Give the Southeastern Conference schedule makers credit for hedging their bets.
A week after booking for 11 a.m. what proved a top-10 game, the wise men in Birmingham exercised a bit more caution in making TV assignments for Oct. 9 conference matchups.
Arkansas at Ole Miss has an either-or kickoff, 11 a.m. on ESPN or 2:30 p.m. on CBS. So do Georgia at Auburn at the same times on the same network, that game the 126th meeting between the South's oldest football rivals.
No. 12 Ole Miss, which plays No. 1 Alabama this week, could be on CBS on consecutive Saturdays. No. 8 Arkansas at No. 2 Georgia, an off-the-charts matchup few could have foreseen in September, starts at 11 a.m. on what shapes up as a long day of football watching.
Arkansas' 20-10 victory over then-No. 7 Texas A&M frankly surprised the SEC, which on Sept. 20 slotted Arkansas at Georgia for the SEC Network at 11 a.m. CBS, with first pick in the SEC's television package, picked up Arkansas-A&M for the 2:30 p.m. window, bringing out the network's No. 1 broadcast team, Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson.
Arkansas fans cried "oh, ye of little faith" when they saw the Georgia date scheduled just after the cartoon hour while Vanderbilt and Connecticut, which might draw test-pattern ratings, pitting the SEC's worst team against one whose coach speeded up his retirement to Week Two, kicks off in prime time.
Give ESPN credit for assessing Arkansas vs. Georgia as a big game. The network's College GameDay crew will be in Athens, Ga., this weekend, providing two days' worth of publicity that Arkansas could not buy. Arkansas has not received this treatment since the 2006 game with Tennessee, GameDay's only Fayetteville visit, one that Razorback Joe Adams broke open with a dazzling punt return.
It matters in every way, especially in recruiting, what Rece Davis and Kirk Herbstreit say about a team on ESPN. And which team's helmet crusty ex-coach Lee Corso wears on the pregame show. Herbstreit (Ohio State) and Desmond Howard, he of the Heisman Trophy pose (Michigan vs. OSU in 1991), supply the perspective of ex-players. And, no one in the SEC has a larger voice than talk-show host and author Paul Finebaum, a former ink-stained wretch (euphemism for sportswriter) who has gone on to bigger things.
ESPN obviously paid attention to the Arkansas-Texas game Sept. 11 in Fayetteville, which the network carried. Joe Tessitore and Greg McIlroy described a 40-21 Razorback victory, the first of two this year for Arkansas over a ranked team. Further proof that Arkansas might be more than an underdog gone wild came against Texas A&M, to which the Hogs had lost nine straight since 2011.
Arkansas, make no mistake, is an underdog against Georgia, the Bulldogs favored by 19 points in the latest Las Vegas line. An early 10-3 decision at Clemson shot the Bulldogs to No. 2 in the polls. Clemson, as we have learned, can't score, dropping to No. 25, hence Arkansas has generated enough attention that, point spread notwithstanding, it just might be Georgia's strongest opponent to date.
With Ole Miss getting 15 points at Bryant-Denny Stadium, one is left to think that Alabama and Georgia play in a higher league. And that Alabama, defending national champion, is gulping even more rarified air. Nick Saban has won more national championships (seven, including one at LSU) than Bear Bryant and increasingly is getting a Knute Rockne-like aura across college football. Remember, the next former Saban assistant to beat him will be the first.
So, wouldn't it be wild if it's Lane Kiffin? Perhaps not to those who regard the second-year Ole Miss coach as a whippersnapper who left Tennessee in the middle of the night and was fired at USC on an airport tarmac.
It should not be forgotten that after the 2013 season, stunned by Auburn on a 109-yard return of a missed field-goal attempt, Saban sought out Kiffin to jazz up the Alabama offense. In two years, Kiffin coached Derrick Henry, the school's second Heisman winner under Saban (Mark Ingram, in 2009, the first in school history) and brought Saban his fourth national title.
Odd then that Kiffin was on the losing side when Ole Miss scored its only back-to-back victories over longtime tormentor Alabama. Hugh Freeze left Oxford in disgrace (since rehabilitating himself at Liberty, which visits Arkansas next year) and Kiffin lasted three years in a Taylor-Burton relationship with Saban at Tuscaloosa.
Arkansas fans still chide Kiffin for using a job opening at Fayetteville as leverage in his 2020 hiring at Ole Miss. Nevertheless, as F. Scott Fitzgerald might say, he's an Oxford man (so was Houston Nutt) and has the Rebels thinking of their first SEC title since 1963. Perhaps Lane just recognized Ole Miss as a better job than Arkansas, which cratered in 2018 and '19 under Chad Morris. Arkansas found, in Sam Pittman, someone who wanted the job and wouldn't trade him for anyone.
Here, we see Kiffin with a Heisman candidate in quarterback Matt Corral, even if Arkansas fans remember him for throwing six interceptions in Fayetteville last year. Alabama, which had a Heisman hopeful last year in Mac Jones and whose DeVonta Smith won the award, is sure to give Corral his stiffest challenge yet.
The same is predicted for KJ Jefferson, Arkansas' Cam Newton clone, against Georgia. The outcomes at Athens and Tuscaloosa Saturday will greatly affect kickoff times and networks next week.