Top 25

rank / team / prior

1 Notre Dame 1

2 Ohio St. 2

3 Florida 3

4 Alabama 5

5 Stanford 6

6 Oregon 4

7 Kansas St. 8

8 S Carolina 9

9 LSU 10

10 Georgia 7

11 Oklahoma 13

12 TX A&M 12

13 Nebraska 11

14 SJSU 15

15 Clemson 14

16 Florida St. 17

17 N. Illinois 19

18 Oregon St. 16

19 Utah St. 18

20 Boise St. 24

21 Louisville –

22 N’western 20

23 Michigan 23

24 Ball St. –

25 Ark. St. –

Out of rankings: (21) Texas, (22) Rutgers, (25) Kent St.

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Intro to Arkansas-LSU and 2006 to present

You might wonder why I seem so interested in this rivalry series thing.

The first seeds of thought about this were planted by these comments by a former SportingNews columnist:

I believe Arkansas fans would be more fired up about playing schools like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Kansas. They could drive to those venues with their hot hats on. And how cool would it be if the Razorbacks could renew their old SWC hate-fest with Texas?

Go ahead, call the Hogs.

Instead, Hogs fans have been force-fed a “rivalry” with LSU.

–Tom Dienhart, 2/23/2006

My first blog in defense of the LSU/Arkansas rivalry was written on November 23, 2006, just hours before the game the next day. That was the first blog of mine that generated any significant number of responses (I got 22 comments in all). 2006 was my first college football season of blogging. My first blog on the SportingNews had been a re-post of my final rankings for the 2005 season.

I didn’t think people would be that interested in historical facts and figures about college football rivalries, but since that interests me and it interested my readers then, I started doing them for all the teams. One benefit of the SportingNews closing its community has been my opportunity to revisit these.

In Deinhart’s defense, the rivalry has gotten a lot more interesting since his blog. That year, LSU knocked off Arkansas in Little Rock that year, 31-26, putting any thoughts of the Hogs playing for the national championship to rest (they had had a 10-game winning streak going into the game). LSU made the Sugar Bowl as a result of that win.

In 2007, Arkansas apparently returned the favor, handing the Tigers their second loss with a 50-48 3-overtime win in Baton Rouge. LSU of course would win the BCS and AP national titles anyway after a series of losses by higher-ranked teams and the Tigers’ SEC championship win over Tennessee pur LSU in the BCS championship game.

The two teams exchanged home wins in 2008 and 2009…

2009 POST-GAME: The last 5 games (2005-09) were decided by a total of 13 points, and two of those games were in overtime. 6 of the last 9 games were decided by three points or less, and a 7th was decided by 5 points. If Arkansas had won this game, it would have been the first time Arkansas beat LSU three games in a row in 80 years. 1929 had been Arkansas’s last win over LSU before Arkansas joined the SEC. The Hogs beat the Tigers 7 times in the 1920s. The decades since then depend on what you count. In the numerical ’90s, Arkansas won three times, but if count the ’90s as 1991-2000, Arkansas won four times. If you count 2000 as part of the ’00s, Arkansas won three times in the ’00s. If not, Arkansas has won twice with a chance to make it three.

I gave my reactions to 2010’s game here.

2011 and 2012 Notes: In 2011, LSU won by 24 points, the largest margin of victory in the series since Les Miles became the head coach at LSU. The previous largest-margin was Arkansas’s 8-point win in 2010. The largest margin in an LSU win had been 5 points in 2006.

2012 was a more typical LSU-Arkansas game. LSU led by only 4 going into the last two minutes before kicking a field goal. Then Arkansas had a 60-yard drive, giving the Hogs a chance to tie with a touchdown on the final play from the LSU 20. But Tyler Wilson’s pass to the end zone fell incomplete. This broke a streak of four consecutive games in the series in which the home team won. However, it marked the seventh time in eight games (and ninth time in twelve games) that the margin was 8 points or fewer.

The games since Arkansas joining the SEC are somewhat easily summarized: Arkansas won 2 in a row, LSU won 4 in a row, Arkansas won 3 of 5, LSU won 4 in a row, Arkansas won 3 of 4, and now LSU has won 2 in a row.

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Top 25

rank / team / prior

1 Notre Dame 1

2 Alabama 2

3 Ohio St. 3

4 Kansas St. 4

5 Oregon 5

6 Florida 6

7 Georgia 10

8 Oregon St. 9

9 Louisville 7

10 S Carolina 11

11 Clemson 16

12 Nebraska 18

13 Florida St. 12

14 LSU 8

15 TX A&M 23

16 Stanford 13

17 Toledo 14

18 Texas 22

19 Oklahoma 24

20 La. Tech –

21 N’western 19

22 Rutgers 21

23 SJSU –

24 UCLA –

25 Miss. St. 20

Out of rankings: (15) TX Tech, (17) Boise St., (25) Tulsa

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Before my usual top 25 run-down and other notes, I wanted to express my condolences to the University of Texas and its fans for the passing away of Darrell Royal yesterday. I had mentioned him less than two weeks ago in my blog about records and winning percentages of Les Miles and other prominent coaches. Many of the coaches on my list of historic greats are long gone, but some of the ones still alive (most of whom, unlike Royal, made their names in the 1980s and 1990s) are Lou Holtz, Dennis Erickson, Jimmie Johnson, Tom Osborne, and Barry Switzer. At least a couple of the honorable mentions are still around too. For example, Vince Dooley turned 80 a couple of months ago, and Frank Broyles (about 6 months younger than Royal) is expected to turn 88 next month. Broyles and Royal were close friends despite the rivalry at that time, and Royal’s career also overlapped with Switzer’s.

I was also interested to note that Royal attended the University of Oklahoma, where he played for Bud Wilkinson, another coach on my list. Royal intercepted 18 passes in his career with the Sooners, still a school record, particularly impressive given the reluctance of many to employ the forward pass at that time. Perhaps not coincidentally, he is famous for the statement, “Three things can happen when you pass, and two of ‘em are bad.” He also was a successful part-time quarterback.

Before becoming the head coach of Texas, where he was known for installing the wishbone offense, Royal briefly coached at Mississippi St. (whose series against LSU I profiled here) and Washington. In his 23 seasons as a college head coach (1954-76), none of his teams ever had a losing record.

If you missed the link above, what follows is my top 25 run-down and other notes.  (I also include links to prior rankings there.)

I’ll start off by mentioning a couple other writings of mine that might provide some interesting backstory. I wrote the first last week about Les Miles’ record at LSU, but it also compares his record to that of other coaches, including Saban’s at LSU and Alabama. Then of course there is my blog about the LSU/Alabama rivalry, dominated for decades by Alabama but controlled by LSU for much of the first decade of the 21st century before becoming competitive again of late.

This is unrelated, but I also wanted to share a couple of links about Marcus Lattimore. Spurrier got a bit of criticism for his sort of backhanded acknowledgement of Dabo Swinney’s kind words about Lattimore. Dabo didn’t go quite as far as “Hog Lady” though. The SEC isn’t just great defenses and running backs, you have to love the fans and personalities as well.

Back to the important goings on, we do have two of the most successful active head coaches with their current programs facing one another, and of course LSU was fortunate to have had them both.
If you’ll look at the stats I gave in the Les Miles blog, I think it’s an even bigger coaching match-up with Urban Meyer at a new school and with Pete Carroll in the NFL. It’s harder to argue there are other guys doing as well or better.

There was a time where the Red River Rivalry had two coaches that were at about the same level Miles and Saban are now, but I think both Texas and Oklahoma have gone a little downhill in recent years. And there was never a point where that game featured two programs with a combined 3 national championship and one runner-up in 5 seasons, with of course one runner-up in that time (LSU last year) as well. (It took 10 seasons for Oklahoma and Texas to accumulate two national championships and three runners-up between them; two national championships and one runner-up took place in the six seasons between 2000 and 2005.)

Of course, when Urban Meyer was still at Florida, his game against the Tigers in 2009 represented 4 combined championships since 2003. So that was bigger at the time, especially being that Saban hadn’t won one at Alabama yet.

Saban and Miles followed similar trajectories on their way to LSU. A little bit of NFL experiences, but they were hired from being the head coaches at second-fiddle state universities. I don’t mean to take anything away from them, but the great programs in Michigan and Oklahoma are not the ones that end in “State”, although Sparty has a little more of a substantial history.

I wanted to talk about Miles vs. Saban head-to-head and mention a few notes about the series overall before assessing this season’s game.

Continue to Full Post, including "Miles vs. Saban" and "Game Notes and Preview"

A couple of preliminary things. If I were going to do subjective rankings again, LSU was probably going to move down even with a win since I was surprised by Auburn’s loss to Arkansas (and Washington may well lose to Oregon). I thought the final score in that one was going to be the opposite. I’ve also updated the LSU/Florida entry to my rivalry series.

As to this season’s game, I was encouraged by a field goal on the opening drive, but it went almost all downhill offensively from there.

Instead of LSU QB Zach Mettenberger getting better, he seems to have gotten worse since the first couple of weeks of the season. Then he finally makes a good play, and the officials reverse a call from a play being dead to being a fumble with Florida recovering. I didn’t think this was possible, and I further don’t believe there was irrefutable video evidence that the play should not have been ruled dead. Regardless, I never thought it was possible to be credited with a fumble recovery after the whistle blew.

The announcers (Gary Danielson and Verne Lundquist) of course didn’t see any problem with what the refs did. They also didn’t regard the 56-yard completion as a third-down conversion, saying LSU was 0 for 9 at one point (before getting another first down on a screen pass). LSU also got a first down after a third down as a result of a penalty. So yes, LSU was poor on third downs, but there were two situations in which they had first downs; but they’re not being counted, so the 1/13 stat is misleading.

I’m not trying to say it was all about the call even though let’s say I’m skeptical. The way LSU was playing, they would have probably only gotten a field goal, making the final score 14-9 instead. It doesn’t always work that way, but that’s how I think it would have happened.

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