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Post by ybp80 on Jun 5, 2024 13:10:41 GMT -6
Harding and ACU played in a Bowl Game in Houston after the 76 or 77 season. ACU won the game. To my knowledge, that’s the only time that those two football teams have met. (I hate to confess this, but I was enrolled at Harding at the time.)
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Post by bucfan on Jun 5, 2024 13:30:01 GMT -6
Playing Harding would be a no win situation for ACU. Beat them and it will be "Well of course you won, ACU is D1 and Harding is D2". Lose and we'd never hear the end of it. It would be Angelo State times 10.
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Post by Outsider on Jun 5, 2024 14:00:33 GMT -6
Harding and ACU played in a Bowl Game in Houston after the 76 or 77 season. ACU won the game. To my knowledge, that’s the only time that those two football teams have met. (I hate to confess this, but I was enrolled at Harding at the time.) I confess that I did my undergraduate work at Harding. I loved my time there and then it was time to move on. I still have family that teach there as well as here at ACU. My roots go deep at both places, so I get it but it's a definite NO GO as far as football goes. They are DII and we are DI and SOS is what matters.
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Post by acutrackfan on Jun 5, 2024 14:57:44 GMT -6
I was at the ACU-Harding game (the Shrine Bowl) in 1976 -- it was a slugfest that ACU won 24-14. My biggest memory of the game is still seared in my mind's eye. Ove kicked a 51-yard FG early in the 3rd quarter -- as the ball was sailing through the uprights, Ove's holder, Dean Low, has already raised up and started to walk away. Ove, ever the showman, has raised his hands into the air indicating the kick was good and turned toward the bench. Then, the outside rusher for Harding finally arrived at the scene and hit Ove full speed at the knee level from behind and broke Ove's kicking leg. While Ove still had some NFL stops after that year, he never fully regained the strength in that leg. The Harding guy got a 15-yard late hit penalty, but I still don't remember if he got tossed. The tenor of what was already a "chippy" game certainly never improved over the final 1.5 quarters.
As far as whether ACU should ever play Harding in a FB game again, I know that the original comment was made in jest. BUT, I would dread playing Harding. I watched the D-2 NC game on TV last year and the Bison took apart a good Colorado School of Mines. Harding runs a unique "run-only" offense that absolutely wears down any team they play. I know that when Harding decided to go that route, their coaches spent several days at Army, the only other team that runs that kind of offense (and Army returned the favor by sending most of their staff to Searcy to spend time with the Harding coaches last summer). And, remember how Army obliterated our defense during that COVID game 4 years ago at West Point. Just like Bucfan stated, it would be a "no-win" situation and I think there would be a huge chance that it would be the Angelo St game all over again, only worse.
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Post by ybp80 on Jun 5, 2024 15:02:21 GMT -6
I heard from a certain cousin of mine that the Big Purple absolutely blew away the Harding band. I agree that I would hate to see them play ACU. Definitely a good team.
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Post by bucfan on Jun 5, 2024 16:23:58 GMT -6
Cory Hogue from Texas Football has us ranked 20 out of 35 non FBS Texas schools. Below #5 HSU and #12 McMurry. Pretty disappointing that we are expected to be the least successful football program in Abilene for the upcoming year.
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Post by Cap'n on Jun 5, 2024 18:08:03 GMT -6
Hard pill to swallow. If the measure is success, then we can't really complain. We haven't done anything significant in a long time. Plus, in this list, teams are rewarded for playing weaker schedules. SFA, for example went 0-fer in the UAC but jumped to 13th on this list when they bailed to the SLC. AXE EM JACKS
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Post by dallasalum on Jun 5, 2024 18:44:58 GMT -6
Cory Hogue from Texas Football has us ranked 20 out of 35 non FBS Texas schools. Below #5 HSU and #12 McMurry. Pretty disappointing that we are expected to be the least successful football program in Abilene for the upcoming year. That's a joke.
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Post by lynxferus on Jun 5, 2024 18:53:17 GMT -6
Let's play defending DII National Champion Harding. That'll sell tickets. Not really, no one here outside inner circles knows Harding and it's still DII which hurts our SOS. I don't really understand this reply. Everyone who went to ACU knows about Harding. It's a sister school. If your inner circle includes alumni and current students, then I guess that makes some sense. That's not a small inner circle. Is the outer circle the City of Abilene?
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Post by Outsider on Jun 5, 2024 19:10:06 GMT -6
Not really, no one here outside inner circles knows Harding and it's still DII which hurts our SOS. I don't really understand this reply. Everyone who went to ACU knows about Harding. It's a sister school. If your inner circle includes alumni and current students, then I guess that makes some sense. That's not a small inner circle. Is the outer circle the City of Abilene? Many alumni (and current students) don't even know much about Harding as they aren't C of C background to begin with and aren't necessarily familiar with our histories, or that ACU even has "sister schools" like Harding, LCU, Pepperdine, Lipscomb, etc... You add that to the greater Abilene, and West Texas area and my reply makes a lot of sense. The percentage of ACU students that are related to C of C, or even the Restoration Movement, has been declining for decades.
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Post by Cap'n on Jun 5, 2024 20:12:37 GMT -6
This is a general thread about ACU football during the offseason. So please don't get your feelings hurt when I lock down the thread since we got off on who we might or might not play and Harding.
Will we play Harding this year? Nope. Could they beat us this year? Nope. Should we play them any year? Yes if they move to D1. Will they move to D1? They are not financially capable of moving up in the near future.
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