RISON - This Friday night, the Rison Wildcats will make the nearly 19 mile trip from their campus to Paul “Bear” Bryant Stadium in Fordyce to take on the Fordyce Redbugs in what is considered by many to be one of the premier high school football rivalries in Arkansas.
Stan Sadler, former publisher of the Herald and considered the unofficial historian of Rison High School athletics, joined current Herald publisher Britt Talent and Roy Phillips on the Free Range Conversations podcast this week to discuss what is one of the oldest and most heralded rivalries in Arkansas high school football.
The podcast can be downloaded on Apple Podcast or Spotify, or people can listen to it on the Herald’s website at www.clevelandcountyherald.com
This week’s game marks the 73rd meeting between the two schools with Fordyce currently holding a 39-28-5 lead in the series. The first game was held in 1952 with the Wildcats posting a 37-7 win over the Redbugs for what has turned out to be Rison’s largest margin of victory in the series. Fordyce’s largest win came in 1997 with a 41-0 shutout.
While Sadler said he could not confirm that the Rison-Fordyce rivalry is the oldest in the state, he did sayid it is considered one of the best. “I think the rivalry itself, the series itself, I would go out and say that it is probably unmatched as far as the excitement and the intensity of the series,” he said. “I wouldn’t know of any other series in the state that is quite like this one.”
He went on to say that the only other series that may be comparable is the Salt Bowl between Benton and Bryant high schools.
Sadler said he could not pinpoint any particular reason why the Rison-Fordyce rivalry has become like has other than it simply kept building and building from one year to another.
One factor could be the circumstances surrounding the two schools for their annual meeting since both schools have rich histories in football and multiple state championships.
For most of the series, Rison and Fordyce played in separate conferences and often in different classifications with Fordyce usually being the larger school. The rivalry game was often held as the season opener for both teams, and the kickoff didn’t take place until 8 p.m., which in itself made it unique for a high school football game.
And often times, both schools were coming off successful seasons when they met.
That was certainly the case in the early 1990’s when both Rison and Fordyce won back-to-back state championships in 1990 and 1991, and then met each other to start the following season.
Sadler said the 1991 meeting between Rison and Fordyce was highly anticipated since the Wildcats had just ended what was then the nation’s longest high school football win streak when the Wildcats upset Barton in the 1990 Class A state championship game. Fordyce, meanwhile, had won the Class 2A state title.
“Both teams had basically the same starters back from 1990,” Sadler said.
“To tell you the excitement, the build up for that particular game, my brother (Bill Sadler who was working for KARK Channel 4 at the time ) was able to get a helicopter shot,” he said. “It was an 8 o’clock kickoff that night and he made the shot at about 5 o’clock, about three hours before kickoff, and both bleachers were full and people had started gathering around the field… probably about nine to 10 people deep (by kickoff).”
Sadler said they estimated there was a crowd of about 4,000 people at that game.
And the game itself lived up to its billing as it ended in a 21-21 tie with Fordyce threatening at the Rison 1 when the game ended. In fact, Sadler said some Fordyce supporters still feel like their Redbugs had actually scored at the end to win.
“(Fordyce’s) Clark Watkins was the quarterback and Tom Russell was the fullback, and you know they felt like they got in there in the end zone in the end,” Sadler said. He recalled the Redbugs tried to punch it in between the tackles and there was a mass of 22 bodies concentrated inside the 1 yard line as time was expiring. Sadler said the game officials never signaled a touchdown and the game ended in tie.
“They (Fordyce) had a time out that they didn’t use, and that has always been a discussion also,” he noted.
“That’s always going to be the lead game as far as talking about the series,” Sadler added.
This week’s game has the potential to be another classic in the series considering that Rison and Fordyce both enter the game undefeated at 8-0 overall and 5-0 in 8-3A conference play. The winner will have the inside track to winning the league title and a playoff seeding that will assure home field advantage through the first three rounds of the playoffs.