It may be different where you live, but around here, the announcement Tuesday of Arkansas' 2018 football schedule was greeted with a collective yawn.
That and the 11 a.m. kickoff for Arkansas' Sept. 30 home game with New Mexico State, which along with Idaho is being drummed out of the Sun Belt Conference. Guessing that 3 in the morning would prove inconvenient for all concerned.
Arkansas, which beat Sun Belt member Texas State last year, has a Nov. 4 home game with Coastal Carolina. The Razorbacks have booked SBC members Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe and Troy over the years, winning most of those matchups handily with the exception of the 2012 overtime Arkansas defeat to Monroe at Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium.
Plaster will fall from the ceiling in the football offices in Fayetteville before Arkansas schedules Sun Belt power Arkansas State, which unlike the state's flagship school won a conference championship and a bowl game last football season.
By the way, anyone hanging around the Metroplex after the Arkansas-Texas A&M game Saturday might consider the Arkansas State-SMU game at night on the Mustang campus in plush north Dallas. Anyone looking for a new football coach might consider A-State's Blake Anderson, 25-16 in his fourth season in Jonesboro with a 20-4 mark against Sun Belt rivals.
Back to the Razorbacks, whose 2018 schedule was unveiled Tuesday afternoon on the SEC Network. The University of Arkansas' online release played up the Razorbacks' seven home games next season, including five straight inside the state. Besides resuming a once-annual series against Tulsa, the Hogs play nonconference games against Eastern Illinois (Sept. 1 season opener) and North Texas, which in 1968 had future NFL star Mean Joe Greene and gave a Sugar Bowl-bound Razorback squad all it could handle in Little Rock.
Arkansas' four Southeastern Conference home games are against Alabama (Oct. 6), Ole Miss (Oct. 13), Vanderbilt (Oct. 27) and LSU (Nov. 10). What isn't known is which SEC team will play Arkansas in Little Rock in what may be the last Razorback game at War Memorial Stadium.
Alabama hasn't played in Little Rock since rotund Freddie Kitchens led Gene Stallings' last Crimson Tide team to a 17-7 triumph in 1996. LSU has been coming to Fayetteville every even-numbered year since Bobby Petrino's 2010 Hogs ran the Tigers out of War Memorial 31-23, a game remembered for two LSU defensive backs colliding at midfield on Ryan Mallett's touchdown pass to Cobi Hamilton as the first half ended.
It makes no sense, economic or otherwise, for Arkansas to play Alabama or LSU before a lesser crowd in Little Rock (even if at capacity) than at its 72,000-seat Fayetteville stadium. Ole Miss, its football future uncertain pending NCAA sanctions, and Vanderbilt -- another school with a coach, Derek Mason, someone might want -- is a more likely Little Rock opponent for the Hogs.
As in 2014, when the Hogs lost an August game at Jordan-Hare Stadium, Arkansas' 2018 SEC opener is at Auburn, where the Gus Malzahn fan club soon may be posting guards at the door. That's on Sept. 22, followed by the annual Southwest Classic against Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Who knows who will be coaching in either of those games?
November brings back-to-back road games against Mississippi State (Nov. 17) and Missouri (Nov. 24), one school with a coach (Dan Mullen) likely to be much in demand and the other apt to be in the market. Arkansas won a shootout last year at Mississippi State, which had won the last four meetings, but then lost at Missouri for the second time since the Tigers joined the SEC.
That Bret Bielema at Arkansas and Kevin Sumlin at Texas A&M are under duress going into their teams' SEC opener Saturday is not exactly privileged information. A&M fans, after three straight 8-5 seasons, wonder why the Aggies reach a peak early against Arkansas (five straight wins over the Hogs), then totter. Bielema keeps saying the Razorbacks are close to something, but what exactly?
Although he seems genuinely likable, Bielema can't afford many more like the gruesome Sept. 9 defeat to TCU (28-7), the head coach looking dazed on the sideline and disjointed when meeting the press.
Even with buyout talk in the air, Bielema probably has more friends about than Sumlin. Unless I'm misreading Jeff Long's powerbase, the man who hired Bielema at Arkansas might not muster enough support to be elected constable of Washington County.
Sports on 09/21/2017