?

 

Footnotes

1 For the record, I’m a Simmons fan, and I especially appreciate his vision in helping to create the “30 for 30” documentary series, the Grantland website for longform journalism and general experimentation, and his “BS Report” podcast, which got him in trouble.

2 Let me put in another plug for Terry Frei’s book on that game and all the cultural and political winds that swirled around it, Horns, Hogs & Nixon Coming.

3 Hatfield’s offense could be only a little more exciting than watching worms melt in the sun, but he won. He often won big. And he’s hands-down the nicest major-college head coach you’ll ever meet.

4 The Liberty Bowl? Really? Yes, really. In those days, there were actually fewer bowl games than days in December. And after the Big Four (Cotton, Sugar, Rose, Orange), the Liberty was considered a solid consolation prize. Also, don’t you love that Orville names both refs? And notes that Preston Watts lives in Memphis … as in TENNESSEE!!! Dots connected, O.H.

5 I had a good checkup, thanks for asking. Need to floss more.

 

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