Arkansas officially blew its slim chances of getting into a bowl game by absolutely folding against Mississippi State on Saturday.

As all college football fans know, a team needs six wins to be bowl eligible. Arkansas would have hit that magical six-wins mark with wins over its last two games -- Mississippi State and LSU.

Arkansas managed to lose 31-28 to Mississippi State (4-7, 2-5 SEC), thus falling to a 4-7 record (1-5 in the SEC) and dropping to dead last in the SEC West. Miss State, by the way, is now next to last in the SEC West.

A lot of people want to blame kicker Alex Tejada for losing the game, but that's nonsense. Sure, Tejada missed a 46-yard field goal at the end of the game and missed another one besides. However, the defense was absolutely horrible against Miss State.

How bad? Miss State was averaging 77.3 yards rushing per game, but registered 226 yards against Arkansas. It's no wonder that Arkansas' defense is rated the worst in the SEC, is it?

Arkansas' offense did its job. Nathan Dick took the starting quarterback job away from his brother, Casey Dick, and passed for 333 yards and two touchdowns. Add 109 yards rushing to that total, and you come up with 442 yards of offense for the Razorbacks. Not bad at all.

However, Arkansas' absolutely flat defense allowed a generally pitiful Miss State offense to run up 445 yards. That's just pitiful and inexcusable.

Yes, the pundits will blame Tejada and he is, admittedly, pretty bad. However, his sub-par kicking game is nothing compared to the miserable Arkansas defense.

Arkansas, of course, got a new coach, Bobby Petrino, this year. The argument can be made that he made the best of a bad situation -- he inherited a bunch of young players and some fairly bad ones from former head coach, the hated Houston Nutt. Regardless, it seems pretty clear that Petrino has some butt kicking and recruiting to do to rebuild this team.

Hang in there, Bobby! Better seasons are on the way.

Meanwhile, LSU comes to Little Rock on the day after Thanksgiving to play the Razorbacks. Yes, you heard right -- Arkansas still splits home games between Fayetteville and Little Rock.

At any rate, the LSU game doesn't really matter at this point as Arkansas has no chance of going to a bowl game. Expect to see the Hogs play like they just don't give a damn when LSU comes to town.

A shameless plug for my father

I was shopping for some gifts for my dad today and settled on a good MP3 player loaded with a bunch of old time radio shows from the incomparable OTRCat.com. I like buying unique gifts for my dad and he loves old time radio shows.

It occurred to me, however, that dad has had a rough year. As I've whined about on her plenty of times, a tree fell on mom and dad's house earlier this year and caused about $100,000 worth of damage. Fortunately, they're living in a great house right now -- a great thing because it will take about six months to rebuild their home.

So, dad's pretty down about it all. Now, my folks are set for money, so there's no problem there. The maniac tree company that dumped the tree on their home is insured, so there's no problem there, either. However, what would make my dad absolutely thrilled this holiday season is for some people to purchase copies of his book, Poems from a Baseball Fan by Howard A. Nobles.

That's a very unique book and one that I do believe any dyed in the wool baseball fan would love to get for Christmas. Dad put that book together from over 40 years of poems he's written about baseball, a sport he loved to play

Of course, I'm biased.

If you're looking for a unique gift for that baseball nut on your list, why not click on the above ad and give it a look?

You'd make a retired educator and lifelong baseball maniac happy. You know you want to take a look and buy a copy, so have at it!


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