Arkansas and aTm in old SEC

What if the SEC football schedule would have had more than 5 or 6 conference games for all of those years that you reference?

8 team league and only had some teams 5 or 6 league games. How stupid is that?

Yes if you beat Texas in the 60s then you are very likely SWC champs and competed for the national title.

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If Ark and aTm had been original members of the SEC and never played in the old SWC, what would their history look like? Would Ark have even competed for a National Title in the 60's?

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That depends. Playing in the SWC gave us a great pipeline of talent from Texas. Was the Arkansas (assuming we still had that pipeline going) program capable of competing in and doing well against the SEC in the 60s? Yes, we had legit talent back then. The national title we claim came in a season we were undefeated and beat Texas. Texas, it should be noted, handed Alabama a loss that year.

Arkansas was quite good in the 70s and 80s and were a legit national power for many of those years. What killed us off was Broyles driving Hatfield away and then a series of either disastrous or mediocre at best hires.

I don't think either would be much different, though A&M would have bailed on the conference by now.

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I don't think either would be much different, though A&M would have bailed on the conference by now.

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If anything A&M stocks around too long before leaving.

We could have left with Arkansas in the 90s but didn't. We could have left again in 2010 with Colorado & Nebraska, but didn't.

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Arkansas needs Texas talent. They really should move to the big 12.

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I just don't see how moving to any other P5 conference would have helped these last few years when we're losing to Western Kentucky, San Jose State, North Texas and Colorado State.

There is a narrative that A&M coming into the league has killed our Texas recruiting but it's not true at all, we're still recruiting Texas the exact same as we were when Petrino was winning 10-11 games here: LINK

We do need Texas talent but we also need Arkansas talent to be better than it has been lately. In the past we've been able to rely on in-state guys like Matt Jones, Darren McFadden, the trio of WRs under Petrino, etc. but there haven't been many superstars come out of Arkansas lately since they're all playing basketball now (and coincidentally we have a top 10 recruiting class in basketball for 2020 of all originally in-state guys). On paper we hover around #20-#25 in recruiting but you can tell by watching that our current talent (or maybe it's just been the coaching) is worse than it has been in a very long time.

Behind Bama. Just where we like to be.

The state is lacking behind baseball and basketball instate recruiting. But that is looking to change since Pittman is recruiting the state, including Little Rock metropolitan area much harder. Little Rock schools and surrounding towns are showing signs of life with high school football getting better. Also Northwest Arkansas is growing with more division 1 prospects.