It's no secret that the Hogs' bowl history is - to put it kindly - less than inspiring. Still, we were surprised to realize that a win against Ohio State would mark the first time that Arkansas has had consecutive seasons end with a bowl-game victory.
Granted, up until about 30 years ago, before seemingly every city in the country decided it was fit to host a bowl game, post-season invites were a lot harder to come by. For instance, the 1966 Hogs went 8-2, entered their final game ranked sixth in the country and didn't appear in a bowl game. And as mentioned above, when the Razorbacks have received an invite, they've often performed miserably; Arkansas is 12-22-3 in bowl games. Still, Arkansas by and large has had a successful football program. It seems pretty crazy that the Razorbacks have never managed to win a bowl game two years in a row.
The Hogs appeared to have a good chance of accomplishing the feat in December 2000, when they squared off against noted football powerhouse UNLV in the prestigious Las Vegas Bowl one season after destroying Texas in the Cotton Bowl. However the loosey-goosey leadership style of Houston Nutt and the abundant distractions of Sin City proved to be a bad combination: exhausted by days of partying and clearly not taking UNLV seriously, the Hogs coughed up perhaps the most embarrassing bowl performance in the program's history, getting rolled by the Rebels 31-14.
Ohio State is certainly a formidable opponent but I think the Hogs have their best chance in a long while of finally posting back-to-back bowl wins. This is the most talented and best coached Razorback team in decades, and the Hogs are clearly thrilled and motivated by the Sugar Bowl appearance. Too often in the past, Arkansas has - perhaps understandably in certain instances - not been that jazzed about their post-season invite, and their play has reflected that.
All of this begs the question, though: Can the world handle sustained Razorback bowl success? Our interns are on the case, but the early returns suggest cause for worry: apparently, some ancient Mayan texts indicate repeated bowl victories by the Hogs are an indicator of the end times. If that's the case, the world may truly come to an end in 2012.