LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Being a fan of any team is tough – you're there for the ups and downs, the good times, and the bad times.
But why do we do that to ourselves? What keeps us coming back to a team, no matter how bad they are? We asked some of our biggest Razorback fans why they've always stuck around, even when the going got tough.
"If you go against the razorbacks, you're going against your family," Craig O'Neill, longtime Hog fan and THV11 Anchor, said. "This is how you were brought up."
Craig has seen a lot of Razorback football in his time.
"I've got one that goes back to 1975, against none other than A&M," Craig said. "Beat them 31 to seven at our beloved War Memorial Stadium."
Some of it good, and some of it bad. But Craig isn't the only one with a sour taste because of those bad times.
"I try to compartmentalize and not think about how awful some of those losses were to North Texas, Western Kentucky, Vanderbilt, that were really bad," Hayden Balgavy, THV11 Anchor and also a longtime Razorback fan, said.
Hayden knows how tough the bad times have been – he's been a Hog fan his whole life, too.
But what keeps them coming back?
"It is in my DNA, it is in my blood," Hayden said. "There is no changing it, and I will forever love 'em... for better or for worse."
A lot of it has to do with loyalty – you don't tend to give up easily on the things you care about.
"The win in overtime, we don't forget those things, and they're with us, and we tell and retell those stories over and over," Dr. Howard Turney, a professor at UA Little Rock, specializing in social work, said.
He said giving up on something is hard, especially when you grew up with it.
"That collective memory of what we have with our fellow man, that connects us in a real special way," Dr. Turney said.
While it's hard to stick through thick and thin, it's a little easier now – especially with a team as solid as this one.
"It's like good old times," Hayden said. "It's a bond that very few things in this world can give you, and that's something special we have."