ARKANSAS AT NO. 8 ALABAMA

Mt. Saban, a slippery slope

The Arkansas-Alabama series has taken a sharp Tuscaloosa turn since the arrival of saint nick

Alabama head coach Nick Saban give Arkansas coach John L. Smith a pat on the back following the Razorbacks' 52-0 loss Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012, at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

— Leigh Tiffin completed a kicking meltdown with a missed extra point, Ben Cleveland did a funky touchdown dance in double overtime, and when it was over Houston Nutt gleefully mounted a conductor's stand and led the Arkansas band in the fight song.

When Arkansas defeated Alabama 24-23 in double overtime on Sept. 23, 2006, the result wasn't out of the ordinary. Nutt had just improved his record against the Crimson Tide to 5-4. The Razorbacks, since joining the SEC in 1992, were 7-8 on the field against Alabama, one of the all-time great programs in college football. However, a forfeited Alabama victory from 1993 and a soon-to-be vacated Tide triumph in 2005 gave Arkansas an 8-6 official edge over Alabama as SEC brethren to that point.

Who could have predicted that double-overtime victory, the Razorbacks' second in four years over Alabama, would be Arkansas' last in the series for the foreseeable future?

After Coach Mike Shula was forced out just after Thanksgiving in 2006, Alabama Athletic Director Mal Moore spent a chunk of the winter hanging out in Miami, patiently waiting to reel in the most significant hire in college football over the last decade.

Nick Saban left the Miami Dolphins after two seasons and came to Tuscaloosa.

Saban and the Crimson Tide prevailed in a 41-38 thriller over Nutt and No. 16 Arkansas at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Sept. 15, 2007, to start a streak of domination over the Razorbacks.

No. 8 Alabama will take an eight-game on-field winning streak in the series into today's 6 p.m. kickoff at Bryant-Denny.

Since Saban's arrival, the Crimson Tide has won three national championships and averaged 11.4 victories per season. Arkansas has undergone large peaks and valleys with no SEC championship game appearances and has averaged 7.0 wins per season since 2007.

Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema has made no secret of his high regard for Alabama and its game-day environment and his great respect for Saban. Speaking at the Arkansas kickoff dinner in August, Bielema made that clear.

"I think until we beat 'Bama, we haven't done what we wanted to do in this league," Bielema said. "I think that will be a good measuring stick for where we're at."

After the Razorbacks snapped a three-game losing streak with a 24-20 victory at Tennessee last Saturday, Bielema had already put Alabama in his sights.

"Coming into this league, when I came in, obviously they were the team that was on top," Bielema said. "They still are."

Saban, asked on Wednesday's SEC teleconference if there were any unifying themes during his eight-game winning streak over Arkansas, tried to back away from the conversation.

"I don't really know," Saban said. "I'm kind of worried about what's happening today and what's going to happen tomorrow and right up to Saturday.

"I think every game is a new challenge. I don't think anything that happened in the past is going to affect the outcome of this game. I think our players are going to have to get ready to play one of their best games of the year to have success against a very good team."

The Saban effect

Nick Saban's presence at Alabama, which ranks among the top programs at sparing no expense for its football department, began paying immediate dividends.

The Crimson Tide started hauling in top-rated recruiting classes right away. Saban's recruiting efforts led to the 2015 signing class being rated the consensus No. 1 class by the 247Sports composite rankings for the fifth year in a row.

Jay Barker, the quarterback who led Alabama to the 1992 national championship, said the continuity under Saban has been critical in the Crimson Tide's recent domination of Arkansas.

"Stability is huge in a program," Barker said while speaking at the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Monday. "Recruiting is all about relationships. If a head coach is there for a while, the assistant coaches get to go out in the communities and the high schools. The high schools get to know the coaches and develop those relationships over time. They keep pouring those recruits into the program.

"When you have a changeover in coaches like Arkansas has had, it really makes it tough recruiting against a Nick Saban or anybody who has been in those high schools or areas in the southeast or even around the country."

Bret Bielema and his staff have improved Arkansas recruiting in his three seasons. Yet for every 4- or 5-star prospect the Razorbacks land, like an Alex Collins or Denver Kirkland, Alabama matches it with a handful of its own.

"To me they are the staple of what college football is, and not just the SEC," Bielema said. "They have a phenomenal head coach, their environment … it's as good as anywhere I've been.

"We all know their draft selections and history of first-round draft picks and where they rank in recruiting. They have just an endless supply of everything that you need. That's what makes this game so fun and intriguing and hopefully makes all of our guys' juices flow a little bit more."

Houston Nutt said Saban invited him to Tuscaloosa for a practice after he was let go from his Ole Miss job after the 2011 season.

"They have so much, you know," Nutt said. "Everything's gotten better since Nick got there. Whenever you hold up the crystal ball and you win the national championship not once or twice but three times, your recruiting and everything gets better. … Everybody wants to come play for a winner."

Nutt recalled seeing a nutritionist handing out what he called "Fruit kabobs" to Alabama players after practice so they already had productive calories prior to their evening meal.

"To me, that's ahead of the game in every aspect of it," he said. "No money was being held back for anything except how good they could make the football program."

Alabama finished off a renovation of Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2010 that took capacity to 101,821 and further enclosed the roaring of the crowd and the piped in elephant sounds.

Arkansas assistant head coach Sam Pittman was on staff at Northern Illinois in 2003 when the Huskies stunned Alabama 19-16 at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

"When we went back in '13 they had done so much to the stadium," Pittman said. "It was really neat. Of course, once the game started it wasn't any kind of game if you were an Arkansas fan. But a very impressive place and tradition and the elephant sounds and all that are pretty neat."

Close calls

Arkansas has had three near misses against Saban's Crimson Tide. The Razorbacks lost by 3 points in 2007, 4 points in 2010 and 1 point last season.

The Razorbacks roared back from a three-touchdown deficit in the 2007 game in Tuscaloosa, just as they'd done in a 34-31 double-overtime victory there in 2003, to take a 38-31 lead with 8:08 to play.

But Darren McFadden, who had been on a rampage with 195 rushing yards and two touchdowns, had to come out after a helmet-to-helmet collision on that go-ahead drive.

"That was where Darren really played one of his greatest games ever," Nutt said. "I really thought we were going to win that game. I also remember [trainer] Dean Weber coming up to me and saying these dreaded words, 'Darren's out. He can't go. He's got a concussion.'"

Leigh Tiffin kicked a 42-yard field goal with 4:20 remaining to draw Alabama within four points. Then, after the Crimson Tide got a fortuitous stopping of the clock with no timeouts remaining to measure for a first down that was a full yard short, John Parker Wilson threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to Matt Caddell for the game winner with 8 seconds remaining.

"I remember Nick telling me after the game, he said 'That guy, No. 5 [McFadden], holy cow,'" Nutt said. "He was just a bruiser, a beast that game. … That was a tough one because I really thought we out-played them."

Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino was obsessed with taking down Alabama, which won BCS national championships in two of his four years in Fayetteville.

"It seemed like everything we did in the offseason was somewhat formatted and displayed to beat Alabama," said Tyler Wilson, a five-year Arkansas quarterback from 2008-12. "From the videos we watched in two-a-days to some of the books we were asked to read."

Wilson said the Razorbacks studied up on legendary Arkansas track and field Coach John McDonnell's theory of peaking at the right time and tuning your bodies for a certain event.

"A lot of people, you feel like maybe those would be tailored to the end of the year, the bowl game or the national championship," Wilson said. "What we tried to do was tailor them for the fourth game of the season [against Alabama in 2010 and '11]. … Everything was built to beat Alabama."

The 2010 team, with Ryan Mallett at quarterback, had an excellent shot against the defending BCS champion and No. 1 Crimson Tide in Fayetteville on Sept. 25.

"We had a good peg on them in terms of scheme," Wilson said. "We felt like they were confused on some things in the multiple tight end sets. We knew we had probably two or three plays that would get them at some point."

Arkansas struck early. After Jarius Wright caught a 31-yard crossing route on the first offensive snap, the Razorbacks pulled out one of those key plays. Running back Ronnie Wingo Jr. got free on a wheel route down the left sideline for a 43-yard touchdown 50 seconds into the game.

The Razorbacks led 17-7 at halftime and expanded the lead to 20-7 on Zach Hocker's 48-yard field goal with 5:04 left in the third quarter.

Alabama rallied with a pair of touchdowns and a field goal on its last three possessions while Arkansas had a punt and two of Mallett's three interceptions on its last three series. The Crimson Tide prevailed again, 24-20.

Outside of that tight game, Petrino's teams lost three games to Alabama by an average margin of 29 points.

"I think Saban was very clever. I think Saban had Bobby's protection plan figured out," Wilson said. "Some coaches kind of understand other coach's schemes and they try to steal as much knowledge of their system and their program as possible, because it's a way to combat what they do. … There were things [Saban] could do with delayed blitzes."

Bielema's first Arkansas team took a 52-0 pounding in Tuscaloosa, but the Razorbacks had a strong game plan for last year's meeting on Oct. 11. Arkansas held the No. 7 Tide to 66 rushing yards and out-gained Alabama 335-227 in total offense.

However, the Razorbacks could not capitalize on early Alabama turnovers in the kicking game, dropped two would-be interceptions and had a PAT blocked by Jonathan Allen after their first touchdown. The block would prove fateful in Alabama's 14-13 victory.

"You learn from last year's mistakes, without a doubt," Bielema said.

"Last year was very much like what we used to do with them," said former Arkansas quarterback Clint Stoerner, who had a 2-1 record against the Tide, at the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club on Wednesday. "Same style of ball, a 14-13 game. We should have won the game."

Said Wilson, "In terms of which scheme or which coach … has had the best shot to beat Alabama, probably last year Bielema could make that argument. His style, his direction, had a better chance to beat Alabama than any other Arkansas team the last eight years."

Nutt's first - and best

Houston Nutt was an assistant coach on Jack Crowe's staff in Arkansas' inaugural SEC season of 1992, when the No. 9 Crimson Tide routed the Hogs 38-11 in Little Rock on their way to the national championship.

When Nutt returned as Arkansas' head coach in 1998, he recalled preparing for his SEC debut against the Crimson Tide in Fayetteville.

"Watching that film, with guys like Shaun Alexander, I was thinking 'Oh my gosh,' and you almost just get sick to your stomach with all the athletes that are on that field," Nutt said.

Arkansas destroyed the Crimson Tide that day, 42-6, in what still ranks as Alabama's most lopsided defeat since 1957 and its fourth-worst non-shutout loss of all time.

"I'll never forget looking at that scoreboard in the third and fourth quarter like, you know what, we out-him them today," Nutt said. "We out-toughed these guys. That was the best feeling I ever had as far as the first time we ever went against Alabama."

Clint Stoerner guided Arkansas to that victory as the starting quarterback, just as he'd done in 1997, a 17-16 Razorbacks' triumph that marked the program's second one-point victory in a row at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

"You've got to take the crowd out of it," Stoerner said. "If you get behind and you get into a situation where you've got to throw more than you want to, and then the crowd becomes a factor, and then you have pre-snap penalties, it's almost like a snowball running downhill."

Perhaps Arkansas' most important victory over Alabama came off the field. The Razorbacks were awarded the 1964 national championship by the astute Football Writers Association of America after the season. Alabama's '64 team won the Associated Press (AP) national title, but it was awarded before the Crimson Tide's loss to Texas in the Orange Bowl. The AP changed its format to selecting national championship after the season the following year.

Taking on the Tide

Bret Bielema took aim at the Crimson Tide as soon as he arrived on the Hill, saying he didn't come to the SEC to play Alabama, he came to beat Alabama.

"We got close a year ago, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say," Bielema said this summer.

Saban has expressed his admiration for Bielema's program-building plan at Arkansas.

"Bret has done a really, really good job there of creating a lot of toughness and physical team that you really have to have your jaws set to play well against the type things they do," Saban said.

Bielema created a theme for Arkansas' road schedule during the off season called "Code Red," which includes guidelines for how the team would prepare and travel. The regimen includes the team wearing "Code Red" wristbands as a symbol of unity.

"We’re going into the toughest atmosphere probably in college football that I’ve been in, when we go to Alabama," Bielema said. "So we’re probably going to need to put on two red wristbands this week."

Information for this article was contributed by Jeremy Muck of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Sports on 10/10/2015