University of Virginia Library

Texas Faces Arkansas In Shootout

Already billed as the game of
the century in the Southwest
Conference, and maybe the nation
for that matter, the Texas-Arkansas
game on Saturday afternoon will
pit two of the three top teams in
the country in a storybook ending
for college football's first one
hundred years. In a year that began
with Penn State's unbelievable
come-from-behind win over Kansas
in the final seconds of the Orange
Bowl, a battle between undefeated
Texas and Arkansas teams for the
national championship and a
Cotton Bowl bid is nothing short of
poetic justice.

For a week now spirit has been
rising to a fever pitch all over the
state of Arkansas. A Fayetteville
radio station is said to have given
away more than 40,000 "Beat
Texas" buttons. Tuesday night the
words "Beat Texas" were
superimposed on every television
show in Little Rock during the
prime time hours of eight and nine.

An apt climax to a season
marked by such games as the
Michigan win over Ohio State and
the Dartmouth loss to meagre
Princeton, the Longhorn-Razorback
battle will be a showdown for the
national and Southwest Conference
titles, Texas style. The only other
undefeated major college team,
Penn State, was ranked third in
many of the polls and is out of the
picture until New Years Day, when
they will face Missouri in a return
trip to the Orange Bowl.

The championship battle
Saturday would have taken place
early in October had it not been for
ABC-TV taking a calculated risk in
having the game set back. "It makes
them look wiser than a tree full of
owls," said Longhorn coach Darrell
Royal.

Two weekends ago, people were
talking about unbeaten, untied
Ohio State going three years in a
row as national champs. With a
lineup packed with star juniors such
as quarterback Rex Kern, fullback
Jim Otis, and linebacker Jack
Tatum, a repeat performance of last
year's title seemed a sure thing for
the near professional Buckeyes. But
apparently someone forgot to tell
Michigan, who had Big Ten title
hopes too, and as the old song goes,
"they rolled 'em over", 24-12. Now
people down Texas way are talking
the same kind of two-year-in-a-row
championship talk themselves.
Coach Royal's boys, favored
numero uno on everybody's poll,
are just as young and eager as
Woody Hayes' Buckeyes are.

So is Arkansas. With one of the
top quarterbacks in the country
this year in Bill Montgomery, the
Razorbacks deserve to share the
number one ranking that was given
to the Longhorns after Ohio State's
demise. Add to this an interior line
averaging 235 that has two years of
experience in the Southwest
Conference wars, a pinch of
inter-state hatred, bring to a boil
with a Cotton Bowl bid, and serve
to an estimated 60,000 people in
Fayetteville, the ball game on
Saturday takes on near-Civil War
proportions.