Arkansas beat Texas in a bombshell upset last season, and now the Razorbacks coach wants to make that game a fixture of the yearly college football schedule.
Sam Pittman wants Arkansas to play Texas every season once it joins the SEC and revive what was one of college football’s best traditional rivalries.
“Personally, I love the rivalry games and would hate, once Texas gets into the league, not to play them every year, for the fans and everybody else,” Pittman said, via ESPN.com.
“I’m not calling out Texas. Texas has a great program, and I have high respect for them. I’m just saying for the fans, and obviously for the team because we’ve got a lot of Texas kids on our team, I think it would be a neat home-and-home each year.”
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Texas and Arkansas first met in football back in 1894, and the Longhorns own a 56-23 edge in the series, which has included a few games of national importance.
Including the 1964 matchup in Austin that led to Arkansas — which then featured future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on the roster — winning the national title.
In 1969, the teams met in a “Game of the Century” in Fayetteville, a Texas victory after which President Nixon, in attendance at the game, personally awarded the Longhorns the national championship trophy.
“I would want to do that for the state of Arkansas and what it means to so many people here, to be able to play Texas every year,” Pittman said.
“Now, I’m not saying, ‘Man, we want to play Texas.’ I’m not saying that. I’m saying — for the fans, for recruiting, for the tradition of this game and things of that nature — I would like to play that game every year. But, certainly, I’m not counting out the Longhorns by any stretch.”
Once Texas does join the SEC — officially not until the 2025 college football season — we’ll see if the conference is able to renew this old rivalry.
(h/t ESPN.com)
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