Can Razorbacks Keep Feeding Off Success of Frank Broyles?

Landing among Top 25 college football programs now may not keep going in SEC

Author:
Andy Hodges
Updated:
Mar 9, 2023 9:29 AM EST
Original:
Mar 8, 2023

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Maybe nothing made Arkansas' overall status clearer than a list of the Top 25 football programs the last 100 years.

The Razorbacks were on that list Brad Crawford at 247Sports put together this week.

What it made clear is the Hogs are still feeding on the success Frank Broyles had during his 19 seasons as the football coach but his decision to take over as athletics director in 1973 led to a decision that may determine how long they stay there.

The Hogs were 17th out of the top 25 of best college football programs in the country, which probably isn't that bad until you step back and look at the whole history of the program.

Just to add some context, this ranking was determined primarily from a computer that factored in wins, national championships and some more things.

A lot of folks aren't old enough to remember when they were the picture of average winning games, placing 94th among all teams, winning at a 52.9% clip. They were in the old Southwest Conference, which meant most years they only had to deal with the Texas Longhorns.

Broyles fixed that. He figured out beating the Longhorns wasn't nearly as important as beating everybody else. Lose just that game and take advantage of any stumbles by Texas and you could still have a shot.

He never won a national championship. The Hogs claim they won in 1964 based on four of five people voting them there in a re-vote of the writer's poll. The other vote was for Texas, by the way. But the trophy had already been given to Alabama (they haven't given it away, either).

During Broyles' tenure as coach, the Hogs jumped to 11th in winning percentage (69.3%). It rose to over 70% under Lou Holtz and Ken Hatfield (and Jack Crowe's brief tenure).

Then they joined the SEC for financial reasons, starting play in 1992.

Since then the Hogs fell to 57th in winning games and the 52.1% of wins through 2021 shows just how much it affected the football program that has really good years scattered with some horrible ones, but mostly around .500.

Coach Sam Pittman is trying to fix that, but it's going to be tough.

For the future, though, it's going to be tough. A changing landscape across college football has always given the Hogs a problem. Too often, they wait until the bandwagon gets rolling, then appear to jump under it.

That's Hunter Yurachek's job to fix that. Time will tell on that one.

But it's a tall order.

Throw Texas and Oklahoma into that mix (since it's less than a year until they are in the league you have to) and the Hogs are 9th among SEC teams.

One would assume getting into the top half of the SEC is the first goal. Accomplish that and the rest will likely follow.

Only time will tell how long the Hogs' football reputation continues to feed off the success Frank built.