They'll play another Battle of the Ravine in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon, and ESPN's "College GameDay" program won't be there. But I'm still trying.
Those who know me realize that Battle of the Ravine day is my favorite day of the year. I grew up within walking distance of the Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University 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.
The amazing thing is that the series is almost even after all these years. Ouachita leads 44-43-6. The game, which wasn't played in 2020 due to the pandemic, has been decided by a touchdown or less in 43 of the 93 contests. The series was suspended from 1951-62 due to excessive vandalism. Pranks between students on either side of the ravine had gotten out of hand.
ESPN has taken its popular Saturday morning program to an NCAA Division III game (the Nov. 10, 2007, contest between Williams and Amherst), but "GameDay" has never originated from a Division II campus. Those associated with the Battle of the Ravine are still trying. The hook? It's the only college football rivalry in which the visitors walk rather than fly or take a bus 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 preparing 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. It's an event that should be on every Arkansan's bucket list.
While we've not been able to get the "GameDay" crew to Arkadelphia yet, the print equivalent happened in 2019 when Sports Illustrated sent one of its top writers and a noted photographer. The result was an eight-page spread that gave the Battle of the Ravine the most national publicity it has ever received.
"Past tailgaters saluting with Solo cups from atop pickup-truck beds, the Henderson State Reddies march," Alex Prewitt wrote. "Past family members reaching for fist bumps and alumni clanging cowbells and cheerleaders ruffling pompoms. Past trilling piccolos and tooting tubas and the upright feather plumes of the Showband of Arkansas. Past a massive sign hanging from a student apartment, underneath a cloudless Saturday afternoon sky: 'Ouachita Plays Madden On Rookie Mode.'
"Two weeks until Thanksgiving, this is rivalry season in the college football world. But for all of the Civil Wars and Big Games waged, for every Old Oaken Bucket and Holy Bronzed Oil Filter Wrench up for grabs, there is no annual tradition quite like the Division II Battle of the Ravine. ... This road trip takes less than 10 minutes--past state troopers halting traffic, through a lot of unfriendly Tiger fans, right into the visiting locker room."
Prewitt understood that it's proximity that makes the Battle of the Ravine unique.
"Alabama will drive more than 150 miles to square off with Auburn in the Iron Bowl later this year," he wrote. "By comparison, a Henderson golf coach once teed off from the south end zone of the Reddies' football stadium and reached the bowl at Ouachita's field with a mid-iron on his second shot. This hyperlocal series has been going steady since Teddy Roosevelt's second term."
Ouachita athletic director David Sharp played in the Battle of the Ravine. So did his father and brother. Both Sharp and his brother also coached in the game.
"We live this 365 days of the year," Sharp told Sports Illustrated in 2019. "That's the difference between us and other rivalries. They go back to their own entities. I go to lunch, and there's Henderson's AD. I go to dinner, and there's their football coach."
The two schools first met in an unsanctioned game in 1895. The two school presidents feared that an annual game would "engender bitterness," so the next one didn't occur until 1907.
"Then it was on," Prewitt wrote. "After Henderson won the first six games and tied the seventh, emboldened Reddie fans boasted at a 1915 pep rally that Ouachita would only triumph over their 'dead bodies.' When the Tigers indeed pulled off the upset 34-7, their fans dressed up a dummy in a crimson Reddie uniform and lowered it into an on-campus grave, where a minister read last rites.
"Fervor has naturally fluctuated along with the teams' collective competitiveness over the decades, but it never fully fades. ... Indeed, it takes a certain sense of humor to survive the rivalry. Anything else would render life untenable for the other 51 weeks in Arkadelphia."
The lights are on at both stadiums this week to discourage pranks. Signs on the campuses are covered. They won't be uncovered until Monday.
"At Henderson, band members pull overnight shifts protecting oft-targeted campus monuments, including the fountain and an old bell that was saved from the wreckage of a campus fire in 1914," Prewitt wrote. "Over at Ouachita, meanwhile, the brothers of the Rho Sigma social club have for decades focused their defense efforts on the school's marble tiger statue.
"That poor mascot has endured plenty of abuse over time--in 1978 alone it was coated in red paint, tar, Christmas tinsel and gasoline before being lit afire--leading in 2010 to the installation of an iron protective fence and security cameras."
"GameDay," you just don't know what you're missing.
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.