FAYETTEVILLE — Jack Crowe has experienced the highs and lows of a Football Championship Subdivision team beating an SEC opponent from both sides of the equation.
No one who has ever coached may understand the matchup better.
Crowe’s perspective seems especially timely with Arkansas opening the Coach Chad Morris era on Saturday against Eastern Illinois, an FCS team from the Ohio Valley Conference.
Crowe was Arkansas’ coach on Sept. 5, 1992, when The Citadel — an FCS team from the Southern Conference playing on what at that time was known as the NCAA I-AA level — came to Fayetteville to open the season and upset the Razorbacks 10-3.
It was Arkansas’ first game as a member of the SEC and the shocking outcome resulted in Arkansas Athletics Director Frank Broyles firing Crowe the next day.
“I had just one bad day at Arkansas,” Crowe said again on Wednesday when he spoke to the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club. “That Sunday after The Citadel game.”
After the Bulldogs beat the Razorbacks, an SEC team didn’t lose to a FCS team for another 18 years.
It happened again on Sept. 5, 2010, when Jacksonville (Ala.) State — coached by Crowe — came into Oxford, Miss., and beat Ole Miss 49-48 in double overtime at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
“If you stay in this long enough, it goes both ways,” Crowe said after the game.
Jacksonville State’s victory at Ole Miss was more stunning than The Citadel beating Arkansas considering the Rebels led 31-10 at halftime.
“They started to play down and we started to play up,” Crowe said on Wednesday of the second-half turnaround. “When that happens, it’s hard to reverse the way things go.”
The Gamecocks scored on their final six possessions, including five touchdowns, and won on a two-point conversion pass from Coty Blanchard to Calvin Middleton.
“There’s only one of those kind of games, really,” Crowe said when asked where Jacksonville State’s victory at Ole Miss ranked among victories in his coaching career.
The game was on the other end of the scale for Little Rock native Houston Nutt, the Rebels’ coach from 2008-11 after 10 seasons as Arkansas’ coach.
“Without a doubt, it’s the worst loss of my career,” Nutt said after the Ole Miss-Jacksonville State game.
Nutt was on Crowe’s staff as receivers coach when The Citadel beat Arkansas.
Eastern Illinois Coach Kim Dameron, a Rogers native who played defensive back and receiver for the Razorbacks, was Ole Miss’ safeties coach when Jacksonville State beat the Rebels.
Dameron and Nutt were both graduate assistants at Arkansas in 1983.
“All of them are dangerous,” Crowe said of FCS teams playing their Football Bowl Subdivision big brothers. “But you only have to worry about Eastern Illinois when their quarterback’s name ends in an ‘O.’”
Crowe’s Gamecocks faced Eastern Illinois when the Panthers were led by quarterbacks Tony Romo and Jimmy Garoppolo.
Romo played 14 seasons in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys before retiring and Garoppolo is now starting for the San Francisco 49ers after being Tom Brady’s backup with the New England Patriots.
“Stay way from the ‘O’s,’” Crowe reiterated.
The quarterbacks expected to play for the Panthers against Arkansas are Harry Woodbery and Johnathan Brantley.
“Play your game,” Crowe said of his advice to the Razorbacks for Saturday’s matchup. “Don't play at the level of who you’re playing.
“Play your game, advance your game. You either are going to be better or worse after playing this game, so you challenge yourself beyond what you might be challenged by.
“And the other side of this is some of those guys [for Eastern Illinois] are going to be better than what you think they are.
“There are plenty of guys at FCS schools that can walk right in [to FBS programs]. There are guys at that level that can play.
“So don't go out there and have a guy knock your head around until you figure out they have guys that can play.
“Don't put a brand on them. Evaluate them for who they are. Forget about the brand.”
Crowe also had a message for FCS players facing a Power 5 team.
“You can play the best football you can play,” he said. “Or you can say you just came over here to pick up a check.”
It appeared Arkansas would pick up an ugly 3-0 victory over The Citadel in 1992 until early in the fourth quarter when E.D. Jackson — who rushed 29 times for 167 yards — lost a fumble when he took a handoff on second-and-4 from the Razorbacks 37.
Bulldogs defensive end Garrett Sizer stropped the ball and it bounced into the arms of end Judson Boehemer, who ran untouched into the end zone to put The Citadel ahead 7-3 with 9:47 left.
A year earlier the same play would have resulted in the Bulldogs taking possession at the 34, but a new NCAA rule that year allowed a fumble recovery behind the line of scrimmage to be advanced by the defense.
“I always thought it was ironic that the touchdown they got in that game was because of a new rule, but that’s the way football is,” Joe Kines, Arkansas’ defensive coordinator in 1992 who was promoted to interim head coach after Crowe’s firing, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2012. “That’s the reason a football is oblong.
“It bounces funny, and those funny bounces change people’s lives sometimes.”
Crowe, 70, managed a chuckle on Wednesday when reminded of The Citadel taking advantage of a rule change to beat Arkansas.
“Listen, I’m happy about where I am and I don’t know that having won that game, my life could have turned out any better,” said Crowe, who lives in Birmingham, Ala., and is a consultant for the University of Alabama-Birmingham. “I’ve had incredible coaching experiences.
“They don’t have to happen in the SEC. They can happen everywhere.”