It’s not football, but Vanderbilt at Arkansas on Jan. 12, 2013 in Bud Walton Arena. Arkansas won 56-33. Vanderbilt took only 40 shots the entire game, made 10, and had an offensive rating of 50.8 – the lowest of any opponent in Mike Anderson’s tenure at Arkansas by a quite a bit. I’ll never forget all the missed shots.
The 2015 game Mississippi State scored only nine points in the first half in BWA is up there, too. That’s No. 2 on the list of top defensive efficiency ratings under Mike.
I played in an eighth grade basketball game that we lost 38-4. We were down 38-0 with 50 seconds left and our coach called a timeout and challenged us not to get shutout.
I chose to keep mine college level and up, or else I’d be here all day remembering Sparkman High School football vs. Junction City bloodbaths. I will say, I was a part of an AAU team that beat a Texarkana team 122-40. We were told by our coach not to defend them outside the 3-point line after the first quarter.
I went to a hockey game twice in Little Rock. Those tie for the worst sporting events I’ve ever been to. Just ahead of that were the 2-3 “Twisters” (arena football) games I saw in Little Rock.
Tie…2002 Music City Bowl and the 1989 Cotton Bowl. Both were just brutal to watch in person. Plus I shuttled to the MCB and EVERYONE on the shuttle had to wait an extra 30 minutes after the game for one unapologetic and extremely drunk jack-wagon to get back to the shuttle before we could leave.
1997 SMU game in Shreveport. the whole trip sucked, not just the game. The casinos were small, crowded, and just kind of dingy. The hotel we booked was a pit. Just an unmitigated disaster all the way around. I swore I’d never set foot in that town again.
It was a HS Baseball district tournament game here in Chattanooga about 10 years ago. My son-in-law was the pitching coach for the team and a friend was the head coach. The parents for our team had been horrible all year. Griping openenly about umps, coaches and other players. I called a couple down in games prior for talking about the coaches where the wives could hear. The parents were out of control from the 1st inning. Very bad. Then mid game the head coach heads out to ask an ump about a call. Calmly and professionally - the ump kicked him out of the game as soon as he left the dugout. The next inning 2 sets of parents were removed by the ump and police. By now my son-in-law was coaching the team. Our team lost and at dinner after the game I asked my son-in-law what the head coach had done to deserve being booted. He said the players on our team were mumbling very bad things that the umps could hear and the head coach didn’t take action - thus he was booted. Actually I would have booted 4 more sets of parents if I was the ump. The head coach is a great guy but not good with confrontation. He was released as HC the next year. Very embarrassing. The bad thing is that the kids were not taught respect.
I watched Butler shoot 18.8 percent against UConn in the men’s BB final in 2011, but am emotionally invested in the Hogs and could recount any number of more painful experiences than that.
You were probably not born by a long shot when this happened, but I was a sophomore starting at center and linebacker in 1966 for Norphlet when we beat Sparkman 92-0. Their numbers were way down but they still wanted to play the game. It was 54-0 at halftime. We quit trying to score in the second quarter and all of the Seniors showered and dressed at halftime. In the second half, we punted on first down every time. Sparkman kept throwing the ball, our guys kept intercepting or picking up fumbles and running in for scores. We ended up #1 in the state that year so we had a good team and Sparkman was just barely fielding a team.
The final days of Sparkman’s football program were pretty similar. When I was coming up, it was in the same conference most years as Junction City, Bearden and Bauxite (who had some extremely hard-hitting guys from what I remember). The school consolidated with Camden Harmony Grove in 2004 and lost its program.
The Sparkman, Ark., Wikipedia page still reads: “They were very competitive for many years in which they played in state playoff games, sometimes with only 16 players.” Sixteen players may be generous.