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Fifty years later it seems some Arkansas fans still haven't gotten over the 1969 Razorbacks losing the "Big Shootout" to Texas. Bruce James played in it for Arkansas. He said it only took him "probably two or three days" to move on from the pain of that 15-14 near miss. Instead, he relishes expe- riencing the December epic of No. 2 Ar- kansas vs. No. 1 Texas. There was also the obvious high- light of pack- i n g R a z o r - back Stadium with the likes of President Richard Nix- on and world famous evangelist Billy Gra- ham among others. Now the 1969 Razorbacks' forgotten loss, the anticli- max 27-22 Sugar Bowl defeat to Archie Manning and Ole Miss … that still burns the Razorbacks' All-American defensive end headed to the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame. First things first. The Big Shootout. "I got over that ball game really fast," James said Oct. 19 at the 1969 Razorbacks reunion at the Fayetteville Country Club. "Probably two or three days because I knew when I walked off the field I had left everything there I had. I didn't have anything else to give. I always thought about it the last 50 years that I would rather played in that ballgame and lost than to never have been good enough to get to that championship game and not play in it." The Dec. 6 Shootout was the only game televised, un- like today when some college football games routinely are televised Thursday and Fri- day nights with Saturday nonstop morning through past midnight. It riveted national view- ing. It was going to be The Game ever since ABC picked it in the summer expecting a No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup. "The Game of the Centu- ry," some called it. "There's nothing like it, and there never will be," James said. "So I sort of feel like that ball game doesn't haunt me. I just feel fortu- nate I got to participate in it. Because it was the only ball- game played in the day and the president of the United States was there and every television set tuned in." And as much as Arkansas fans despised Texas, James respects the Texas comeback after the Longhorns trailed 14-0. He just as much re- spects the efforts of the Ra- zorbacks. "You've got to look at b o t h s i d e s ," Ja m e s sa i d . "You've got eight or nine f irst-team All-Americans on that field playing against each other from Texas and from Arkansas. You talk about Arkansas, but Texas was the best. I never played against anybody that good. I saw them absolutely never quit. They fell behind; they didn't quit. I told them af - ter the game, 'Don't lose the Cotton Bowl.' Because I knew if they lost the Cot- ton Bowl our game would be insignificant. It would not mean anything." Texas beat Notre Dame, 21-17, in the Cotton Bowl and was voted No. 1. Penn State also finished 11-0, beating Big Eight champion Missouri in the Orange Bowl. "They had to come from b e h i n d a n d b e a t No t r e Dame," James said. "And once again they showed their char- acter. So when you lose to a team like that, you know you played the best that was out there and you played your very best, you accept it. I'm just proud I got to play in the game of that magnitude." Losing a game of that magnitude to the Longhorns deflated the Arkansas-born Razorbacks and those Razor- backs from Texas going into their Sugar Bowl date with Ole Miss. The 1969 Razorbacks' lone prominent Mississippian, James likely was the lone Hog inherently inspired against Ole Miss. "Unfortunately, being from Mississippi, that game h u r t m e t re m e n d o u s ly," James said. "Because every one of those Ole Miss play- ers I had either played with in an all-star game or played against in the regular season, Archie Manning included. All that entire team were peo- ple I had played against or played with and I wanted to win that game more than any- thing else in the world and we didn't play well. We had the better team but we were emotionally dead." Arkansas' practices for the Sugar Bowl and the Sug- ar Bowl first half were pan- cake-flat. "We absolutely didn't fire until the second half," James said. "We fell behind 24-12 at halftime. We ended up try- ing to make a comeback in the second half and we didn't get it done. But we were the superior team. So that one hurts. That one hurts a lot more for me being a Missis- sippian than it does losing the Texas game. Because I felt like as a team we played our very best against Texas and I didn't think we did against Ole Miss." Certainly he understood why, particularly since Texas as SWC champion was in the Cotton Bowl and the Razor- backs again in the Sugar Bowl where the 1968 Razorbacks defeated Georgia. "Emotionally, you were drained." James recalled. "You just lost the national championship and you were going down to play a game in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl and you had been there the year before and beaten Georgia. So you are going back to a bowl game that re- ally doesn't mean a lot." Frank Broyles' 1970 Ra- zorbacks, with James a first- team All-American after being honorable mention All-American in 1969, again went 9-2 losing only to Jim Plunkett-quarterbacked Stan- ford and again to SWC cham- pion Texas. Again they could have gone to the Sugar Bowl but declined and stayed home. "We were 9-2 but we voted not to go," James said. "All the seniors said, 'It's the Cotton Bowl or nothing.'" Those Sugar Bowls were against terrific SEC champs. Frank Broyles did beat all the top SEC teams to sign James. "I was trying to make up my mind whether to play for Bear Bryant (at Alabama) or Johnny Vaught (at Ole Miss)," James recalled. "I came to Ar- kansas only because of Frank Broyles. "I was going to go to Ala- bama or Ole Miss and I got this offer out of nowhere f ro m A rka n sa s . I d i d n' t know there was a recruiting difference between confer- ences. The Southeastern Conference could contact you anytime during your senior season. The South- west Conference couldn't contact you and bring you up until after your last game as a senior. "So I get this phone call from Arkansas and it's Jack Davis who was in charge of recruiting. Jack was from Mississippi and had come from Natchez. He said 'Coach Broyles and Arkansas want you and would like for you to just wait until the end of the season and we'll bring you up immediately and want you to come talk to us. Would you do that?' And I said, 'Yeah.'" Bruce explained his inter- est. "I had never been to Ar- kansas," James said. "But I knew a lot about it because (Razorbacks legend and NFL Hall of Famer) Lance Alworth is my hero and he's from Mississippi. And Coach Broyles had been a giant star at Georgia Tech and was the SEC Player of the Year. We all knew who Coach Broyles was. And the University of Arkansas had won the nation- al championship in 1964. This was 1966 when I was being recruited so he had some- thing to sell." James knew all that. It piqued his interest but wield- ed near zero impact on his fi- nal decision. "We visited and Coach Broyles didn't even talk about football," James said. "He did something that Bear Bryant didn't do. He did something that Johnny Vaught and all the other coaches didn't do. They just talked about foot- ball. He talked about, 'What did I want to do with my life? What would my degree mean to me?' He found there was a direct correlation to good football players and how they felt about their education. And all of a sudden I felt, 'This man is different.'" Broyles needed to be dif- ferent given what the others could offer. "Now, it was the worst fa- cilities I've ever seen," James recalled of Arkansas. "We didn't even have an air-con- ditioned dorm room. It was horrendous. Alabama — they called their dorm the Bear Bryant Hilton. Miami was like — my gosh! It was unbe- lievable! LSU — everybody had better dorms. So I came strictly because I want to play for Coach Broyles." To this day, James believes facilities and the recruiting attraction of coordinators and position coaches are overrated. Especially nowadays when "everybody has great facili- ties," James said. "You don't go because of a position coach," James said. "I always wanted to know the head coach and what he was about, not an assistant coach. And I really didn't care about facilities. I cared about foot- ball. It might be really plush, and I could have gone to those other schools, but there was something special about Coach Broyles. He convinced me and the recruiting class I was in that we had enough to win a conference champion- ship and be a Top Ten team. So he was very correct about it." As for Arkansas assistant coaches, James was influ- enced by the late Charlie Coffey, both the defensive coordinator and his position coach. "I learned a lot of football from the man," James said. "He was a very difficult man to play for. He was tenacious. But what he taught me about fundamental football and how to play that position is why I'm being put into the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame." Since he played defensive end and not linebacker, James was never coached by the late and legendary Wilson Matt- hews. But he directly felt the im- pact of the Matthews Fourth Quarter winter conditioning that reportedly made Marine boot camp seem like a week- end at Disneyland. "Oh, gosh!" James said. "Hey, I start getting queasy just thinking about that 50 years later. Let me put it to you this way, once you got in a game you never worried about being tired because of what you had been through in the Fourth Quarter." The Fourth Quarter was just another bond to that 1969 reunion as tight as any family reunion you could find. "I've seen players that I haven't seen in 10 years and it's remarkable and amaz- ing how the emotions come back about a person and how good a football player and nice people that they were," James said. "It's been 50 years, and five minutes that you're around them you see they haven't really changed. As an outsider who came in from Mississippi and came in knowing no one, I was fortunate to have these guys as teammates. It's great to be here and a pleasure to see them." James said his teammates share his SWC Hall of Fame honor. "I can't tell you how hon- ored I am to be in the Hall of Fame when I think of all the great players that played in the Southwest Confer- ence and how fortunate I am," James said. "I had great coaches, and I had great teammates. I don't think you win these kinds of honors if you are not surrounded by great players who allow you to do your job. It's sort of a team thing to me. I know that sounds corny but it's true." James explained how in- dividual honors are another dividend of playing team ball. "Somebody had to do their job for me to do my job," James said. "So I'm very honored to be going in. We all made each other better. All of us had great pride. We were competing with each other to make the tackle. So you've got 11 people trying to get to the ball carrier, you've got a great defense." James' Arkansas success netted him a NFL opportu- nity he couldn't fulfill. "I was under contract with the Philadelphia Eagles for two years but I didn't play," James said. "I was shocked to be drafted to be honest with you. I had a blown-up knee. I had five operations before I got there." Like Broyles advised when he recruited James to play football, James prepared for life after football. He gradu- ated from the UA's School of Business majoring in man- agement and minoring in marketing. Following his two years with the Eagles, Bruce got in the insurance business influ- enced by insurance agencies helping rebuild the 1969 Mis- sissippi homes and business- es devastated by Hurricane Camille. "From Hurricane Camille, I saw that they make you whole again," James said. "That's why I wanted to be in the insurance business.Work- ing for State Farm is what I've done for the last 46 years in Little Rock. I enjoy it." And football does remain a part of his life. He's done sports commentary, mostly on the Razorbacks, on TV and radio. The Razorbacks' plight was discussed just three weeks ahead of the firing of Chad Morris as head coach. "I say this to everybody and I've discussed this with people who play," James said. "I don't see a whole lot of talent. You see a guy on defense who's not fast and misses tackles. You see his body language. You can't coach that out of a kid and you can't coach that into a kid if it's not there. "We have got to get some players who think it's a great honor having Arkansas on their jersey and whether they are great players or not are going give you everything they've got. We don't have that right now. Fans have got to understand we are play- ing in the toughest league in America." And they should be glad to be in the toughest league, James asserts, not run from it, the path he defines by any advocating Arkansas leaving the SEC for the Big 12. "That makes no sense," James said. "There are so ma- ny people that would love to be in our position in the SEC it's not funny. That would be like saying we are not good enough." Bruce James knows Ar- kansas can be more than good enough. He played for the Hogs when they ranked with the best. Former Hog James relishes role in big game, despite loss NATE ALLEN SPECIAL TO NWA DEMOCRAT-GAzETTE James File photo/Shiloh Museum of Ozark History/Springdale News Collection/CHarleS BiCkFOrd Crowd members hold up a banner dec. 6, 1969, during the arkansas-Texas game in Fayetteville. File photo/arkansas democrat-Gazette Players collide dec. 6, 1969, during the arkansas-Texas game in Fayetteville. "You've got to look at both sides," former razorback Bruce James said. "You've got eight or nine first-team all-americans on that field playing against each other from Texas and from arkansas." 4S v FridaY, deCeMBer 6, 2019 ∂ ∂ The Big Shootout