An opening battle in the war for college football's offensive soul: The 2006 Capital One Bowl. Part 1 of a narrative look back.

In 200(7), two coaches faced off in a fateful bowl game. These two coaches would come to exemplify two opposing offensive philosophies in the college football landscape of the 2010s: pro-style and spread. Both coaches would become controversial or generate huge amounts of hype for very different reasons, but after the 2006 season they met each other with their two teams: the Wisconsin Badgers and the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Houston Nutt Can’t Run

On January 2, 1978 Houston Nutt was sitting on the bench while Lou Holtz’s Arkansas Razorbacks destroyed the Oklahoma Sooners 31-6 in the Orange Bowl. Coming into the game, Oklahoma had hopes for a national championship--both Arkansas and Oklahoma’s collective rival Texas had just dropped their first game of the year to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl. Arkansas had lost to Texas earlier in the season so had no hopes of standing atop the final polls.

Unfortunately for the Sooners, Holtz had turned the Hogs around into one of the best teams the program had ever seen; he installed a new veer option offense that changed the offensive identity of the team itself and led them to a 10-1 season up to this point. On the bench, sophomore quarterback Houston Nutt was playing backup to the junior starter Ron Calcagni, but Houston had a problem: his outlook at Arkansas had shifted drastically as a result of Holtz’s changes.

Frank Broyles had recruited Houston for what ended up being his final season as head coach--1976. Things looked great for the freshman quarterback; he was second on the depth chart and Broyles gave him the vote of confidence when Houston started four games as a result of Calcagni’s injury. He didn’t play spectacularly; in his two seasons as a Razorback, Houston’s completion percentage never climbed over 50%, but he seemed to be in a position where the coaching staff expected him to develop over the years and eventually take the reins.

It was a good place for the young quarterback. The Little Rock native would have grown up amidst the most prestigious years of Arkansas football: Broyles had coached the state’s greatest-ever sports team to a national championship in 1964 when Houston would have been seven years old. Now the freshman was playing for that coach and the biggest sports program in his home state.

In 1977, however, Holtz wanted a quarterback who could threaten offenses with his legs. Holtz wanted to rely heavily on option plays and make the opposing defenses guess wrong on whether the QB or RBs would carry the ball. As a result, Calcagni in ‘77 complimented his 1147 passing yards with 546 yards on the ground--doubling his rushing output from the year before.

The problem for Houston was that he couldn’t run. In 1976 Nutt had -95 yards rushing. That stat is pretty typical for a drop-back passer who never runs and just takes occasional sacks. In 1977, the year of Holtz’s veer option, Nutt seems to have been tapped to run those plays occasionally, but the results look dismal: 0.7 yards per attempt compared to Calcagni’s 4.4. If Holtz wanted to continue his success in Fayetteville after Calcagni’s departure then Nutt was clearly not the way forward. He did not match the offensive identity of the new and improved Lou Holtz Razorbacks.

Before the 1978 season, Houston Nutt would transfer to the Oklahoma State Cowboys where he would finish his playing career as a backup quarterback.

30 years after Nutt was given an opportunity to start for Broyles’s Hogs, Nutt was the head of another Razorback team that was having their own identity crisis. Houston Nutt would later be a struggling Arkansas head coach that would lead the Hogs in the 2007* Capital One Bowl. His opponent? First year head coach Bret Bielema and Barry Alvarez’s Wisconsin football machine.

“If you don’t play with a fullback, we’ll kick your ass.”

When Bret Bielema allegedly stated his preference for fullbacks while speaking to Texas high school coaches, his perspective had been shaped by years in the rough-and-tumble world of traditional Big Ten power football. Specifically, Bielema had spent years as the head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers--a prime example of the type of tough, midwestern team that to many is synonymous with the word “football” itself. Despite the strong opinions that Bielema would develop about offensive schemes that aren’t man’s man, powerful, big boy football, Bielema was and is still a defensive coach.

The infamous Bret Bielema started his football career as a Defensive Tackle at the University of Iowa, and his expertise would continue along that trajectory. As a coach, Bielema would work with linebackers and defensive linemen. He eventually landed himself a position as the Defensive Coordinator with Barry Alvarez’s Wisconsin in 2004. In 2005 Paul Chryst joined the staff as co-Offensive Coordinator, and in 2006 when Barry Alvarez stepped down as head coach he chose Bielema to take the reins. Chryst would be OC, and overall the transition was smooth. Alvarez had established himself as the greatest head coach in the history of Wisconsin football; he had delivered the program its only three Rose Bowl wins. Bielema would later on have his own, more complicated relationship with the grandaddy of all bowl games.

Perhaps the Bielema who coached Arkansas from 2013-2017 would have been afraid of getting his "ass kicked" in the Capital One Bowl. In his first year as head coach, Bielema found his first team of Badgers facing off against the greatest Arkansas fullback of all time: Peyton Hillis. Hillis would go on to play in the NFL for several years. He had a breakout season with Denver in 2008. Much like his head coach experienced during his playing days, Hillis had to become the first-option rusher for the Broncos in the 2008 season when their primary runningbacks were injured. He received a lot of attention for that performance, but the next year he became an understated fullback again. In 2010 he would be traded to the Cleveland Browns, where he would make a name for himself once more as a fullback: eventually becoming a Madden cover athlete in 2011.

But the weirdest thing happened in the season that fullback-loving Bielema and his brutish Badgers faced off against Hillis and his team. During that year Hillis contributed less to the Razorbacks than he ever had before or afterwards. In 2006 Hillis carried the ball only 13 times. In 2005 he carried it 65 times and in 2007 it was 62. His receiving yards and overall plays from scrimmage tells a similar story. So what happened in 2006? Googling “Peyton Hillis injury 2006” and several variations gives no indication he was battling injury at this time. So what’s the deal? What was going on in 2006 that would explain Hillis’s underutilization?

The answer: 2006 was not just the year the Razorbacks had one of the all-time best RB pairs in Darren McFadden and Felix Jones. It was not only the year that McFadden finished as runner-up to the Heisman trophy and electrified the college football world as perhaps the best-ever example of a Wildcat RB. This was also the year when a battle was happening behind the scenes in Fayetteville. This was the year of the Springdale Five, the Mitch Mustain quarterback controversy, and a former high school coach who would play a major role in popularizing the spread offense in the 2010s.

In that 2007 Capital One Bowl, Gus Malzahn was the offensive coordinator in his first and only year with the program. He was matched up directly with the fullback loving, former DC Bret Bielema in his first year as a Wisconsin head coach, and Gus didn’t seem to like fullbacks--even one as great as Peyton Hillis.

Hey everybody thanks for reading! I got it in my head to start a long, narrative, sports writing project after stumbling upon this game while researching for a pre-season write up of the Razorbacks. If you found this interesting and think I'm on the right track please let me know. I had a lot of fun writing this and I plan on continuing with this write up and really diving into this particular game. I hope it's as interesting to y'all as it is to me. I've also identified 8 other bowl games that could continue on the narrative and themes I've started with here: the pro-style vs. the spread, running quarterbacks vs. passers, and traditional vs. new-school offenses.

*I erroneously referred to the Capital One Bowl as the "2006" bowl rather than the "2007" game. I forgot that this bowl game is played after the New Year and that it should be referred to accordingly.

Part 2 is now live