In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Starting Out at Arkansas (1972–1978) “God help us all.” —Texas miler Reed Fisher Arkansas was swept into the 1970s by the winds of change and progress making their way across the country. Civil disobedience and antiwar protests had erupted in cities as the young began challenging the assumptions of the established order. Winthrop Rockefeller, who had only recently been elected as the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction , completed the integration of Arkansas schools that had been allowed to stagnate for over a decade. An upstart retail outlet based out of Rogers, Arkansas called Walmart, named after its founder Sam Walton, had only recently incorporated, opened its thirty-eighth store regionally, and become listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Down the road in Springdale, Tyson Foods was processing and marketing beef, chicken, and pork on a scale that would soon exceed all but one of the industry leaders in the world. Economic development was certainly not a foreign concept to this region, but with its sweeping mountainous countryside and a population that stood a shade north of two million, the Natural State had certainly been preserved from some of the social developments of urbanization and secularism seen elsewhere. Its undisturbed scenic beauty and rolling hills resembled the Irish countryside. As the hold of Christianity on other parts of the country began its wax and wane, Arkansas remained a state of fervent believers with the Southern Baptist Convention predominating. Tucked away in rustic Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas was founded in 1871 as the Arkansas Industrial University before adopting its present name in 1899. Although it soon emerged as the preeminent state-funded land-grant institution in the state, the University of Arkansas had hardly distinguished itself on the sporting field during the first half of the twentieth century. The tradition of ”Calling the Hogs,” which would later become a celebratory aspect of Razorback athletics after every touchdown, home-run, slam-dunk, or victory, in fact traces its roots to local farmers trying to inspire a listless football team mired for decades in the Southwest Conference cellar. 25 3 Eventually including Baylor University, the University of Houston, Rice University, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas, Texas Tech University, Texas A&M University, and Texas Christian University, the Southwest Conference was largely composed of Texas schools who openly wondered whether the perennially weak Arkansas athletics programs even belonged in the league.1 The facilities on campus, which were below average, could not make up for funding that was inadequate in football and virtually nonexistent in every other sport. Much of that began to change in 1957 when athletics director John Barnhill hired a bright young coach named Frank Broyles to lead a moribund football program out of the bottom of the Southwest Conference. The returns were immediate and long lasting. It took Broyles only two seasons to capture the Southwest Conference championship in football and another six to bring the ultimate glory to Fayetteville—a football national championship. Between the Arkansas players who went on to successful professional careers and the assistant coaches who eventually led teams that contended for Super Bowls or college national championships—Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson, Joe Gibbs, Raymond Berry, Johnny Majors, Hayden Fry, Doug Dickey foremost among them—Broyles impact was certainly felt on the field. By 1985 twenty of Frank Broyles’s former players or assistant coaches led major collegiate football programs. Eventually, the Broyles Award for college football’s assistant coach of the year was created in his honor. “I believe to this day that he turned out more great head coaches than any coach in the history of the game,” said Terry Don Phillips, a player, coach, and administrator under Broyles at Arkansas and later athletic director at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Oklahoma State, and Clemson. “What he did was bring in outstanding coaching talent, and he was a CEO. in the sense that he was bringing good coaches but still setting the tone and the parameters for the program. He let his coaches coach. So from that perspective he didn’t micromanage, but he would give his opinion. He didn’t shy away from that. There wasn’t any question who was in charge. And as an administrator you knew the tone and parameters, but he let you do your job.” Off the field, the positive notoriety and attention his program gained for the university could not be quantified. Even President Nixon thought it was worthwhile to make the...

Share