Scatter shooting national championship game from Arkansas perspective

What was there for Razorbacks fans to gain from what went down between Indiana, Miami Monday

Indiana's Zachary Smith (19) celebrates after the College Football Playoff National Championship college football game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Deep into basketball season, Arkansas fans got to partake in a national holiday that allowed them to fully take in all the festivities surrounding the national championship game.

Watching literally one of the worst college football programs of all time rep basketball schools across the country while showing up in Miami wearing red and white with a bunch of players most of America doesn't know was about as close as Hogs fans can come to experiencing what it might be like if the Razorbacks were to ever make a run for the title.

So, what with so much in common, what were the possible observations made from an Arkansas perspective?

Why is this game in the middle of basketball season?

Auburn Tigers forward Keyshawn Hall (7) fouls Arkansas Razorbacks forward Trevon Brazile (7) as they fight for a rebound as Auburn Tigers take on Arkansas Razorbacks at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala. on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026. | Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

When it comes to being a life-long learner, one things educational philosophers like people to look for are what's known as "Ah-ha" moments. They're pretty self explanatory.

Someone is trudging along through life and suddenly there is some sort of epiphany that increases understanding of a particular subject. Well, Monday night's "Ah-ha" moment came when it clicked that the NFC and AFC championship games are in just a few days.

That means the national championship game was played less than a week before the world will know who will play in the Super Commercial, um, Super Bowl. More importantly for Razorbacks fans, it means if the Hogs ever make it to a national championship game, that same week the basketball season will be 20 games in while Arkansas will have knocked out just shy of half of the SEC season.

That's a lot of encroachment of basketball season. Just think how long football season felt as it trudged on through November.

Now imagine if it kept going two more months until Monday night. That's five months of having to care about football games.

If the Big Ten gets its way, this thing might push itself all the way into opening day for college baseball.

It sounds exhausting. Something needs to be done to tighten up the season before the world turns upside down and allows Arkansas anywhere near the playoffs.

Arkansas truly was greatest 2-10 team of all time

Arkansas Razorbacks quarterback Taylen Green after scoring against Arkansas State at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Ark. | Nilsen Roman-allHOGS Images

One thing Miami proved Monday night was the SEC hasn't fallen off nearly as far as everyone made it out to seem. The Hurricanes barely beat Texas A&M in the opener and needed a miracle, along with a no-call on a pass interference, to take down an Ole Miss team that not only didn't have its head coach, but faced Lane Kiffin constantly causing problems in preparation as he attempted to sabotage his former team once the portal opened up.

Now think back to September when Arkansas fans lost their minds at Sam Pittman because a freak fumble when the ball got punched out roughly an inch from the play being ruled down caused the Razorbacks to not get a win over a Trinidad Chambliss lead Rebels team on the road. That's how close Pittman's team was overall to being good enough to play and compete quite well for a national championship.

Arkansas didn't need a Mark Cuban level billionaire booster like Indiana to make it happen. It just needed one of the curmudgeon boosters who have made it a point to take joy in watching the Razorbacks wallow in pain and misery by intentionally withholding funds to, instead, give just enough to make minor upgrades to a pair of defensive backs and a linebacker.

That would have been just enough to tip the scales. The Hogs only needed enough improvement on defense to get one more stop each game, and it wouldn't have cost millions to do it.

For further proof, turn to the Texas A&M game. The Hogs never led because that's more of a Pittman thing. Petrino wasn't into building a lead and waiting for heartbreak at the end.

Even still, if the Hogs had that minor bump in talent, they likely keep the Aggies from scoring on every possession in the third quarter. To put things into further perspective as to how little the improvement needed to be, Arkansas didn't even need to stop A&M from scoring every drive.

The Hogs just needed to hold one of the two touchdowns to a field goal instead and the Razorbacks win. That's how slim the margins are between what Arkansas put on the field and a legitimate national title contender — a fumble an inch from being rule down and a field goal instead of a touchdown.

It probably thrills the boosters who like to make sure Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek knows how much their lack of support hurts the program to know it was their intentional lack of participation that led to a 2-10 season and the firing of a coach rather than a trip to the national championship game over what is the equivalent of a typical Arkansan handing a friend a $20 bill to help them out in respect to their financial largess.

The world could have had the football cyborg, Curt Cignetti, and his Indiana Hoosiers against the aw shucks, hand me a plate of food and a cold beer football style of Pittman. Either way, America would have known both the win and the loss for either would have resulted in each man publicly admitting he was about to go grab a drink.

Razorback experience would have been much different

Indiana Hoosiers fans cheer from the stands Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, after defeating the Miami (FL) Hurricanes in the College Football Playoff National Championship college football game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. | Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

It has been well established that a big part of Indiana's success was predicated on the fact there are over 90,000 Hoosiers enrolled at pretty much any given point in time. That's roughly three times as large as Arkansas' most recent record breaking enrollment of 34,000.

For perspective, it wasn't that long ago that Fayetteville was fighting off a fast growing UCA and Arkansas State for largest university in Arkansas at just shy of 20,000 students. That means the Razorbacks just recently got within 60,000 students of Indiana.

That's a massive advantage. Let's say over the past 20 years, the University of Arkansas has had an average enrollment of 25,000 students. That's an average of 6,250 new students each year.

Over the course of those two decades, Arkansas produces roughly 143,750. That's 20 years to produce not much more alumni than what Indiana has on campus this morning.

Even crazier, that number will go up next year if Indiana University so chooses because applications are going to at least double, as they always do, after a national championship. At worst, the Hoosiers will simply increase the number of people likely to go on to become millionaires in its alumni base because it will have a larger pool from which to selectively choose.

Over that same period of time, Indiana produced 540,500 alumni. Having nearly five times as many alumni as Arkansas who are within two decades from having been on campus during the NIL era is huge.

That doesn't even factor in older Hoosiers like Cuban. Even if a third of those people give at least a little, that's way more than every single person who went to Arkansas over that time period giving to NIL.

However, the most obvious factor was how packed the stands were everywhere Indiana went. People kept wondering how 50,000 Hoosiers kept popping up each week.

Well, there may be a few who are going to multiple spots, but it's rather easy with that many former students, plus fans who never attended the university, to make the Georgia Dome 95% Indiana fans and to outdraw Miami in its home stadium.

Had this been Arkansas, the huge crowd advantage wouldn't have been there. Most of the people who could have afforded to go would have already spent a lot of money chasing John Calipari's basketball team to neutral sites across the country.

Also, there just aren't a lot of Razorbacks fans who can afford what the prices turned out to be along the journey to the national championship. Parking alone for the national title game in Miami would have ruled out a lot of Hogs fans.

If Arkansas is going to replicate what Indiana just pulled off, Arkansas fans need to start saving now. The plus side of doing that is if the Razorbacks continue to miss the playoffs during everyone's lifetimes, the people of Arkansas will have a solid retirement nest egg saved up because it's going to take a ton of cash to be ready when the time comes for a full playoff run.

Clear why old Alabama model still works

The last observation that should have been easy and a little bit reassuring to Arkansas fans is the old 1990s, early 2000s Alabama approach to winning still works. Load up on big linemen with good footwork, get a solid stable of running backs, mix in a good group of serviceable receivers and a bus driver level quarterback who isn't going to make mistakes and play disciplined football.

On the defensive side of things, do your best to control the box and avoid getting burned for big plays in the secondary. Yet again, the main thing is discipline.

The other key is playing veteran players who have been allowed to mature as men who have high character.

That's something Arkansas can do. It's how the Hogs have tried to build it in the past, but teams were better set up to combat it unless there was extreme depth like what used to be common at Alabama, LSU and Georgia.

That's no longer the case. Teams seem to crumble in the face of disciplined power running games with their tiny linebackers.

The other thing Indiana did was simply play with more heart than other teams. They weren't willing to go down on a play.

They pushed for that extra yard, the first down or the extra few inches needed to get across the goal line without fumbling. Indiana simply went harder in everything they did as if there were a strong mental requirement to not let themselves get beat by lack of effort or mistakes.

That's how the people of Arkansas envision Razorbacks football. It's played with heart and won with determined running backs who are looking for help from linemen who see their block as if it's saving their brother's life.

That type of play is much cheaper than what a lot of programs are trying to put together. High flying offenses built on glitz and pomp are expensive.

The receivers needed are expensive, the quarterbacks required make more than their NFL counterparts by a lot, and the linemen protecting them make the equivalent of 60 years worth of a veteran teacher's salary in a single season.

That's not the lane in which Arkansas can survive. However, a strong run-first offense with a caretaker quarterback is both affordable and viable as a path to success.

It's not quite the Indiana way, but it's a close cousin that can be molded to fit Arkansas. It just may require a lot of film study from the late '90s and the first dozen or so years of the 2000s.

That means watching a lot of Gary Danielson analysis, which isn't always appreciated by a lot of people, but if the coaches can handle that, there is a path back to relevance.