The Harding Bisons football program represents Harding University in college football as a Division II member of the Great American Conference. Harding is located in Searcy, Arkansas. The Bisons are led by head coach Paul Simmons, a former Harding linebacker, with a record of 59-13. Simmons has coached the Bisons to four playoff appearances in a row, not counting the cancelled 2020 season.
The back-to-back 2016 and 2017 seasons were the most successful run in the history of the program. Ronnie Huckeba's 2016 squad, before his retirement from coaching, won the conference title before making it to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II playoffs. The following year under first-year head coach Simmons, the Bisons won three post-season games to make it to the semifinals of the playoffs before losing to Texas A&M-Commerce (the storied football program formerly and widely known as East Texas State).
There are 52 former Bison football players who have earned All-American status, either on the NAIA or the NCAA Division II levels.
History
Harding's football program began the same year that Harding College came into existence in 1924. The first eight years produced a 19-28-6 record, with most of the wins coming against high schools or college B and C teams. But the Bisons cultivated a steady following of excited students and townspeople, as evidenced in various volumes of Harding's yearbook, The Petit Jean.
Among the opponents in the 1920s were five colleges that would become rivalries lasting into the 21st century. Arkansas State Teacher's College would eventually become the University of Central Arkansas, and Magnolia A&M would become Southern Arkansas University. Henderson State University had begun as Arkadelphia Methodist College and was referred to as Henderson-Brown when Harding began playing them. Harding first played against Arkansas Tech University's Third Team in 1924, and advanced to playing Tech's Second Team the next year. The first matchup against the Ouachita Baptist Tigers was in 1928, ending in a 0-0 tie.
One special moment in Harding football history was a 1926 trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and a drubbing by the Arkansas Razorback Freshman Team. The head coach of the Razorbacks was Francis Schmidt, who was nicknamed Francis "Close the Gates of Mercy" Schmidt. He loved to run the score up on lesser equipped teams. Harding, with many first-year players itself that year, was beaten badly by the Razorback freshmen, 0-74.
As the effects of the Great Depression began to set in, the Harding College football program folded after the 1931 season due to the economic hardship. The Petit Jean yearbook included an ominous entry in regard to the football team's finances in 1931:
The hope of again fielding an intercollegiate team was still alive through Harding College's dormant football years of 1932-1958. One of Coach Paul Fiser's prized players in 1931 was Ervin "Pinky" Berryhill. Berryhill would one day be the man to serve as athletics director when the intercollegiate football program would finally be reinstated almost three decades later in 1959.
Intercollegiate athletics for all sports (football, basketball, baseball, all men's and women's sports) at Harding were disbanded in the 1930s due to the depression economy. In its place, led by former Harding athlete and then-current faculty member Berryhill, the Harding administration approved intramural competition on campus. As a result, 1939 saw “football” come back to the Harding campus in the form of two-hand touch intramural teams. Less than a decade later, the form of intra campus football had turned to “ragtag” ball, or flag football. Some future Harding assistant coaches and academic professors were members of these teams, including Clifton L. Ganus Jr., who would later become president of Harding University from 1965-1987.