What was expected to be a quiet football national signing day with no signees for Arkansas turned into one with a lot of news, some that I feel will benefit recruiting down the line.
That’s because Feb. 3, 2021, will be remembered as the day Arkansas announced it had agreed to play a football game against Arkansas State. The teams are scheduled to play Sept. 6, 2025, at War Memorial Stadium.
The decision to do so ends a decades-old policy of not scheduling Arkansas State in football. The 2025 game will be the first between the programs.
It was the biggest headline from a press release and ensuing zoom press conference with Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek that also announced additional football games for Little Rock and the movement of the Razorbacks’ SEC game with Missouri to Fayetteville. The Razorbacks were scheduled to play Mizzou there two more times.
“Just as we talked about a few years ago we were going to tip our toe in the water with our sister schools, I think the timing was right to just continue to expand what that looked like with completion with our in-state schools,” Yurachek said.
There are recruiting implications. Arkansas now has an additional SEC game on its campus late in November, a time when many prospects have finished their high school seasons and would be able to take official visits on the weekend of the game with Missouri.
The Razorbacks cannot have official visitors at any game in Little Rock, per NCAA rules.
At the same time, keeping games with Arkansas-Pine Bluff (in 2021 and 2024), Western Carolina (2023) and Arkansas State in Little Rock allows fans and prospects using unofficial visits an easy chance to see the Razorbacks in Central Arkansas.
To me, both of those developments create a win-win situation.
It also appears Arkansas’ annual SEC game with Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, is headed for home-and-home sites beginning with the 2025 game scheduled to be in Fayetteville.
There is a contract with the Aggies for games at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium through 2024, although last year’s game was played in College Station due to the covid-19 pandemic.
As someone who grew up in the small farming community of Balch, about 30 miles in different directions from Newport and Jonesboro, I am totally down with this decision to play in-state schools such as Arkansas State.
Arkansas played Central Arkansas in men’s basketball earlier this season. The Razorback women played UCA, UAPB and Arkansas-Little Rock.
The Razorback baseball team has been playing in-state schools since 2019 and has games with UALR, Arkansas State, UCA and UAPB on this year’s slate.
The earth didn’t quit spinning when in-state games happened, Yurachek said.
“We actually lost our first (baseball) game to Little Rock, but we still went on to the College World Series that year,” Yurachek said. “And we still had top recruiting classes. Things didn’t fall apart across our state because the Razorbacks were competing against other schools within the state.”
As a sportswriter, these in-state games are more interesting to me than games with Louisiana-Monroe, other Sun Belt Conference squads and FCS foes.
I look forward to the competition and the new narratives that will develop out of the games.
Having attended a ton of Arkansas State football and basketball games growing up, as well as ones involving Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference members Harding, UCA, Henderson State, Ouachita Baptist and Arkansas College, I have always had great respect for the other programs in the state and enjoyed seeing all levels of competition.
In fact, in the spring of 1981, I was weighing a decision to walk on and play football at Arkansas State after winning the Tex Plunkett Journalism Scholarship as well as scholarship offers to play football at Harding or Henderson and a basketball scholarship at Harding.
A call from Arkansas head basketball coach Eddie Sutton and assistant Jim Counce and an offer to be a manager (if I could get my Newport teammate Charles Balentine to sign with the Razorbacks) ended all thoughts of me going anywhere but Fayetteville.
One certainly understands why some Arkansas fans aren’t happy about the decision to play gridiron games with Arkansas State and/or UAPB, and also why former Razorback athletics director John Barnhill didn’t see it as a great business decision to do so while building up the sports program in Fayetteville.
But it’s a new dawn, a new day, a new way in the college sports landscape. I believe the positives far outweigh the negatives.
I saw more than a few bumper stickers growing up that read “How Long Will the Razorbacks Run?”
As a teenager I both thought it was witty and disagreed with the sentiment at the time, but one thing is for sure now.
The so-called running has stopped and the games are on.