No Longer an Ugly Boot

No Longer a Big and Ugly Boot

Growing up as a kid Thanksgiving Weekend meant eating lots of turkey, watching the Detroit Lions get whipped, and watching Nebraska play Oklahoma. For most of my time as a child and a teen the Oklahoma/Nebraska rivalry decided who went to the Orange Bowl and who often times determined who played for a National Championship. The game was a must see for all College Football Fans until the Big XII formed in 1996 and killed this fantastic rivalry. For many years the Friday after Thanksgiving was just a day for many to sleep off the effects of tryptophan, but recently it has become a day for fans to watch the fastest growing rivalry in The South, Arkansas vs LSU.

When Arkansas joined the SEC in 1992 you could have polled any Hog fan on the question "Who is your biggest rival" and they 99% of them would have told you Texas and followed the word Longhorns with a curse word. One of the reasons Arkansas left the SWC was because of the control Texas had over that conference and there was plenty of hate for the Horns. Arkansas had seen many great seasons destroyed because of Texas, but had ruined many seasons for the Horns as well. It was a nasty and dirty rivalry that was one of College Football's best for many years.

Twenty years ago many LSU fans would have told you that Alabama was their biggest rival and some older fans might have mentioned Ole Miss. Alabama was the longtime power of the SEC and it was the team LSU played the most outside of Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Tulane. The Tide was the power of the SEC for decades and kept LSU from reaching their full potential that we see today. While today many LSU fans will still list Alabama as their most hated rival due to the Saban factor, the feeling isn't the same on Bama's side of the ball. Bama's two biggest rivals have always been Auburn and Tennessee. The Ole Miss rivalry means nothing to LSU fans since Rebel Football has meant nothing to the national scene in four decades.

LSU and Arkansas had played prior to 1992, but not often. The two teams met 37 times prior to 92, but from 1967-1991 they didn't meat at all. The two teams did meet in some significant games prior to the SEC though. For instance the Tigers ended the Razorbacks 22 game winning streak in the 1966 Cotton Bowl with a 14-7 win in Dallas. In 1909 Hugo Bezdek's Arkansas Cardinals beat LSU 16-0 in Memphis, TN to become the unofficial "Champions of the South and Southwest" and finish the year undefeated. It was the 1909 team that produced the nickname "Razorbacks" according to most historians. Certainly the two schools had some history with playing each other, but no one at the time Arkansas entered the SEC would have considered these two schools rivals. Even playing the game the final week of the year wasn't helping this game's cause since neither program in 1992 was very good.

In 1996 in hopes to making the game feel like a rivalry the "Golden Boot" was introduced. The biggest trophy in College Football is four feet tall and 175 pounds in weight. It is in the shape of Arkansas and Louisiana. The trophy itself was mocked by many. Most thought it was crazy to introduce the trophy to a game that really wasn't a rivalry at the time. Critics stated that rivalry trophies was a Big 10 thing and the one trophy that really mattered in SEC Country was the Tennessee-Kentucky Rivalry's Beer Barrel. Others found it insane that two teams that had met 4 times in 30 years were trying to force a trophy on fans in order to establish a rivalry. Had the two programs been in better shape in the 90s the trophy might have taken off, but since neither were powers at the time few really cared about this rivalry or the big trophy.

Today the rivalry has started to establish itself as one of the best in College Football. Since 2001 this game has featured the SEC West Champion or a BCS participant seven times. In 2002, a game known as "The Miracle on Markham, a miracle pass from Matt Jones to DeCori Birmingham in the final seconds sent Arkansas to the SEC Championship game. A few years later in 2006 LSU went on the road to beat a top 5 Arkansas team 31-26 and put the Tigers, not the Hogs into the Sugar Bowl. The next season Arkansas knocked off the #1 LSU Tigers 50-48 in triple overtime to bring The Golden Boot back to Fayetteville. Last year 9-2 Arkansas beat 10-1 LSU in a game with a Sugar Bowl birth on the line. The series has seen 8 of the last 10 games decided by a TD or less and most of those games have been exciting shootouts. While LSU has certainly been the better program in the last decade, the Hogs have earned the respect of Tiger fans by winning 3 of the last 4 games.

This Friday will be the biggest game ever in the rivalry, possibly the biggest in Tiger Stadium History. While we've seen two games since 2006 have a BCS Birth on the line, this will be the first time a National Championship has been on the line for both teams. LSU is 11-0 and features a fierce defense and the Hogs are 10-1 with an explosive offense. With both programs being on a solid foundation and being led by 2 great coaching staffs, don't expect this rivalry to lose importance anytime soon.

The Oklahoma-Nebraska Rivalry has long been dead, but the nation no longer sleeps on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The big trophy that was once mocked now is a gateway to BCS births and National Championships. After Friday one team is going to run around the field with the giant trophy, while another will sit back and curse the name of their rival celebrating on the field. This time though the winner is likely to be carrying around a crystal ball trophy in a little over a month.

Matt Barber
Dixiefriedsports@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/dixiefriedsport