Body Language, 1970

They were calling it the Big Shootout again but it wound up being the Big Murder. What happened was that Darrell Royal ordered his Texas Longhorns to quit fooling around with these dreaded Arkansas games and get, as he put it, "body on body." Texas hadn't done that last year, he insisted, and that was why President Nixon and everybody else saw such a close one up in the Ozarks. This would be different, Royal promised the night before the game. "We're gonna get folks on folks and it's gonna be Worster and Bertelsen," he said.

It was that, all right. It was Steve Worster and Jim Bertelsen and Jim Bertelsen and Steve Worster, over and over, and they just kept on coming until a classic rivalry that is always a rather panicky ordeal for both teams was nothing more than a 42-7 ho-hummer for Royal and Texas—a team that proved beyond a doubt it was the best in the country, at least over the regular season.

The shocking thing was the thoroughness. Arkansas is no dog, as most people know, and Frank Broyles' Razorbacks are accustomed to saving their best game of the season for Texas. They were expected to do the same last Saturday, but Royal felt something Arkansas didn't.

"Last year," he said, "we did a lousy job of getting ready. The coaches, I mean. If the kids don't have all that heart, we don't win 15-14. We're ready. We're gonna get body on body and be angry."

It's hard to imagine a team readier than Texas this year. Or madder. From the very start it looked as if some carpenters would have to be called in to un-nail the Texas blockers from the Arkansas defense. Texas owned the scrimmage line on the game's first play, when Bertelsen went 13 yards, and never stopped owning it until Royal's Wishbone I had cut up Arkansas for 464 yards rushing.

A record Memorial Stadium crowd of more than 68,000 people sent up that old familiar chorus of "Woo...Woo...Woo" for Worster, but they should have invented something for Bertelsen as well, not to mention the offensive line. The line just rocketed out as a single torture device and made the normally quick Arkansas rush look first frozen and then flattened.

The linemen deserve mention: Tackles Bobby Wuensch and Jerry Sisemore, Guards Bobby Mitchell and Mike Dean, Center Jim Achilles and Tight End Deryl Comer. These were the fellows who sprang Bertelsen for 189 yards and Worster for 126, the men who blew them in for five touchdowns. Quarterback Eddie Phillips got the other score—and that was only fair, for Phillips wasn't exactly asleep.

Texas simply kept the football, the way Royal loves to, and the Longhorn touchdown drives monopolized what seemed like the entire afternoon. The Horns roared 76 yards the first time they got the ball, and scored. They went 83 yards the third time they got it, and scored. It was 14-0 at that point. Arkansas got back in the game with two screens and an interference call, and it was 14-7. But....

Right here came the game's only truly dramatic moment. A scramble by Bill Montgomery, another screen and another penalty helped move Arkansas to a first down at the Texas three-yard line. Then, out of somewhere, came this old-fashioned thing called the goal-line stand. Arkansas took four running shots at the Texas middle and wound up on the one. That sent Frank Broyles heading for the worst loss of his career. Texas nursed the ball 99 yards—slowly, punishingly, Worsterly and Bertelsenly—to a touchdown that so demoralized the Razorbacks they were never again what they might have been.

"I want to say something about Eddie Phillips," said Royal later. "We kid a lot about the pass around here [ Texas threw a barrage of five against Arkansas], but Eddie puts the ball in the air, too. He just throws it sideways on the pitch instead of forward."