Some things change and some things will never change. SEC fans will look at a school outside of the P5 and assume they are playing a Division 2 or FCS team. No matter if the opponent is FCS or a top level G5 team, it’s all the same to the SEC fan.



So pardon Arkansas fans if they don’t know or don’t care who Louisiana Tech is. The narrative after the game was how could the Razorbacks play so poorly to only beat Louisiana Tech by 1 point?

The fact is, the game played out very similarly to the last time the two schools met, back in 1997 in Little Rock. Arkansas won 17-13 and Louisiana Tech had the ball in the final two minutes with a chance to win the game. Tim Rattay completed 7 passes for 74 yards in that final drive; a drive that only went for 12 yards. The drive had 4 penalties; including a 20 yard holding penalty and an offensive pass interference penalty. Tech had 13 penalties for 141 yards in that game.

Like I said, some things never change. You aren’t going to get any breaks on the road in the SEC. To win, a G5 school has to be up by two touchdowns at least in the fourth quarter and then – hold on to your seats.

What has changed is the manner in which Louisiana Tech is competing with the P5 (Power Five, Privileged 5, whatever you want to call them.) That game in 1997 saw Rattay throw 63 passes for 393 yards. The Bulldogs were overmatched against the bigger schools and had to win by throwing the ball a ton.

Rattay threw for 590 yards in a loss to Nebraska in 1998. Luke McCown threw for 433 yards as a freshman at Auburn in 2000. Two years later McCown threw for 448 yards in a win over Oklahoma State. Colby Cameron threw 58 passes in the memorable 59-57 loss to Johnny Manziel and the Texas A&M Aggies.

The memorable losses aren’t as fun to talk about as they were in the 1990’s when everything was new. Tech moved up to the FBS level in 1988. There were wins over Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, and Mississippi State in those early years. There was a close loss to Alabama in 1992, when Willie Roaf and the Bulldogs hung in with a Top 10 team before falling 13-0. Those early years Tech competed, but not with a high-powered offense. Enter Gary Crowton.

Crowton took control in 1996 and the Bulldogs beat Mississippi State. The next year, Tech beat Alabama and California. In 1999, the Bulldogs beat Alabama again. Crowton and Rattay left, and Luke McCown came in at quarterback. Tech beat Michigan State and Oklahoma State in back to back years (2002, 2003) and then the following two years beat ranked Fresno State teams. Louisiana Tech is not new to this, the Bulldogs have been beating bigger schools and highly touted schools for almost 30 years.

Tech competed with those schools with an unconventional offense. Even under Sonny Dykes, Tech beat Ole Miss, Virginia, and Illinois with a spread offense. The defense was not the focal point of the team and a lot of those years – the defense was an afterthought.

Fast forward to the Skip Holtz era and things are a lot different. Louisiana Tech had a bigger offensive line than Arkansas on Saturday. The Bulldogs held their hosts to 106 yards rushing on 40 attempts. Tech is not overmatched in the run game anymore.

Against Kansas State last season, the Bulldogs had 3.6 yards per rush and Kansas State had 3.7 – not a huge difference. Kansas State ended up winning the game 39-33 in 3 overtimes.

That’s two straight years Holtz and Co. had a P5 school on the ropes and couldn’t quite close the deal. Does he need that win over a bigger school to validate what he is doing? Holtz beat Illinois in the Heart of Dallas Bowl, but the Bulldogs are still looking for their first win over a P5 school in the regular season under Holtz.

Holtz is signing a vast majority of high school players every February and last week was the first evidence that the strategy paid off. Kenneth Dixon, Vernon Butler, Kentrell Brice, Jeff Driskel, Vontarrius Dora, Paul Turner and Adairius Barnes all made NFL rosters or practice squads this week. The expectation was that there would be a drop off at Tech.

Instead, Tech mixed in all those young guys with a select few graduate transfers (Dalton Santos, Prince Sam, and Jordan Harris) and looked just as solid as ever. With mostly young guys at cornerback, running back, and on the defensive line: Tech was led by a redshirt freshman at quarterback (J’Mar Smith) and played pretty well.

The 2016 Bulldogs aren’t a small, overmatched team with a gunslinger leading them with a hope and a prayer and nearly 70 pass attempts per game. This is a program that is competing for conference championships every year, making huge facility upgrades, and doing it the right way.

The Bulldogs go to Texas Tech in a couple of weeks and Mississippi State returns (LA Tech beat Mississippi State in Ruston in 2008) to Ruston in 2017. Will Tech win one of those games? Maybe, who knows?

More importantly the Bulldogs will be facing off against Southern Miss at the end of this season in a game that could decide who goes to the Conference USA Championship Game. Holtz has built his program into a championship contender. A raise and an extension has to be on the way. LA Tech has not had a proven FBS coach before, but the benefits are clear. Holtz isn’t learning as he goes. He had a plan from day one and that plan is working.