FAYETTEVILLE — Today’s 11 a.m., open-to-the-public football at Reynolds Razorback Stadium seems Arkansas’ most honest spring game in decades.
That’s because rather than billed as the Razorbacks’ annual Red-White game, it is called exactly what the Red-White games truly have been but never billed.
Simply a scrimmage.
With the April 23 Garth Brooks concert at Reynolds Razorback Stadium making the stadium unavailable for Arkansas’ last Saturday date of the allowed 15 spring dates, Coach Sam Pittman chose simply to call today’s activity a scrimmage open free to the public.
Back in the day spring games were a big deal for Razorbacks football. They used to play two of them — one at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville and the finale at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
The Fayetteville one for Frank Broyles and his coaching predecessors was the one the coaches could most glean the cohesion of what their depth charts at the time indicated were the first and second teams playing together.
The Little Rock one, the most ballyhooed, usually with grocery chains involved in free ticket promotions, was for the fans.
Captains were picked early in the week for a player draft of Red vs. White.
With all players then living at the Wilson Sharp Athletic Dormitory, the victorious players of the Red or White teams were treated that next week to a steak dinner at the dorm’s Darby Hall.
The losing team that same night ate beans and franks.
The Little Rock game inevitably had some mismatches, like a third-team center trying to block the starting nose guard, but coaches said they did glimpse who would compete. And it allowed the then seemingly almost endless spring practices to end with some levity.
Sometimes the levity was unintentional. Like the invocation for Lou Holtz’s first spring game.
“God bless our new coach and his new plays,” the minister prayed.
Always wondered if Broyles, the athletic director-head football coach personally hiring Holtz to take the coaching reins, took mild offense at the implication the old plays perhaps lacked divine inspiration.
Red-White fervor could reach the ridiculous.
Like the Red-White stormy night in Little Rock when tornado sirens sounded during a game abruptly canceled with fans urged to flee for safety.
Some actually booed the game’s premature end.
The NCAA’s scholarship reductions from virtually unlimited to 85 changed the entire spring game perspective.
While back then first-teamers generally got pulled relatively early to cut injury risk, the numbers were such that four full competitive quarters could be played.
No second half running clock like recent spring games.
With their situational scrimmaging, Pittman expects his Hogs today to get more done in less time and lesser injury risk.
Today still offers a free taste of football for fans excited by last fall’s 9-4 campaign. Now they’ll have time also to view today’s reigning SEC champion Arkansas baseball and softball teams.
It’s a Saturday spring stage that football willingly shares.