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"Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Arkansas the Cotton Bowl!" they like to chant -- when they're not doing that "Woooooo! Pig! Soooiee!" Which they seem to say a lot.

But if coach Houston Nutt keeps this stuff up, they'll be expecting him to deliver even more. The dawn of a new century has given birth to greater expectations by a program getting over a bad inferiority complex. Y2K has given way to 'Why not Bowl Championship Series games?'

Nutt's Arkansas Razorbacks completed their second consecutive enormously successful season since he took over a depressed football program at what had become known more as a basketball school. In the first collegiate football game of the new millennium, the No. 24 Hogs dominated No. 14 Texas, 27-6, a New Year's Day victory that Arkansas recruiters expect will have far-reaching implications for the program.

"This is big. Real big," Nutt said after the program's first bowl victory in 15 years. Arkansas had lost seven bowl games in a row.

Texas and Arkansas, major programs in neighboring states, have competed against one another in three centuries now. And it has produced some memorable games. Like The Big Shootout, when the No l. Longhorns overcame a 14-0 deficit to beat No. 2 Arkansas in 1969 in one of the most memorable games in the history of the old Southwest Conference. Now Texas is part of the Big 12 Conference while Arkansas left for the Southeastern Conference. The teams don't meet regularly any more, but it's something special for fans of both schools when they do.

"It's been a great tradition, these two teams playing one another," Nutt said, "But we haven't won many of those games -- much less by 27-6. I can't tell you the positive impact this is going to have on recruiting. To beat Texas, right here in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl. That means so much, and I mean right now. Today. Those kids we're recruiting were all watching this game on TV, and they'll know who we are when we come calling."

And many of those recruits are in Texas, one of the most fertile regions in the land for producing top collegiate players. Texas produces about 300 Division I football players annually, and Arkansas is planning to skim more of the cream from the top.

"Coach can't recruit all of them -- even though he tries," Nutt said of Texas coach Mack Brown. Nutt told SportsLine after the game that he had visited with 15 Texas recruits in the week his team spent in Dallas preparing for the Cotton Bowl.

"We'll only take 10 or 12 kids out of Arkansas," he said. "We rely on Texas a lot because of the great coaches in this great big state where football is so important."

Saturday's victory showed how much the Hogs rely on Texans to beat Texas. Their two most important players, one on each side of the ball, were imported from the Lone Star State.

Tackle D.J. Cooper, from the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, led a swarming defense that limited the Longhorns to just 185 yards of total offense, including minus-27 yards on the ground. He had two of his team's eight sacks. And quarterback Clint Stoerner, of Baytown, led an offense that produced 24 second-half points after a 3-3 halftime tie. He completed 12 of 23 passes for 194 yards and a touchdown.

Both are seniors. They were among 22 Texans on the Arkansas roster Saturday, and both made their share of sales pitches to Texas recruits. Cooper, a soft-spoken self-described "country boy," tells would-be Razorbacks about a close-knit program.

"I tell them we're like a family," Cooper said. "But I don't lie. Everything has its goods and its bads. But at Arkansas, it's mostly good."

Arkansas coach Houston Nutt has led his team to a 17-7 record the past two seasons. (AP)

And after consecutive losses in which the Longhorns were mostly bad, Brown suddenly has a bigger selling job to keep top recruits home instead of defecting to Arkansas. The poor finish ruined an otherwise wonderful season. Texas had a 9-2 record before losing to archrival Texas A&M at College Station, to Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game at San Antonio, and finally to Arkansas. The Longhorns didn't score a touchdown in their final 10 quarters of the season.

"We were inept on offense," Brown said. "We couldn't run the ball. When you can't run the ball, you can't protect. When you can't protect you can't throw or do a real good job at anything.

"But our football team is really, really young, and it's really been a great year for us. This team wasn't even supposed to be in a bowl game. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for us. But I think you see we have a lot of real good football players here."

And they were missing a few on Saturday, too. Wideout Kwami Cavil, who caught 100 passes this season as quarterback Major Applewhite's go-to guy, and leading pass-rusher Aaron Humphrey missed the game after being suspended for violating team rules.

"I talked to the team a little bit in the dressing room about that," Brown said. "But our motto at the beginning of the year was 'No Excuses,' and that's the way we're going to be today. I don't want to take anything away from Arkansas. We just didn't get the job done."

Freshman quarterback Chris Simms, who finished the game after Applewhite went down in the fourth quarter with a knee injury, said his team was whipped, pure and simple.

"It was kind of like the A&M game," he said. "They just beat us man on man. They kinda wanted it more than we did, and that's something we have to work on for next year: Playing at a higher level the whole game."

Arkansas had it going that way for 60 minutes against Texas, and Nutt couldn't have been more pleased.

"This year's 8-4 record is much better to me than last year's 9-3 record," he said. "No one expected anything out of us last year. But this year they picked us to be champions. We had a bull's eye on our chest. We had a few disappointments, but we beat Tennessee. We beat Mississippi State and now Texas in the Cotton Bowl. We've had a great year."

But it's just beginning. Hogs fans are as gluttonous as fans everywhere. And they'll soon be wanting more.