When the Razorbacks made the move from the Southwest Conference to the SEC in 1992, us folks that had been in the media for awhile knew the football glory was done. At least consistently. As one guy covering the Hogs since the 1940’s told me, “they’ll win big every once in awhile, but they won’t be able to keep up every year.”
That’s pretty much been the case. Even Frank Broyles knew it. After all, do you think the buildup in the basketball and baseball programs was an accident? Nobody has ever known the complete picture around Arkansas athletics better than Broyles, who had the unique ability to view into the future and know what was coming.
Now ESPN has in the under-achieving category in a ranking. It would be very hard to argue the logic of that. The two schools are very similar in their results and the revolving door around recent coaching hires.
For folks over the age of 30 or so, none of this is surprising. Some keep asking when the Hogs are going to get back to the days when the expectation every year was to compete for a conference and national title. Now they simply want to win enough games for a bowl trip somewhere other than Memphis or Shreveport.
It started after a 20-5 run by Bobby Petrino’s last two teams in 2010 and 2011. An unanswerable question was whether that would have continued because we will never have a trace of evidence either way, but that roster wasn’t deep enough or good enough for much over a 6-6 record in 2012, despite some lofty predictions.