Just rolled into Little Rock to help close up my grandma's house and try to get a little vacation time in, logged in and caught up on this epic. I am just down the street from War Memorial stadium, where at different times as kids Houston Nutt and I both sold cokes to get to watch Razorback games for free. Thought I better add my two cents on HDN and Petrino to this marathon.
A lot of Arkansas fans hate HDN with a passion. I understand why he had to go and I am happy to have Petrino, but those who hate HDN have very short memories. This is what I remember:
When Arkansas moved to the SEC, we were down in Football and good in other sports. Nolan and Hawgball took the SEC by storm, changing the face of college basketball. But we got our butt kicked for several years on the football field, and were generally outmanned and outcoached. Danny Ford came in, understood the problem, and went about correcting it. He recruited good players and built an SEC caliber team, as seen by his SEC West Championship and our first trip to Atlanta (or was it still Birmingham) in 95. But he was an old school coach, and didn't really provide a lot of inspiration.
Before HDN came in in 98, we were actually removing seats in Fayetteville because we couldn't sell them (the south end zone seats were taken out and a grass berm was installed). Attendance averaged about 40k. Most people didn't care much about Arkansas football, all the kids in High School wanted to play basketball. Arkansas high schools didn't even have spring football. HDN changed that. He came in and made it exciting again.
His 8 game run to start the 98 season was an aboslute blast. I sat with Saniflush at the 'bama game that year and watched as we just destroyed them. To this day I remember how hearbroken I was over the loss to Tenn on Clint Stoerner's fumble. It was HDN who went to the Arkansas Activities Association, told them he couldn't be successfull in the SECin the long run unless they started HS spring football. He went to the razorback clubs, which Danny Ford hated, and talked until he was hoarse about the hogs. He got everyone excited again to the point we had to expand the stadium. For those things, I will always be thankful he was here.
Moving to the present, I think Petrino is building a good team. And please don't hit me back with a lot of recruiting rankings. I know you guys live and die by the star counts, but I just don't think they are that important. I think we've got a chance to be really good this year. Someone asked earlier what will be different this year, I think the main thing will be our defensive secondary. Last year we lost our best cornerback in Fall camp, and had to move our best safety over to corner to fill in. This year, Isaac Madison is back at corner, meaning we can move our free safety back where he belongs. Obviously we have to go out and prove it on the field. We'll see what happens. I hope the Alabama coaches and players are writing us off as easily as the fans are.
One other note, I'm not sure if you guys were just busting titz's chops, but if you really think Arkansas should be lumped into the bottom of the conference with the Miss schools, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt, then you haven't been paying attention. Arkansas has taken three trips to the title game, those four schools only have 1 trip between them.
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