![]() In attendance at the game were Billy Graham, who led the prayer, and President Richard Nixon. The Longhorns went on to win the National Championship. In 1969, Coach Broyles’s number-two Hogs faced off with Coach Darrell Royal’s number-one Texas Longhorns in a game played in Fayetteville that became one of the Razorbacks’ most memorable games, dubbed “The Big Shootout.” The Hogs led 14–0 up until the fourth quarter, when the Longhorns came back to win the game 15–14. A five-member committee of the Football Writers Association of America did name UA as number one following the team’s Cotton Bowl victory. Under Broyles, the Hogs had an 11–0 season and claimed to have won the 1964 National Championship, though this claim is highly disputed, as the Associated Press had already ranked the University of Alabama as the top team in the nation. In 1957, Frank Broyles became the Razorback head football coach, and he served in that capacity for nineteen years. The “hog call,” as it is known, soon became standard practice as the cheer for the Razorbacks: “Woo, pig, sooie! Razorbacks!” Other Razorback traditions include “running through the A”-the team taking the field by crossing through the A-shaped formation of the UA marching band before each home game-and the attendance at each home game by the Razorbacks’ live mascot, a Russian boar named Tusk. Some sources record that in the 1920s, a group of farmers began calling to the Razorbacks football team in the same manner they would call their pigs home, trying to encourage the football team. With the mascot change, the institution of one of UA’s most famous football traditions soon followed. In 1908, Hugo Bezdek became the head coach for UA, and it is Bezdek who is credited for changing the team name from the “Cardinals” to the “Razorbacks.” After winding up a successful 7–0 season with the defeat of Louisiana State University, Bezdek reportedly said that his team had played “like a bunch of Razorback hogs.” The mascot for the football team became the Razorbacks for the 1910 season. ![]() During their first year as a team, the “Arkansas Cardinals,” as they were then known, won two games against Fort Smith High School but suffered an overwhelming 54–0 defeat against the Texas Longhorns. UA’s first head coach was John Futrall, a Latin professor at the university. That same year, a contest was held to pick the new school colors, with cardinal red and white being chosen. The football team of UA was founded in 1894. Although they have not enjoyed the kind of success achieved by similar programs in other states, such as Nebraska and Oklahoma, the Razorbacks continue to receive widespread fan support and attention every football season. As measured in print and broadcast media coverage and observed in vehicle decorations, the football team of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), the Razorbacks, is the most popular. Because the state of Arkansas lacks a National Football League team, its college football programs draw a great deal of attention every year.
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