FAYETTEVILLE — It has been a while since Arkansas beat Alabama.
In fact, when Ben Cleveland caught Mitch Mustain’s pass to give the Razorbacks a 24-23 double overtime win over the Crimson Tide back in 2006, none of the current players were out of elementary school.
Even sixth-year seniors like Grant Morgan and T.J. Hammonds were just in third grade, while the current true freshmen were still a couple years away from starting kindergarten.
Sam Pittman was coaching at Northern Illinois, Barry Odom was the director of football operations at Missouri, Kendal Briles had just finished his playing career and Nick Saban was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins.
The Razorbacks will get another chance to snap that 14-game losing streak - which is tied for the longest against any single opponent in school history - when they travel to Tuscaloosa, Ala., for a 2:30 p.m. CT kickoff Saturday.
There have been some close calls and some blowouts during that stretch, with more of the latter in recent years. The last four matchups have been decided by an average of 39 points.
With a 7-3 record and No. 21 ranking, though, Arkansas is expected to be more competitive this time around. One major reason, Pittman said, is that the team believes it is capable of beating Alabama, which hasn’t always been the case.
“I go back to look at my first year here in 2013 and we got beat 52-0,” Pittman said. “Then the next year we got beat by a point. Now, things happen and different things during the game like all that, but the No. 1 difference, to me, was we had a team full of guys that believed that they could win.”
Here are a few other stats and tidbits ahead of Saturday’s game, which will be televised on CBS…
Point Spread
Despite playing on the road, Arkansas is “only” a 20.5-point underdog against Alabama, according to VegasInsider.com. Even though the spread is nearly three touchdowns, it’s still much smaller than in recent years.
The Crimson Tide have been favored by at least four touchdowns each of the last four seasons. The Razorbacks backdoor covered 37- and 35-point spreads in 2017 and 2018, respectively, but failed to cover as 32- and 28.5-point underdogs in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
According to HawgBeat’s database, which goes back through the 1997 season, Arkansas has never won a game when its opponent was favored by at least 19 points, going 0-22. The largest spread against the Razorbacks in a game they won was 18 and that came in 1997, when they knocked off Alabama 17-16.
