Ronnie Huckeba's 2016 squad, before his retirement from coaching, won the conference title and made it to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II playoffs.

That team later defeated Lenoir–Rhyne in the NCAA Division II semifinals to send Harding to its first-ever national championship game.

On December 16, Harding defeated Colorado School of Mines to win the 2023 NCAA Division II national championship.

But the Bisons cultivated a steady following of excited students and townspeople, as evidenced in various volumes of Harding's yearbook, The Petit Jean.

Henderson State University had begun as Arkadelphia Methodist College and was referred to as Henderson-Brown when Harding began playing them.

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: "To L. S. Chambers too much credit cannot be given.

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.

As a result, 1939 saw “football” come back to the Harding campus in the form of two-hand touch intramural teams.

Several of the players on these 8-man tackle intramural teams would go on to be part of the 1959 reemergence of Harding Bisons football on the intercollegiate level.

[14] Carl Allison did not make the cut for the Chicago Bears roster, and instead instantly became the head football coach at Clinton (OK) High School.

Carl Allison and his assistant Prock then joined forces to restart the Harding football program in Searcy, Arkansas.

When Allison briefly returned to Norman as a scout for the Oklahoma Sooners,[15] John Prock became Harding's head coach and would serve in that capacity for the next two-plus decades.

Counting Allison and Prock restarting the Harding football program, the Bisons have had only 6 head coaches in the last 60-plus years.

That left Harding and Ouachita Baptist to form a coalition as NAIA independents for two years while they worked together to move to NCAA Division II, and to the Lone Star Conference in 1997.

After working together with other old Arkansas and Oklahoma rivals to help form the Great American Conference in 2011, Harding has enjoyed a steady climb toward the top of NCAA Division II football, with nine playoff appearances, including the national championship in 2023.