Projection for Razorbacks’ bowl trip by CBS won’t excite many fans
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas can be found in a projection for the bowl games, but you’ll have to dig deep to find it.
The good news is they aren’t putting the Razorbacks in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl for the third time in the last four seasons. It’s not exactly an attractive alternative, though.
Hogs coach Sam Pittman, who hasn’t lost a bowl game in his time at Arkansas, would like the alternative CBS Sports has for him.
While going to Birmingham in December or early January isn’t exactly what most Razorback fans will be looking forward to while a lot of interest will be gearing up for basketball, if they face UCF some will get excited.
That’s an opponent that would probably favor Arkansas. Even if former offensive coordinator and high school coaching legend in this state Gus Malzahn has moved on, it could be interesting.
New Golden Knights coach Scott Frost has had success there in a previous stint.
The Hogs have been stumbling through a rough seven years since UCF went undefeated and proclaimed itself national champion. Nobody with a serious trophy agreed, though.
Beating an SEC team in a so-what type bowl game would be something they could brag about.
For Pittman and the Razorbacks it would keep them in the middle-of-the-road.
They have basically built a pretty solid homestead claim there. Whether fans want to admit it or not the temporarily brief success of 2010-11 wasn’t going to continue past those couple of seasons.
Since the Hogs came to the SEC in 1992 it’s where they’ve been with not a single football conference title and just three championship game appearances. One of those was due to Alabama being on probation and unable to play that game in 2002.
While some fans have been squealing like the target pen outside a slaughterhouse the past few days because of some comments on sports radio, the Razorbacks are the definition of mediocrity. One Outback Bowl after the 2021 season isn’t exactly success.
The reasons are too widespread right now to open that debate. But they aren’t picked to have much of a season this year. No one really had expectations of challenging for the College Football Playoff and CBS Sports didn’t project them there.
Three SEC teams — Texas, LSU and Georgia — are in there, but the Hogs are down in the hoping to get a win nobody will project now that will even get them to Birmingham.
Whether anybody cares about that or not will be determined once we see how this season plays out.It’s the way things go when expectations are this low. Some media people have accepted that and encourage fans to be realistic, which is never going to happen because it’s easier to do that than ask why it hasn’t improved.
That won’t happen, either, because it’s one of those that won’t get a direct answer other than to say they just haven’t been able to win the games.
How long the fans support that answer is the key, though.
