Episode 08: Hogs and Bruins in 1989 Cotton Bowl.

Shon is joined by a surprise guest GenZer, who has an interest in all things GenX and learns about the 1989 Cotton Bowl and how it influenced the NFL draft a few months later.

Credits:
Haylee Wolf: narration.
Mason Enis: theme music.

Copyright @ PineStreetProductions 2024. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.

Transcript

[Music] welcome sports fans to Gen X classic

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athletes from our generation this is Gen X classic sports sports talk for Gen xers by gen

xers all right so you ready sure okay welcome to episode8 I've got a special guest with

me today he's an 18-year-old uh future um Sports

journalist and he happens to be my kid Dylan so Dylan say hello hello and the

reason we're doing this episode is because uh Dylan brought me the idea originally he brought me an idea for

something else and when I did the research on it it sort of led into the topic for episode 8 so what Dylan wanted

to talk about originally was uh the 1989 NFL draft and

as I started researching that I realized that there's actually since we're in Arkansas there's actually another story

that sort of precedes and leads into the story of the 1989 draft and Dylan said

well I don't know anything about that but I'm going to I'm going to talk to him and you about it out there and we're

going to uh learn some stuff about an event that I was very much aware of when it happened so Dylan based on all of our

likes and teams and favorite players and so forth uh we decided to do as you

wanted the 1989 draft but when I started re searching it I realized that just an

as much of an interesting story really was the 1989 Cotton Bowl and I found

that to be a good fit because here we are in Arkansas and uh you're a student up there and we're in the middle of

football season a lot of exciting things going on so it's hard to talk about the 1989 NFL draft and all the stuff of

surrounding that like you wanted to without first talking about the 89 cotton bow so let me set the stage well

first of all what do you know about the 1989 cotton Bow by the way everybody it's pretty obvious that Dylan is he's

gen Z and the cool thing about gen Z people like Dylan who were into pop

culture is that our Gen X childhood back

to the 70s and and certainly into the 80s and 90s is really uh accessible to

these kids In Living Color and stereo sound via YouTube uh we didn't have that Gen X had

reruns and you know that missed a whole lot of things so Dylan has grown up around me seeing a lot about the 80s

sports movies television and music and so Dylan's no stranger to a lot of the

topics that we talk about it's just he didn't live through them like we did so Dylan you're going to learn a little bit

today but you do know some of this so what do you know about the cotton bow from 1989 um just said it was between UCLA

and Arkansas and how do you know it was between U UCLA and Arkansas because you

told me because I told you okay so all right so yes in 1989 the cotton bow used

to be played well yeah it was played in what they called the old Cotton bow stadium in Dallas okay

UCLA had a quarterback that you've heard of do you know who that might be Troy Eggman Troy Aman that's correct and so

what happened was um Aman was uh your protot typical dropback passing

quarterback for UCLA but how he got there is even another mini story and uh

in the 80 early 80s Aman was a well-known quarterback and I think baseball catcher perhaps out of

Henrietta Oklahoma and he was draft uh drafted he

was recruited to play football at Oklahoma um he actually was going there

to run the the option and the wishbone which most Gen X sports fans know all about about that the wishbone and the

option he was going to Oklahoma to do that for who is the coach Dylan uh bar Switzer that's correct and

in 1984 Aman shows up on campus and he was the first freshman

quarterback true freshman quarterback Oklahoma had starting at quarterback since World War II so it was a big deal

okay and Aman even though he was a big guy he was about 63 220 plus big big guy

prototypical size for a pro quarterback very much in that Terry Bradshaw type of

mold or whatever the thing about Eggman was he could run the guy was a great athlete so he went to Oklahoma to run

the wishbone um so um he did and so what happened was he

he actually broke his ankle in a big game okay so when he broke his

ankle another guy took over I believe it was 85 the Championship season of 85 and

the guy's name was uh Jamal Holloway and they he ran the wishbone to Perfection

as they say Aman didn't really have a team to come back to after they won a national title with Holloway but it

wasn't a real really a bitter parting with Switzer because um Switzer helped

him find the best program back then the the transfer rules were very stringent

you know when you when you transferred you had to sit out and so uh Switzer

found the coach and the program that he thought Aman should go to and that was uh UCLA so he transfers to UCLA to play

for a guy named Terry Donahue and they ran what I call a prototypical pro style

offense dropback passing running game so forth okay so you're with me on all that

mhm okay so he transfers to UCLA and UCLA promptly goes 20 wins and four

losses with his two seasons as a starter now back then College football game the

college football season was how many games I have no idea okay so back then it was 11 games they played 12 now they

made an exception to that several years ago and bumped the schedule up to 12

games but Aman was playing in 11 game seasons and there was no playoffs so you got your 11 games plus a bowl game right

so coming into his uh final season for UCLA after sitting out and then starting

a couple years coming into his final season um Aman was hyped up big time for

the Heisman Trophy which would have been the regular season of 1988 I was a senior in high school Eggman would have

been I guess a senior at UCLA and he was hyped up along with another quarterback

who played on his biggest Rivals team and they were both hyped up preseason as Heisman finalist do you have any idea

who that guy might have been who was it who's their biggest rival USC USC do you

know who USC's quarterback was no that's the time Rodney Pete so Aman and Rodney

Pete are getting all the preseason coverage and UCLA and USC are kind of duking it out for what's going to be the

pack 10 title back then so they were getting Heisman Heisman attention for

sure um especially Aman um by the way we now know that they

both lost that Heisman to whom Barry Sanders correct cuz he had how many yards rushing 2600 yeah he had about 26

00 which stood forever and might get broken this year by yeah we have a guy at Boise State right now doing a good

job of trying to demolish that record that I thought was he's on Pace right now and he's averaging 10 yards a carry

he's on Pace averaging 10 yards a carry right so we'll see if that sticks but that's a that's an incredible uh record

nonetheless so Aman let's go back to Aman he's 11 and one or he's 10 and one

goes to a bowl game his junior year or the first year he starts and he wins comes back as a

senior goes 10 and one the only problem was they were the preseason height them

or USC to actually win the pack 10 now where does the pack 10 winner back then

traditionally always play their bowl game colum well no where well USC's home

field is the Coliseum UCLA's home field is the Rose Bowl but what bowl game did

the pack 10 winner always get uh the the seeding too Rose B they always played

the yes okay so the question was UCL laa or USC who is going to the Rose Bowl

well along the way Aman lost two conference games in 88 and one of those

was to USC and the big shootout at the end of the season so actually uh UCLA

was upset earlier in the season by Washington State okay so the game with

you USC they still had an outside shot to make it but you USC also beat them

and what's weird about that is from what I remember Rodney P was actually sick or

injured or something and I don't think he played in that game and they still upset Eggman and them so so amegan

sitting here he's actually uh when I said earlier that he was 10 and one both

both seasons he was he was uh he was I guess N9 and two as uh a senior cuz he

lost to Washington State and he lost to Rodney Pete in USC so by winning over

UCLA USC got the bid to the Rose Bowl and the Cotton Bowl had already

negotiated with the pack 10 and for the first time they said look we will take

your runner up in the Cotton Bowl to play the Southwest Conference Champion

so that's what happened USC upset UCLA USC went to the rose that left uh UCLA

La second place with a 9-2 record going to the cotton bow against what turned

out to be the aransa Razer backs okay mhm um and by the way that game against

USC was really like a pick them type situation it was a complete toss up over

who um was going to win that game most likely now so that's how UCLA got there

first they got their quarterback their quarterback was matched up perfectly with their uh coordinator and head coach

and their philosophy and that leaves you with the Southwest Conference Champion Arkansas Razer backs okay so Dylan do

you know anything about the Razer Backs from that 1988 regular season by any chance besides that they had a bunch of

players drafted including Steve Atwater not really okay so um do do you know who

their play byplay and color analysts are on the radio right now maybe if you said

their names Quinn groy is the color analyst and the and he was a

quarterback uh for Arkansas back then and Quinn groy still on the radio as

their analyst and that that was the team that he he was a part of that team so let me tell you let's set the stage for

Arkansas so do you have any idea who the coach would have been in 1988 no that's too early for yeah I know

I'm I'm I'm getting ahead of you there for sure that was Ken Hatfield's fifth season and Ken Hatfield took over for

Lou Holtz 5 years earlier all right in 1984 Ken Hatfield took over for Lou

Holtz coming into the Cotton Bowl that year Arkansas also had only or they

ended up with a 10 and two uh 10- two record but they had they had two big losses in the

regular season I'm sorry one big loss in the regular

season um before I get to that though let me back up do you know what offense Arkansas ran that they were everybody

was kind of famous for back then I I I told you the answer when I was talking about Oklahoma Wishbone they ran the

wishbone they ran a version of the wishbone that Ken Hatfield was a big champion of and that was called the flex

bone and that basically meant they could break the bone formation up and have another receiver or whatever it was more

flexible so they call it the flex bone okay so Arkansas That

season um they started out s and0 okay and and and the Southwest

Conference and everything so they're rolling right so they had been ranked as high as top 10 in the country at

different times they started the season not only seven or went through the season not only 7 and0 7 and zero in the

Southwest Conference they also played their final game of the year against you

have any idea what national matchup they had the 11th game of the season by any

chance they were they were 10 and zero going into the F the final game of the year so obviously they're undefeated in

the Southwest Conference and they had this one extra game that uh was a big

showdown game for them and it was the final game of the season you know who that was was it a Southwest team no it

was a a national matchup it wasn't a Southwest Conference was it Miami it was Miami that's a good guy that was all

that was uh the Miami Not only was it a game against Miami it was a um the

second half of a two game stretch against Miami so do you know anything

about the Miami game from the season before by any chance no I don't was it Jimmy Johnson still that's right and

that's its own story too that we won't get into today but so the season before

Arkansas also had a good team and you know I know these things have to happen years and years in

advance somehow or another being the athletic director I'm sure Frank braws ended up scheduling the Miami Hurricanes

and I don't know if they scheduled that while Jimmy was the head coach or Jimmy inherited that schedule somebody that's

a huge Razer back fan and knows all these things can tell me but the year

before Miami rolled into Little Rock to play the Razer backs and do you know what happened in that game by any chance

I'd assume that Miami blew them out Miami blew them out like 51 or 2 to S I think something like that total mismatch

and and the reason that was such a big deal really is because it was an emotional thing between Jimmy Johnson

and Frank brols because years before um not only when Holtz got hired but I'm

pretty sure uh when Hatfield got hired too Jimmy thought he had the job both of

those times I think he was an assistant or head coach at other schools and being a former Razer back and playing for bws

I think he thought they would give him a fair shot at uh becoming the coach and

it turns out he didn't get the job and it really UPS set him and so when they

ended up on the schedule against each other when I tell you he tried to beat Arkansas as hard as he could and and War

Memorial and Little Rock trust me on that so it ended up being 52 to7 Michael

Irving got drafted to the uh Cowboys as their first round pick and Jimmy comes

back the next year at Miami and so now they're scheduling the second half of that series and Arkansas has to play at

Miami I remember watching that game and the the the important thing about that

game is how close it was you have any idea what the score could have been for a 1988 National top 10 both teams were

in the top 10 you have any idea what the score might have been I would like to say that it was lowc scoring but I think

actually was yeah it was fairly low scoring it was a typical 80s style game maybe even a little underscored for by

80s standards no telling them it was 18-6 Miami and Arkansas was in that game

all the way and had a shot if I may be bad wrong I need Wayne Pumphrey to tell me different but I want to say Steve

Atwater perhaps dropped an interception that would have maybe turned things

around I can't remember I just have that in my head that may not have happened but somebody will correct me but yeah on

a nationally televised game which we've gone over and over on this show how

difficult it is to back then how difficult it was to even get a nationally televised game Arkansas did

pretty well um it really didn't hurt them that much in the National Consciousness I guess because um they

ended up going into the cotton bow you want to have you want to take a stab at what Arkansas after going 10 and one and

only losing by two on the road to top 10 Miami you wanted to take a stab at what they might have been ranked going into

the Cotton Bowl as Southwest Conference champions somewhere talk 10 they were

number 10 in the Country Bingo and I don't know I have everything else on this these notes that I'm looking at

except where UCLA was ranked coming into the game it's safe to say they were probably in

the top 10 or top 15 but I'm not positive anyway so Arkansas's number 10

UCLA whatever they were and it was it was it was a pretty good matchup and

so you got you got nine and uh 10 and one against nine- two good matchup now the

reason that this is important and worth talking about before you even talk about the 1989 draft is that we always joke on

here that um that all roads seem to lead through

Arkansas when nationally when national champions are crowned in NBA NFL Major League all

these big memorable moments especially from Gen X every time we talk about them

we seem to always find a thread that goes back back to Arkansas which is really bizarre but

anyway obviously Arkansas was a threat in this one because they were participating in the game but that's not

the only reason so with the Cotton Bowl being in Dallas what they do or what

they did and they probably still do is they assign each team a different hotel and each team a different practice

facility right yeah and so there's so many fields and places around Dallas um

Arkansas was assigned to somewhere I can't remember if they said it was SM or where but somewhere like that to go do

their practicing guess where UCLA was scheduled to do all of their workouts

the several days leading up to the Cotton Bowl probably something Cowboys related Texas stadium yeah so UCLA is

literally borrowing Texas Stadium from the Cowboys and by the way the the Cowboys were horrible that season of 19

thinking that 1988 the Cowboys were three and 13 they were horrible mhm and so so they needed

a quarterback and they were going to have the first round or the first pick

in the NFL draft because they had the worst record so Troy

Aman is out there working out every day and it was perfectly legal to do it and

so forth but a guy in a funny hat showed up and watched him work out every day and that guy would have been whom Tom

Landry that would have been Tom Landry so Tom Landry personally Scouts Tory

Aman and he's out there to find his quarterback his franchise

quarterback of the Future Okay so that's kind of how that

impacts at least initially the draft but then something else happens um the the the dates get a

little little bit interesting so Landry scouted Troy Aman in January of 1989 so

uh people get really confused in football because a lot of postseason stuff happens in a new calendar year but

the regular season of 88 and therefore the postseason of 1989 the Cotton Bowl

was on January the 2nd 1989 in Dallas Landry as of January 1st

1989 is scouting Troy Aman to make him the first pick in the draft presumably

however what Tom Landry did not know was going on and here's our other huge Arkansas

thread is you want to guess what happened in February of '89 which would have been my senior year of high school

the spring or the winter and a really big thing happened Jerry Jones buys the

Cowboys Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in febru or at least it was public by February I don't know when it was

finalized and all that and so Jerry bought the team in February the draft is in

April and he fires Tom Lander he flies all the way to Austin to fire Tom Landry

and he hires Jimmy Johnson so there's your two major Arkansas threads

for the 1989 Cotton Bowl Is Not only was Arkansas as a team playing in it but

Jerry Jones that entire time was negotiating in Earnest to buy the Cowboys franchise MH okay so let's get

back to the game itself it was on January 2nd 19 uh

89 UCLA I think I said this maybe not um

they were the first team from the pack 10 to play in the Cotton Bowl since the 19 1940s so um it wasn't a normal

occurrence for a a pack 10 team to come that far east and play in the middle

part of the country it's cotton bow also another little interesting historical

part of this is that UCLA had won six I believe

consecutive bowl games leading into that game which is phenomenal I mean just think just from lately you can think of

upsets that happened in bowl games and stuff and and how hard hard that would be to do but they were they were rolling

I mean back then 9 and2 was nothing to sneeze at and the bowls were so structured and there was no playoff so

UCLA had a really good program they sent a lot of guys to the pros back then and they were working on towards their

seventh consecutive um Bowl championship which was just unheard of um so like I said to

to rewind and reset the story up Dallas Texas January 1989 UCLA is 9 and2 ranked

let's say in the top 15 Arkansas is 10- one and ranked in exactly at number 10

depending on what poll you saw okay Dylan do you want to take a stab at who

won the game UCLA UCL won the game and do you have any idea what the score I

remember watching this game just like it was yesterday not that I remember all the details but I definitely remember

watching the game do you have any idea what the score was I do because I looked

it up on my phone and it's absolutely disgusting football why was it disgusting football it was 17 to8 17 to3

I thought well that it says 17 to8 but it was a awful game I think it was 17 to3 but anyway doesn't matter um I I

don't know who I watched it with but I watched it and so I was a senior in high school so obviously this was something I

was into it probably was with my dad and I remember probably with your Uncle Casey and I remember everyone in the

room saying this was one of the worst football games they'd ever watched in their lives and the reason is is because

there was just no offense in this game it was atrocious man and um there were

some reasons behind that um two really different styles of play for one thing I

mean I don't know how many teams Arkansas played that were probably as good at throwing the ball and so forth

or at least being balanced the Southwest Conference was still a pretty run heavy league and so you had two clashing

philosophies for sure on offense but something else happened that kind of made the score at least on Arkansas side

uh be be low do you have any idea what that was if I had to guess with how like

low it was cuz it was three I just checked but I'd have to say was their quarterback hurt somebody got hurt no no

there were two suspensions oh okay so Arkansas had Wayne Martin who was a

defensive end and we'll talk about him when we talk about the 89 draft but he was a dominant player he was a an NFL

player he and their offensive tackle probably the biggest guy on the field was a guy named Freddy childis from

Arkansas and what's funny is I had met him that summer before at a football camp and he was the biggest human being

I think I'd ever Stood Beside at that point and Freddy and Wayne Martin somehow I don't no one knows to this day

I guess what they did but probably broke curfew or something and Coach Hatfield

uh suspended them both for the game and so um it you lost your best

offensive tackle and you lost your best defensive end so really in the trenches

it probably was a lot different story um than it should have been and you know I thought I scratched them down the

scribbled them down somewhere and I guess I did not but um Aman did not

really have that incredible of a game either I guess Atwater and company did a

good job in the secondary cuz I want to say Aman only threw for 160 or 70 yards

or something but um so it was an awful game to watch Arkansas could do

absolutely nothing on offense and to be honest Arkansas had a great defense that year to be honest UCLA couldn't do much

better and probably you know the number one quarterback in the draft being on their

team made a difference um but yeah it was it was an atrocious ugly ugly game

so yeah so Wayne Mar and Freddy chers were suspended by Hatfield and Arkansas

goes on to lose the 1989 Cotton Bowl by whopping score of 17-3 to Troy Aman and

um there's probably several names on the UCLA team that I could mention if I looked them up but I just know they had

a lot of Talent on that team as well and UCLA ended up with their seventh consecutive bowl game and I don't know

if that's a record to this day or not but it's certainly was I looked it up and at the time it was and it was eventually broken by Florida State uh

later but at the time it was a record at the time okay all right well good

um boy I tell you when I looked up amegan there was a whole lot of stuff about his early life in high school and

college that was really interesting um Better B better baseball player than

most people probably think um just the way that he went to Oklahoma and then

transferred and just all the St behind that's pretty interesting to me of course I'm a big you know I'm a big um

Aman guy let me tell you some of the names on Arkansas's team just for fans

out there who are straining to try to remember because this was a long time ago but Barry Foster was a running back

on that team for Arkansas Quinn groy was the quarterback on that team for Arkansas there was a running back that I

very much remember named Juju harshaw on that team um there was a running back

that I very much remember named James Rouse on that team there was a wide

receiver on that team that I remember named Derek Russell Derrick Russell was

from here in Little Rock I believe Little Rock Central and uh Derrick Russell had a nice little career of

probably six seven years with the Broncos mostly uh good receiver Steve

Atwater was on that team for Arkansas as we've mentioned and um Wayne Martin and

Freddy Chris who I've already mentioned mentioned and Arkansas had a really good kicker named Kendall trainer have you

ever heard of him I actually think I have yeah he I think he won man I hope it was trainer he won a bow game for him

I want to say during that stretch maybe it was him I Wayne's probably mad at me

for not knowing that for sure but I want to say Kendall trainer won a bow game with a field goal um okay so that's kind

of the story that's the background story to the 1989 NFL draft and I just thought it was

interesting it would make its own episode to pull in the Arkansas connections and set the stage for what

all was going on when the topic that you wanted to talk about originally rolled around which was in April so what four

months later when the NFL draft and by the way the NFL draft was not the event then no that it is now whatsoever that

was that was the pre milk hyper days that was the well yeah he might have been on there already but it the hype

for it it was not a full week full court press um press uh you know event like it

is now for sure so anyway well he was the only person that attended too troyman he was the only player that went

there yeah thanks for stealing my very first comment out of the next episode when we talk about that but yes we'll

talk about that for the episode so for the 1989 draft episode so yeah the

cotton ball of 1989 it was a good story for Arkansas fans fans it was a good story for Cowboys fans it was a good

story for NFL fans and it led to uh the just the way that the dominoes fell for

that whole season and and how the bowl game came to be it influenced a whole lot of history um for two or three

programs in the pros in college there so I thought it was very interesting and um

like I said it's really weird how when we talk about these uh things so many

things um run through so many Reds seem to run through Arkansas so what do you think about that pretty good topic

that's pretty good topic and uh what's really jarring is I forgot that back then you couldn't declare for the draft

as a junior yeah like nowadays there's no not a single senior quarterback would play in a bowl game right especially the

post jayen Smith era where they're literally afraid they're going to you know blow their knee up and not play

anymore right so that's pretty crazy and I didn't know about that 1988 Heisman

race where those two quarter back Rodney Pete and Y tro ikman were the front run

I had a Sports Illustrated from back then that had the two of them on the cover and even even if Pete wasn't being

I'm pretty sure they were both being pushed for the Heisman but even if not they were pushing uh Aman forward and

Pete was being pushed as a still a premier guy because of being the quarterback of USC and they had a good

team so I think um I'm going to end this episode right here and we're going to

film or record our next episode and it will be about the 1989 draft but let's

end episode 8 the 1989 Cotton Bowl right there thanks for being a part of it buddy thank you for joining us on Gen X

classic Sports where Nostalgia meets The Thrill of the game tune in next time for more insightful discussions and

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