History Repeating: The Arkansas Game

Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images

Ok so big miss by me last time. I super thought I had this thing dialed in. Congrats to Florida, who turned the tables on Auburn and really made us reconsider a few things in our lives. This week I think I have this thing hammered down. Auburn plays a completely maladroit team from Arkansas. It is stupefying to think about how scary the Hogs were just a few years ago. Their trajectory and Auburn’s in the early 10’s were very similar: lofty heights followed swiftly by rock bottom. However, Auburn’s rock bottom was followed by a trip to a national title game the following year, and Arkansas is still rebuilding from 2012. One bad hire can destroy a program for a bit, two bad hires can be crippling. We might be seeing signs that Arkansas has gone for the hat trick with Chad Morris.

We still need to be sure we are going to win. I mean, the John L Smith team beat Auburn so anything can happen in this matchup.

Let’s see if we can’t find a sign of certainty in time’s creamy glaze on the jelly donut of life. Let’s look to the past to see the future.

The Birthday of Jeannie C Riley

On October 19, 1945 Jeannie C Riley was born in Stamford, Texas. She would later get married, move to Nashville, work as a secretary, and then become an overnight sensation and the first woman to have a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and the US Country Single Chart at the same time.

The history of country music in the late 60s and 70s is W I L D. This was a time in which the greatest songwriters in American history were all just hanging out with one another exchanging songs and taking a myriad of judgement-impairing substances. Tom T Hall, a man who wrote nothing but bangers, had a demo tape of a weird song called Harper Valley PTA. Hall hadn’t yet become famous, but this song would change both his and Riley’s lives forever.

A producer named Shelby Singleton gave Riley the song after he heard her voice on a demo. He worked with a lot of acts over at Mercury Records, and thought this Tom T Hall demo matched Riley’s style. It’s an incredible song. It meanders and wanders around a story of a woman who has been given a scolding by the local PTA for her “miniskirts,” who then walks into the next PTA meeting uninvited and dunks on each and every member’s head. She brings out the receipts of each member’s private lives and eviscerates the hypocritical aristocracy of her small town. Harper Valley is a cesspool or rumormongers and gossipers who operate under the guise of “class” and “doing things the right way.”

Harper Valley sounds like Hogville.

Hogville, the Arkansas message board responsible for countless rumors and hilarious missteps, is (like all message boards imo) a cesspool of rumormongers and gossipers. They super hate Houston Nutt. This message board does, however, love Gus Malzahn. Or at least a large portion of it does.

In this scenario, Gus Malzahn is the woman walking into the PTA meeting, and the PTA is the group of Arkansas higher-ups who for whatever reason hired Brett Bielema instead of Gus back in 2012. It’s like this song, except Gus seems to march into that PTA meeting every year and burn the building down as he leaves. He seems to love beating Arkansas into the ground each year, and has amassed a 5-1 record against them. This year will be no different.

Gus will march into the PTA meeting, read them the riot act, and remind them why they should have never let him go to Tulsa, then Auburn, or Jonesboro, and then Auburn again.

Auburn 62

Arkansas 10

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