FORT WORTH — Arkansas’ latest Southwest Conference Reunion Tour stop comes tonight at TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium.
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The No. 15-ranked Horned Frogs will be the fifth former SWC rival the Razorbacks have played, along with Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and SMU since leaving for the SEC after the 1991 season.
Arkansas is 11-11 in post-SWC matchups against its Texas exes — including SEC games against Texas A&M since 2012.
The Razorbacks will be back in Texas in two weeks to play Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
“I absolutely love these games against our old SWC rivals,” said Jay Bequette, a Little Rock attorney who was Arkansas’ starting center in 1981-1982. “It’s great for recruiting in Texas and to see where you stack up against some really good teams. It also brings back a pretty cool era for Arkansas football.
“For today’s generation of players, they don’t even know what the SWC really was, and it was a heck of a football league.”
The SWC, with Arkansas as a charter member in 1914, produced seven national championship teams — including TCU in 1938 and Arkansas in 1964 — along with five Heisman Trophy winners and five Outland Trophy winners. The Razorbacks’ Loyd Phillips won the Outland Trophy in 1966.
TCU’s first game in Carter Stadium was a 40-0 victory over Arkansas on Oct. 11, 1930. The Horned Frogs blanked the Razorbacks again, 7-0, in 1931 to ruin Arkansas’ homecoming weekend and won 34-12 back home in 1932.
Things got a lot better for the Razorbacks against TCU after that.
Starting with a 13-0 victory in 1933, Arkansas went 41-16-2 in the series and 18-9-1 at Carter Stadium. Overall, Arkansas leads the series 43-23-2 and is 21-15-1 in Fort Worth.
The Razorbacks have a five-game winning streak at TCU, including a 22-21 victory in 1991 in the teams’ final SWC game when Arkansas rallied from a 21-0 halftime deficit.
Arkansas can credit a former Texas coach, Fred Akers, with kick-starting the Razorbacks’ domination of the Horned Frogs.
Akers, who succeeded Darrell Royal as Texas’ coach in 1977, was a senior kicker for Arkansas in 1959 when he hit a 29-yard field goal to beat TCU in the SWC opener. The Razorbacks went on to win a share of the SWC title in their second season under Coach Frank Broyles.
Arkansas’ victory in 1959 was the start of a 22-game winning streak against TCU that extended through the 1980 season. The Razorbacks and Horned Frogs opened SWC play against each other every season from 1959 through 1990.
“For the Razorbacks, TCU was always the game we needed to win to give ourselves a chance to win the conference,” said Ken Hatfield, a star defensive back and punt returner for Arkansas from 1962-1964 and head coach from 1984-1989. “It had a lot of meaning.”
TCU no longer resembles the struggling program Arkansas used to dominate.
“This isn’t your father’s TCU or your grandfather’s TCU we’re playing now,” Bequette said.
Gary Patterson has a 144-47 record in his 16th season as TCU’s head coach, including 24-3 since 2014. He was national coach of the year in 2009 and 2011 and has won 10 or more games 10 times.
TCU and Patterson won the Jan. 1, 2011, Rose Bowl 21-19 over Wisconsin — when Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema led the Badgers — to finish 13-0.
“He’s just a tremendous coach and a real good guy in the business that has built that place up into something special,” Bielema said of Patterson. “To throw all that into this game with the tradition of the past is pretty cool.”
TCU will play at Arkansas next season to complete the home-and-home series.
“It’s one of those games where you find out what you’re made of,” Patterson said.
Arkansas defensive backs coach Paul Rhoads gained admiration for the job Patterson has done when he coached against TCU in the Big 12 Conference the previous four seasons when he was Iowa State’s head coach.
“Everything that they’ve gotten, they’ve earned,” Rhoads said.
Arkansas offensive coordinator Dan Enos said it’s like playing a ninth SEC game.
“This will be a great challenge and be great preparation as we move forward in our season,” Enos said.
Before Patterson, TCU had a brief renaissance under Jim Wacker, who coached the Horned Frogs from 1983-1991.
“He was energetic and kind of out there a little bit,” said Lunney, who was Arkansas’ quarterback from 1992-1995. “I remember him being the face of the program when I was a kid.”
Wacker was the national coach of the year in 1984 when TCU improved to 8-4 — including a 32-31 victory at Arkansas — from 1-8-2 in his first season.
Things came apart in the 1985 season when Wacker dismissed seven players — including All-American running back Kenneth Davis — after he discovered they were being paid in violation of NCAA rules.
The Horned Frogs were hit with heavy sanctions, including the loss of 35 scholarships over a two-year period. TCU didn’t have a winning season again until 1991 when they went 7-4.
“The only time in history TCU was getting top-tier talent was back in the early ’80s when they were cheating like crazy,” Bequette said. “Then back in the ’40s and ’50s when there was just a different dynamic in the SWC. There wasn’t any pro football in Texas and teams like SMU, Rice TCU were the powerhouses.
“TCU still isn’t getting the top-tier talent. For the most part they’re taking guys under the radar that are undersized, but can run, and developing them.”
TCU ended its 22-game losing streak against the Razorbacks in improbable fashion Oct. 3, 1981, when the Horned Frogs rallied to beat No. 18 Arkansas 28-24.
Arkansas led 24-13 with 5:20 left in the fourth quarter after Bruce Lahay’s punt had been downed at the TCU 1.
“We’re thinking, ‘This is over,’ ” Bequette said. “But TCU just kept making first downs and went 99 yards.”
Steve Stamp’s 22-yard touchdown pass to Stanley Washington and a twopoint conversion pulled the Horned Frogs within 24-21. Arkansas lost a fumble at its 15, and Stamp had another touchdown pass to Washington.
“We had the game won, up by two scores, and then we just stopped playing,” Bequette said. “It was brutal.”
TCU officials were so giddy they left the stadium scoreboard on until the following Monday.
Two weeks later Lou Holtz coached Arkansas to a 42-11 victory over No. 1 Texas, but Bequette said the immediate aftermath of the TCU game was mind-numbing.
“I can count on one hand the number of times we watched the game tape on Sunday as a full team,” Bequette said. “It might have happened twice, maybe three times.
“That Sunday after TCU was one of those times, and it was ugly. We were all in shock. Nothing about it was pretty, I can promise you that.”
Carter Stadium underwent a $164 million renovation between the 2010 and 2012 seasons.
“It’s a beautiful venue,” said Rhoads, whose Cyclones upset the No. 13 Horned Frogs 37-23 at Carter Stadium in 2012. “It’s going to be a hard, hard place to play.”
TCU has announced tonight’s game as one of two home sellouts this season along with Oklahoma’s visit.
That might explain why Hatfield, who is attending tonight’s game, has upper deck seats.
“The thing I remember about the first time I went to TCU as a sophomore in 1962 is you looked at the upper deck of the stadium and that thing was so steep it seemed like fans were looking right down from heaven on you,” Hatfield said. “Since we’re sitting in the upper deck for this game, I’m going to take some parachutes with us in case we need to get down from there.”