As a small town girl from northern Arkansas, I\u2019ve known no other life than that of an Arkansas Razorbacks fan. I grew up learning how to call the Hogs, \u201cnever yielding,\u201d and spending Saturdays in Fayetteville at Donald W. Reynolds Razorbacks Stadium. As I\u2019ve grown up, my interest in Arkansas football has gone from excitement and anticipation for game days to unenthusiastically looking over the stats the next Sunday. I still consider myself a fan, just more of a lukewarm one than the passionate one I was when I was younger. Looking back, I begin to wonder just when my disinterest began. My best bet would be that it was when I actually started understanding the game and realized the disappointing fact that every Razorbacks fan is faced with: We just aren\u2019t good at football.
\nTake last Saturday\u2019s game. Arkansas played the No. 1 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide on their home turf in Tuscaloosa and got beat 48-7. Even with their Heisman-trophy nominated quarterback Tua Tagovailoa out with an ankle injury, the Crimson Tide made easy work of the Hogs. Backup quarterback Mac Jones passed for 235 yards and three touchdowns, while Hogs quarterback John Stephen Jones passed for 49 yards and one touchdown. The Razorbacks gave up 24 points from turnovers. The game marked 13 straight losses to Alabama for the Hogs, and put their 2019 SEC record at 0-5 under Coach Chad Morris.
\nA big question we Razorbacks football fans are being faced with is simple: Why can\u2019t Morris find a quarterback who will work? Last season, he replaced and rereplaced three promising quarterbacks \u2014 Cole Kelley, Ty Storey and Connor Noland \u2014 none of whom pulled off an SEC victory. This year, he\u2019s faced with the same issue with three new quarterbacks \u2014 Ben Hicks, Nick Starkel and John Stephen Jones. At any rate, the quarterback situation needs to be figured out. You can\u2019t win in the SEC without a consistent quarterback, as we see every week.
\nSomething I have always wondered is how diehard Razorbacks supporters keep their enthusiasm, season after season, game after game. It would be easy to do something similar to what I did and lose interest after a losing spell or yet another coach change. But every time the Razorbacks are playing, you\u2019d better believe that there will be fans tailgating and cheering from the stands and in front of their televisions. I\u2019d like to believe that supporting a losing team just has a unique way of bringing its fan base together. You and your fellow fans experience heartbreak after heartbreak together, something that is sure to bring out camaraderie in fans, no matter their differences.
\nI\u2019m holding out hope that the Razorbacks can pull off an SEC win sometime this season. Maybe it will be this Saturday, when they take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs at home in Fayetteville. I\u2019m also holding out hope for my excitement about Razorbacks game days to be rekindled. There is something special about watching football \u2014 and enjoying it \u2014 with people who love the same team you do. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a small town girl from northern Arkansas, I\u2019ve known no other life than that of an Arkansas Razorbacks fan. I grew up learning how to call the Hogs, \u201cnever…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15171,"featured_media":13904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13905,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903\/revisions\/13905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}