Razorbacks Have Overcome Doomsday Predictions in Past

Last 20 years, though, have seen high hopes dash with every season of questions

Arkansas Razorbacks coach Houston Nutt during the first quarter against the Florida Gators in the SEC Championship game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia. / Jason Parkhurst-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Considering Arkansas has never won an SEC title in its 32 seasons in the league, expectations are not exactly for a championship. Especially in a season filled with this many questions.

There have been times those have yielded big results. You can go back to Danny Ford managing to win the SEC West in 1995 and Houston Nutt backing into the championship game in 2002 because Alabama was on probation.

Those years ended with a thud in Atlanta in the SEC Championship game. It was the same thing in 2006 when it looked like the Razorbacks could actually go beyond anybody's dreams and have a shot at the first legitimate national championshp in school history. (Sorry, but you don't get to change the rules because you don't like the final outcome in 1964.)

A couple of key injuries de-railed things at the end that year in losses to LSU and Florida in the SEC Championship game. There were an awful lot of questions with those teams at this point before the season started.

Throw 1998 in there, too. Nobody was expecting that team to be a fumble away from playing for a championship in Nutt's first season.

Go back even farther. My buddy Jim Harris and I were the only media people in the state of Arkansas in 1977 who thought before the season that team would end up in the Orange Bowl against Oklahoma and could win it.

The natural tendency to predict seasons involves looking at last year's record, seeing how many starters return and who they play at home on the schedule. The facts are what happened last year really doesn't matter in a new year and last week's game has nothing to do with the current one.

Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman has more questions than he has answers right now and he won't get many of the answers in fall camp. Coaches never do because there have been a ton of practice All-Americans who couldn't play against SEC teams.

We'll hear from Pittman, along with the Hogs' strength coach, Tuesday, basically re-capping the summer workouts. He'll also deliver a state of the program, but watch him not make any bold predictions because he's told us before he doesn't really know anything until they start playing league games.

Sorry, fans, but hopes aren't facts. This team has a handful of really good players.

Maybe even a few that are star-level. The problem is to compete for championships, Arkansas needs about 44 of those guys because injuries will happen.

That, or goofy officials' calls, which leads to all these conspiracy theories of SEC trying to keep the Hogs down. There will also be the usual chatter about depth all season.

There have been times little was expected of the Razorbacks and they found a way to dip that lowest of bars, but Chad Morris isn't around anymore.

This time may roll into Stillwater, Okla., on the second week of the season and kick Oklahoma State sideways. That will re-energize a fan base that has become terribly bored with the course of football.

Most of the discussion I've heard throughout the summer has been about basketball and John Calipari. Getting to six or seven wins isn't going to be enough to hook Arkansas fans again.

That's just being a little better than anyone expects. To really make a drastic turnaround it's got to be at least 8 regular-season wins and hope the momentum isn't wasted with a lackluster bowl game effort despite those having little meaning anymore.

It is better than the last couple of years, but everybody will have their own context. People talk about these paths they see to a certain number of wins.

Some are realistic, others are based on counting on something happening without any evidence to support that. Aside from all that, it's best to just take things week by week.

There are too many questions right now to start fixating on a specific number of wins as an expecation. Let's at least find out if the new kicker can get it consistently between the uprights.

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