FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas isn’t all that bonds John L. Smith and Jack Crowe on opposite sidelines tonight.

Age and persistence do, too.

Told emphatically when they were younger that they were no longer cut out to coach the game they love, they were cut entirely from coaching. Now, the two will face off tonight when Smith’s Arkansas Razorbacks take on Crowe’s Jacksonville State Gamecocks in the season opener at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

For men of a certain age, there comes a smile that Smith, 63, and Crowe, 65, so vibrantly command tonight’s stage years after each got the hook. Not many get to climb the mountain in their 60s after falls in their 40s or 50s.

Twenty years have elapsed since Crowe was fired one game into his third season as Arkansas’ head coach after a 10-3 loss to The Citadel, which Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sportswriter Bob Holt rehashed so well and so thoroughly in Friday’s paper.

Other than a 5-2 start - capped by a triumph over Texas - in a 1991 season that ended 6-6 after his quarterback was injured in the game after Texas, Crowe’s head coaching tenure at Arkansas was marked by setbacks and incredibly bad luck.

Three years coordinating Baylor’s offense didn’t change his fortune. So he tried something else, working in business for Stephens Inc.

Five years came and went. Crowe’s respected offensive coordinating at Auburn, Clemson and that one wildly successful 1989 season at Arkansas that led to him becoming the Head Hog when Ken Hatfield left for Clemson, all seemed increasingly forgotten.

But some folks in Jacksonville, Ala., remembered. They enticed Crowe, at 53, to take over as coach at Jacksonville State in 2000.

A dozen seasons, three Ohio Valley Conference championships and an upset victory over Ole Miss later, he’s going strong, still talking the talk and dreaming the dreams of up-and-comers half his age.

“I came here hoping to have enough tenure to make a big difference,” Crowe said. “I haven’t made the difference I want to make yet. We want to be a bigger player on the national stage.”

At Idaho, Utah State, Louisville and his first year at Michigan State when he was named Big Ten Coach of the Year, John L. Smith was a rapidly rising star orbited by some promising young assistants that included Bobby Petrino, Paul Petrino and Paul Haynes.

The two Pauls are Smith’s offensive and defensive coordinators at Arkansas, hired by Bobby Petrino, who had hired Smith three years after Smith’s job went south at Michigan State.

Smith was hosting a sports talk show in Louisville, Ky., when Petrino summoned him in 2009.

The head coach saw he needed a complement to his offensive emphasis and coldly efficient style. He needed an assistant not only with a special teams and defensive mind-set, but one he trusted whose energetic warmth could sincerely build players up without undermining why the head coach and other assistants had knocked them down.

Considering the Razorbacks’ standing ovation to Smith being named his successor, Bobby Petrino hired the right guy.

Apparently Jacksonville State did, too.

Sports, Pages 22 on 09/01/2012