In our new series SEC Connections, we take a quick look at coincidences, partnerships and parallels between The University of Texas at Austin and our sister schools in the Southeastern Conference. This week, The University of Arkansas.
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OK, let’s deal with this one right out of the gate. Other schools have argued that they have played in “the Game of the Century.” (Notre Dame-Ohio State 1935, Army-Navy 1945, Miami-Penn State 1986). But we all know in our hearts that the only real Game of the Century (the last century) was played December 6, 1969: Texas at Arkansas. After all, at what other contest has the president of the United States appeared and, independent of the NCAA, presumed to award the National Championship to the winner — before the major bowl games were played?
It was the No. 1 Longhorns, having won 18 straight, vs. the No. 2. Razorbacks, who had won 15 straight, and therefore both teams were undefeated in excess of that season. President Richard Nixon and Congressman George H. W. Bush of Houston attended the game, Nixon proclaiming it to be the National Championship and that he would give a plaque to the winner. As one can imagine, many observers were dismayed and deemed it premature to crown a champion before the bowl games of New Year’s Day. Arkansas took a 14–0 lead, and held it into the fourth quarter, but Texas came from behind to win, 15–14, and Darrell Royal accepted Nixon’s plaque. Arkansas and Texas gave America the Game of the Century. Period.
Both teams were part of the historic Southwest Conference and played each other from the SWC’s founding in 1915 to 1992, when Arkansas left to join the SEC. (The Big 12 formed in 1996.) The schools have played 79 times.
The first academic building at both schools would come to be known as Old Main. UT’s Old Main was razed in 1935 to make way for the current Main Building and Tower, while Arkansas’s Old Main, built in 1875, still stands.
UT’s Old Main was built at the high point of the campus, then known as College Hill. The University of Arkansas campus was built on “the Hill,” a hilltop farm overlooking the Ozarks.
Ricardo Martinelli graduated with a business degree from the University of Arkansas in 1973 was president of Panama 2009-2014. Laurentino Cortizo did doctoral studies at UT, also in business, and was president of Panama 2019-2024.
Hogs and cattle both were introduced to the Americas during Christopher Columbus’s second voyage, in 1493 to the Caribbean. In the early 1500s, Spanish conquistadors and settlers moved those animals to the mainland, Spanish Mexico, where they escaped, rapidly multiplied, and made themselves at home across the plains and forests of North America. (Imagine trying to keep Bevo or Tusk captive with 16th century technology.) The ancestors of both razorbacks — a term for feral domesticated hogs — and longhorns are from Spain.
