OPINION

REX NELSON: Battle of the Ravine

They'll play another Battle of the Ravine in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon. College football is celebrating its 150th anniversary this season, and the best example of what that sport means is right here in Arkansas.

Paul Greenberg used to write an annual ode to the Bradley County pink tomato in this newspaper. Arkansas tomatoes deserve all the praise they can get, and it was a column I enjoyed reading. When I decided that I needed a column that would come around at the same time each year, the football game between Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University was an obvious choice.

Those who know me well know that it's my favorite day of the year. I grew up within walking distance of both stadiums and have always considered this to be the small-college version of the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. It's a rivalry that divides families, a game that's talked about 365 days a year. In the Nelson family, it was Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day rolled into one.

In the late 1940s, the Arkansas Jaycees promoted it as the Biggest Little Football Game in America, a moniker first used on the East Coast for the NCAA Division III rivalry between Williams College and Amherst College. Those two schools first played in 1884. Ouachita and Henderson first played on Thanksgiving Day 1895.

The Nov. 10, 2007, game between Williams and Amherst was selected as the location for ESPN's "College GameDay" program. I'm determined to get ESPN to Arkadelphia one year to cover this Division II battle. The hook? It's the only game in college football in which the visitors walk to a road game. State troopers will stop traffic Saturday morning on U.S. 67, and Henderson players will walk across to play at Ouachita's Cliff Harris Stadium after having put on uniforms in their own dressing room.

The game will kick off at 1 p.m. At about 4 p.m., the troopers will stop traffic again, and the Reddies will walk back home.

The Battle of the Ravine (the actual ravine, which is filled with kudzu, is less than a mile north of the two stadiums) should be on every Arkansan's bucket list. It might not receive the attention of Michigan versus Ohio State or Texas versus Oklahoma, but the passion and intensity are no less real. Those who have played in these games, coached in them, covered them as journalists or watched from the stands understand. There are few things in American sports like this contest between four-year schools within walking distance of each other.

If you're a Tiger, you call it the Ouachita-Henderson game. If you're a Reddie, it's the Henderson-Ouachita game. If your team wins, you crow about it for the next year. If your team loses, you feel the pain for 12 months.

Arkadelphia is a different place this week. The lights are on each night at both stadiums to discourage pranks. Signs on the campuses are covered. Ouachita students guard the statue of a tiger in the middle of the campus to keep it from being painted red. Henderson students keep an eye on campus landmarks such as the fountain and the bell to keep them from turning purple.

Dan Grant, who was president of Ouachita when I was a student there, wrote a book titled Tiger Tales: Four Generations of Memories and Legends Surrounding Ouachita Baptist University. He devoted a chapter to the Battle of the Ravine. Grant, whose father was also a Ouachita president, tells the story of the tiger sculpture, which was completed shortly before the 1934 Battle of the Ravine.

"When I was 11, my father came home for supper and told us of a visit from B.F. Worley, a sculptor who felt God's call to be a preacher and wanted to enter Ouachita to prepare for the ministry," Grant writes. "The 25-year-old had no money but offered to carve a marble tiger in exchange for his tuition. My father agreed and asked the senior class to raise $2,000 to buy seven tons of Batesville marble for carving the tiger. They did, and with the help of Marvin Faulkner, another Ouachita student, the tiger was completed and placed on campus where it now stands. Worley got the idea of carving the tiger from the University of Texas, for which he had carved a school mascot longhorn when he was employed by a stone company.

"The new tiger attracted the attention of Henderson students, who were looking for good targets to paint red. The night before the game, word spread through the campus that a mob of about 200 Henderson students was heading to Ouachita armed with sticks, rocks and paint. A similar mob from Ouachita, with sticks and rocks, gathered to meet the Reddies and protect the tiger. The two groups met not far from Cone-Bottoms Hall and the president's home.

"I sat on a stucco fence nearby, clicking two big rocks in my little 11-year-old hands. My father walked out between the two mobs and asked to speak to leaders from each group. He pointed out that there was imminent danger of serious injury and that it would be far better for both sides to return to their rooms and let the conflict be settled by well-trained teams on the football field. He was a peacemaker that night, but it was not always possible in later years."

The series is even at 43-43-6 after all these years. The game has been decided by a touchdown or less in 42 of those 92 contests. The series was suspended from 1951-62 due to excessive vandalism. When the two schools started playing again in 1963, I was 4 years old. You can bet I was there, as I have been for almost every Battle of the Ravine the past 56 years.

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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 11/13/2019

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