Arkansas' 2022 football schedule includes seven games in Fayetteville, the most ever for a Razorback team.
One immediately thinks of the Great Stadium Debate resulting when UA officials became increasingly reluctant to play in Little Rock. "They'll play them all up here some day," a former co-worker, himself a UA graduate, said in circa 1987.
Now comes a schedule including home games against Alabama, LSU and Ole Miss, three dates worth circling in any year. And if he hasn't changed teams by then, Bobby Petrino makes a Fayetteville homecoming next Sept. 17. Imagine the greeting he'll get.
Another juicy nonconference date is Nov. 3 with Liberty, where Hugh Freeze (formerly of Arkansas State and Ole Miss) is building a solid program. Cincinnati (a current top-10 team) and South Carolina also visit the Ozarks next year.
Little Rock is down to one game this year (Missouri, which returns the visit in 2023) and none next year. Not that the capital city should think of itself as a scorned lover. Cry if you like, but playing in War Memorial Stadium no longer makes economic sense for the Razorback program.
Extending an olive branch to Little Rock and an in-state school, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek booked a 2025 game in War Memorial Stadium against Arkansas State. One thought the plaster would fall off the ceiling in the Broyles Complex before that would happen. Perhaps Yurachek just looked at the schedules and wonder why Arkansas plays some Sun Belt Conference teams (Georgia Southern most recently) but not the one closest to home.
Little Rock columnist Wally Hall sees Arkansas vs. Arkansas State as something of a state fair with friendships formed and old differences resolved. State-funded War Memorial Stadium needs the big gate, and all the money stays at home. It's an idea whose time has come, and if this can't fill the stadium, then we can change the conversation.
The Madhouse on Markham Street has hosted some of the greatest games in UA history. Opening in 1948, War Memorial Stadium originally served as a halfway house for fans geographically isolated from Fayetteville. Fans could come to Little Rock more easily and with less fear than if they drove two-lane highways through the Boston Mountains in all kinds of weather.
John Barnhill, a Tennessee man who coached Arkansas after World War II, saw the possibility of a one-team state (Arkansas State didn't enter his thinking). So did Frank Broyles, who wanted the UA job three times before Barnhill made the call to Missouri in 1957 after the one year of apprenticeship as a head coach that the Arkansas man required.
The roads into Fayetteville were so treacherous, however, that not until the 1980s did UA install lights at then-Razorback Stadium. For instance, motorists taking U.S. 71 from Alma encountered highway signs informing that 11 people had been killed on a stretch to Winslow. One remembers crawling down 71 on a snowy November 1991 evening after a game with Baylor.
In time, Arkansas' population base shifted to the northwest, requiring changes in infrastructure. Coach Danny Ford, after the surprise 1995 SEC West championship in his third season, saw a day that football would be like Nolan Richardson's basketball, NCAA champion the year before. "All we need," he said, "is to get our highway built and our airport built."
About air travel to and from Fayetteville in those days, Lou Holtz famously said, "You don't buy a ticket. You buy a chance." Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, in nearby Highfill, provided amenities that Fayetteville's old Drake Field could not. Recruiting also prospered with Arkansas able to fly prospects in for an official weekend visit.
What is now Interstate 49 (formerly 540) provided the missing link. Arkansas fans could drive in four-lane comfort from, say, West Memphis. Much of Arkansas still remains isolated from Fayetteville and it may be years before the expanding of Interstate 49 from Texarkana to Fort Smith. But the idea of getting to Fayetteville for an 11 a.m. kickoff has become less onerous. And staying over after an 8 p.m. start more realistic.
Another thing, Reynolds Razorback Stadium, with capacity of 72,000 (up to 76,000 with "temporary" bleachers atop the sound end), dwarfs War Memorial Stadium (54,120). Arkansas once made up to four Little Rock visits per year. The Razorbacks counted them as home games but insiders knew better. Leaving on Friday and spending the night in, say, Hot Springs, amounted to a road game for the Razorbacks.
Arkansas pays Little Rock a rental fee for each WMS game. No such charge is required for an on-campus game.
And, Arkansas does not get to count a Little Rock game as a recruit's official visit. That rules out SEC games, Arkansas opting for the bi-annual Missouri game in Little Rock because students are away from campus for Thanksgiving. More and more, Little Rock opponents have included such as Florida A&M and Alcorn State; also, Louisiana-Monroe and Toledo, which went home with handsome checks and upset victories.
Speaking here for the working press, War Memorial Stadium has become terribly outdated. At last check, the Wi-Fi service proved inadequate for today's electronic age (strange that they play on AT&T Field). And, again on last inspection, the scoreboard clock frequently malfunctions. "Reset it to 2020," a press-box wag howled one night.
Little Rock, once a lifeline to the program, has become the second city in Razorback athletics. Arkansas, to its credit, still throws the capital city a bone every now and then. Think we'll ever see another Razorback basketball game in Hot Springs or Pine Bluff?