Hogs looking forward to Little Rock game, future uncertain

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas and UAPB will open the 2024 season on Thursday night in Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium.

Much has been said and written in recent years about the Razorbacks playing in Little Rock. Sam Pittman talked about Thursday’s game on Monday.

“We’re excited to go to Little Rock and take our football team,” Pittman said. “I believe it has a lot to do with the passion of the state for a long time ago. I know it originally started when there was no televised games, or many, one or two on a weekend. I think that had part of the reason to go over there. War Memorial, their stadium was better than this one in the past. And they had lights, we did not. There was a lot of reasons to go over there. But I think the passion overall, from the years of Arkansas football, had to do with something about our willingness to go play games in Little Rock. 

“Our team is not looking at this as “Well, we have to go play in Little Rock. We’re looking at it as an opportunity to take the team on the road and have a great opening game in a great city of Little Rock. Whether I want to do that for years to come or not is irrelevant right now for this Thursday night’s game. But we are excited to go over there. It’s on our schedule. It’s where we’re gonna play and we’re excited to go over there and we hope that we’ll have a whole lot of fans at the game supporting our football team. 

“Looking forward to playing Pine Bluff. Looking forward to playing an in-state opponent. We know that Coach (Alonzo) Hampton has done a good job. As he goes into this year he’ll know more about his team and they’ll have a better team as I hope we do as well. But we have a lot of respect for Pine Bluff, or UAPB, and we’re looking forward to getting over there.”

The team will not be flying to or from Little Rock. Pittman detailed some of the reasoning behind that.

“We are going to bus over there but we’ll bus back as well,” Pittman said. “Certainly helped us … we can save a little bit of money but more importantly, with us having a two-day advantage on our opponent, our kids will be off Friday, then we’ll practice Saturday and be off Sunday. And then we’ll go into a regular schedule for Oklahoma State after that.”

The Hogs head to Stillwater on Saturday, Sept. 7, for a key non-conference game against the Cowboys. Some teams do a walk through the day before the game.

“We are not,” Pittman said. “You know, ever since I’ve been here we’ve chose not to go to the opponent’s … we do everything here so no.”

The Razorbacks will play the long awaited Arkansas State game in Little Rock next Sept. 6. Pittman was asked about any plans beyond that game for War Memorial Stadium?

“I think this,” Pittman said. “I think the only concerning thing. … Half of it …. Oh I don’t know if the word’s ‘problem’ … Half of it, ‘concern’ OK, is that we’re going to play in our stadium once in the first five games. One of them’s in Little Rock and one of them’s in Dallas. The Dallas game, we’ll end up playing Texas A&M here next year.

“But if you look at it, and you consistently look at it, I believe the year we won nine we had six games and I think four of them — y’all check me on this, I’m saying I think — four of them were home games and we were in here twice. To be honest with you, I just don’t know that it’s fair to the fans. I mean, they know where the University of Arkansas is. They can plan it, they can get here for games. I think they want to be here for games. There are problems with that, including the one for five here. I don’t know the answer to be honest with you in the future. 

“Obviously we’re going to go play Arkansas State a year from now over there in Little Rock. But I think there’s a lot of conversation that probably needs to be had between now and 2026.”

The Hogs will play UAB on Saturday, Sept. 14 in Razorback Stadium after trips to Little Rock and Stillwater, Okla. They will follow that with games at Auburn and in Arlington, Texas. That is Pittman’s concern one home game in September.

With six “Ors” on the depth chart Pittman was asked how much the UAPB game will play into position battles?

“Great question,” Pittman said. “I’m really excited about that. To see game-ready competition. You just don’t stay — we talk to them about the scrimmages and the games the same way — you don’t stay the same, you just don’t. You go to practice and you go out to a game, you get a different person. You do on a Saturday or in this case, a Thursday night. They’re either going to get better or they’re going to get worse.

“No coach is going to come in and say, ‘Well, that’s about what I thought we were going to get out of it.’ It goes up or it goes down. So, I’m really excited to see how each of these guys who are in a battle — and those who are not for that matter — to see how they play. You know, we have so many new players and of course, I heard Arkansas-Pine Bluff has 52 or something like that came in July. So, very, very difficult to really, really know what you have until you line up there on a Saturday night. You think you know, but it’ll be a lot of fun to find out truly what we have.”

The kickoff for Thursday night is set for 6:30 p.m. and televised on ESPNU.