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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Saline County Showdown
Central Arkansas, AR
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By: Nate Olson
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Photo(s) By: Photo by Wayne Smith
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Salt Bowl takes rivalry to next level
What started as an afterthought grew into the state’s best and most unique football rivalry.
Four years ago Benton and Bryant brought their backyard brawl to War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, and the Salt Bowl was reborn.
“I like it at War Memorial because there’s 23,000 people there,” Benton senior receiver Austin Sams said. “The atmosphere is crazy. Everyone is yelling, and the adrenaline is pumping.”
The game is no longer a feud shared by neighboring communities. Its carnival atmosphere captured the attention of the region and state. An aggressive marketing campaign that begins weeks before kickoff gives the event media publicity compared to no other regular-season game in the state.
“It’s grown beyond our wildest imagination,” said State Senator Shane Broadway, a 1990 Bryant alum and member of the Salt Bowl committee. “It’s a community event, and the game is the main attraction. But, regardless if the game is good or bad, we want people to come and have a good time and enjoy the tailgating and the atmosphere.”
Thirty-five years ago the matchup didn’t exist. Benton was the bigger, more established town. Bryant was far from the boomtown it’s become. Former Benton Coach Max Graham needed an opponent in 1974 when Fort Smith Southside opted out of a proposed matchup. Bryant gladly filled the void and the gridiron rivalry was born. The Panthers blanked the Hornets 28-0, which started a 10-game Benton winning streak. The first game inspired one of many pranks through the years. Bryant students painted a Benton black panther pink. The next year, a plane flew over the Bryant stadium and dumped pink marshmallows that missed the mark. Benton rallied around the ‘pink’ panther and made it a rallying cry for the program. The band still plays the Pink Panther theme song and a large pink painted panther sits in the Benton Memorial Athletic Museum on the Benton campus.
Benton continued its domination rattling off a string of 13 wins from 1986 until 1998.
“Bryant was always a basketball school,” Broadway said. “When I grew up we all played basketball. When I was in school everybody asked, ‘How many weeks until basketball season?”
Bryant snapped the 13-game losing streak in 1999 with a 42-7 win at Benton’s C.W. Lewis Stadium. Former Bryant Coach Daryl Patton, who led Fayetteville to its first state title last fall, became the only competitor to win the game as a player and as a coach. Patton quarterbacked the 1984 team to a 35-12 win and led the 1985 Hornets to a 14-7 win, throwing a ‘Hail Mary’ touchdown pass to Ralph Nelson with seven seconds remaining in the game. The win clinched the school’s first state playoff berth.
“It’s such a great rivalry with the proximity of the towns,” said Patton, who beat Benton six times as a player and ocach. “I have some good memories of those games. I remember some of those plays like they happened yesterday.
Bryant Coach Paul Calley served as the offensive coordinator on the 1999 Hornet team and counts it as one of his favorite memories of the series.
“I was in the press box, and the crowd is right there. If they stand, you can’t see the field,” said Calley, who has coached at Bryant 15 years, including six as head coach. “We were up 42-7 with about eight minutes left in the game. We took our starters out, and the fans were yelling at me to put the starters back in. They wanted to score more points.”
The win gave Bryant momentum and started a four-game winning streak. The Hornets are 7-2-1 the past 10 meetings and won the past two games.
“(Bryant’s) resurgence added to the intensity of it,” said Benton High School sports historian Donnie Birks, a 1969 Benton alum.
The two wins in that stretch are special to Benton Coach Marc Jones. The Panthers won the inaugural Salt Bowl at War Memorial Stadium in 2005, and then faced a rematch with the Hornets in the first round of the 5A playoffs. There was talk of moving the game back to War Memorial Stadium, but Jones objected and opted for home field advantage. “I said, ‘No,’ and left the room,” Jones said.
Instead, Benton played host to the game at venerable C.W. Lewis Stadium. More than 13,000 jammed into the stadium, which has a capacity of 12,300.
“We pulled up at the game. We always bus from across town because our high school is across town,” Jones said. “We got there at 5:45, and when we got off the bus the crowd roared and half of them booed. I thought the game was already going on, and we missed it because everyone was there so early.”
Benton battled back from a 28-14 deficit to win 35-28 to become the first team in the series to win twice in one season. The achievement helped ease the pain of a 49-0 blowout loss to eventual state champion Springdale the following week.
“It was a great deal for our football program,” Jones said. “When we lost to Springdale there wasn’t much positive to say about that game, but on the season, we beat our arch-rival at War Memorial Stadium to start the season off, won the conference championship, beat our arch-rival in the playoffs and lost to the best team in the state.”
Still, Bryant’s success over the past 10 years has made the rivalry more relevant. Both communities work together to ensure the game is played on the biggest stage.
“You’d like to say it is just another game, but it’s not,” Jones said. “It’s the biggest rivalry in the state of Arkansas. Any way you dice it, that’s the way it is. It’s one of those deals where it can jump-start your season and it can make the season go very good, or it can give you a big lull at the front end. That’s the good thing about having 9 or 10 days to get ready to play the next opponent.”
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