Poking fun at the Razorbacks' bowl history has been something of a running gag here at Arkansas Expats, Inc (we're crying on the inside, though), but today the Democrat-Gazette's Tom Murphy sobered us up with a very well-reserached article that illustrates just how piss-poor Arkansas' bowl fates have been.
The whole thing is definitely worth a read (and it's free this week!), but as a quick summary here are some of the more eye-opening points:
* since 1985, the Hogs have won all of TWO bowl games. Two! That's 10 losses in their last 12 attempts.
* Arkansas ranks 14th on the all-time list of bowl appearances, but only 33rd in terms of victories.
* only 5 teams have a worse bowl winning percentage than the Razorbacks' .347 (based on their 11-22-3 bowl record), and none of them have played in as many postseason games.
But, Murphy also points out that Bobby Petrino's all-business attitude towards bowls contrasts very notably with his predecessors (going all the way back to Frank Broyles) and a lot of Hog fans - myself included - saw his hiring as an opportunity to reverse some of the terrible fortunes detailed above.
Here's hoping that a new coach and new decade will bring some sort of bowl turnaround for the Razorbacks (at least bringing us up from abysmal to mediocre). We'll know soon enough...