FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek said Tuesday that Missouri is the only SEC team guaranteed to be on the Razorbacks’ 2024 football schedule.
The SEC announced last week teams will play an eight-game conference schedule for the 2024 season — the first after Oklahoma and Texas join the league from the Big 12. Each team’s 2024 conference opponents will be revealed June 14 on SEC Network, but the schedule is not expected to be finalized until later this year.
Missouri will be Arkansas’ guaranteed opponent during seasons that include an eight-game SEC schedule, Yurachek said while speaking at Blair Library during the State of Athletics luncheon hosted by Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.
The status of a contracted game against Texas A&M on Sept. 28, 2024, is not known, Yurachek said, because the league has made no guarantees the Razorbacks will play the Aggies that year.
“If we do play A&M in 2024, what the league has agreed to is that it will be A&M’s home game because that will be [the Aggies’ year to serve as host], and that it would be played at AT&T Stadium to fulfill that last year of that contract,” Yurachek said.
If Arkansas and Texas A&M do not play in 2024, Yurachek said their matchup on Sept. 30 this year will be the final game of the series played in Arlington.
This year’s game will be the 12th between the teams at the Dallas Cowboys’ home stadium since 2009, when they first played as non-conference opponents while Texas A&M was in the Big 12.
Texas A&M’s leadership has been vocal about its desire to end the neutral-site series.
“It’s important to have as many SEC games on our campus as possible,” Yurachek said.
Yurachek was asked if Arkansas might maintain a presence in Arlington after the Texas A&M contract expires. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was a team captain for the Razorbacks’ 1964 national championship team, and his son Stephen and grandson John Stephen also played football at Arkansas.
“I think playing a game there in that venue, with our ties to the Jones family, if we had the right opponent, yes,” Yurachek said. “I think playing a game there every year is going to be a challenge moving forward.”
The Arkansas-Missouri game is still expected to be played on the final weekend of the regular season after the SEC expands. The teams have played each other to end the regular season each year since 2014.
CBS, which will televise this year’s game on Nov. 24, has shown the Arkansas-Missouri game on the day after Thanksgiving each year with the exception of 2020 when the SEC schedule was altered due to covid-19.
Because ESPN affiliates — including ABC — will become exclusive TV partners for the SEC in 2024, Yurachek said he is unsure whether the Arkansas-Missouri game will continue to be played on Black Friday.
“That’s a tradition CBS wanted, that game on that Friday,” Yurachek said. “Whether ESPN and ABC has that same tradition in mind, I’m not sure. I know that ESPN wants to have a Thanksgiving game and a Friday after Thanksgiving game, so I think there will be windows on those days. Whether that’s always Missouri-Arkansas, we’ll find that out in the future.”
The upcoming season will be the 25th since 1996 that Arkansas will play a Black Friday game on CBS. The Razorbacks’ annual game against LSU was previously a staple for that time slot.