I never was all that into college football. Living here in Maryland, I had enough sports teams around to consume whatever bandwidth I had for sports watching and following.
In other parts of the country however, there aren’t so many sports’ choices and by default college football becomes THE sport. For instance, Arkansas does not have any professional sports team. Given that, the University of Arkansas Razorbacks are literally the only show in town.
Years back my buddy Ronnie and I were in Hot Springs, Arkansas waiting in line to eat breakfast at some semi-famous waffle place. To pass the time, we started talking to a couple behind us in line and learned that they were from Texas.
As we chit chatted, the man told Ronnie, who was wearing his Arkansas Razorback jacket “I was at that ’69 Game of the Century when Texas whipped you all.” Ronnie simply replied “So was I – unfortunately.”
For the rest of that day and into the evening, Ronnie would occasionally shake his head and make some comment about the guy having brought up that game. After hearing a couple or several of these repetitions, I finally said to him “Come on Ron, it was over 30 years ago. Time to let it go.” He shook his head and said “J. Scott, there are some things you just can’t ever let go of.”
Turns out that Ronnie was right on about significance of that game. This is from Wikipedia:
In the 100th year of college football, it truly was the “Game of the Century.” In a game between unbeatens played at Arkansas’ Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, the Longhorns were ranked Number 1 in the country, having won 18 straight games. The Arkansas Razorbacks were ranked Number 2, having won 15 straight since their last loss to Texas in Austin a year ago.
President Nixon and George H. Bush, who was then a Congressman from Texas, attended the game (click here for story and related video.) They witnessed Texas coming back from a 14 point deficit to win the game in the fourth quarter. Because there were no playoffs back then, only Bowl games, Texas was deemed the National Title winner. (They would eventually win the Cotton Bowl over Notre Dame.)