FAYETTEVILLE -- The Razorbacks open the 2024 football season with the first five games being in five different stadiums.
Among those games are the season opener on Thursday against UAPB in Little Rock and then the Texas A&M game in Arlington on Saturday, Sept. 28. The Hogs also go to Oklahoma State and Auburn as well as host UAB in Fayetteville. Sam Pittman talked about going to Little Rock for the season opener 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 LR. 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."
Pittman said the team will bus down and back from Little Rock. He then was asked about playing in Little Rock beyond the Arkansas State game on Saturday, Sept. 6, in 2025?
"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 is in Little Rock and one of them is 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."
Pittman said the team won't do a walk through at War Memorial on Wednesday. The Arkansas-UAPB game in War Memorial will kickoff at 6:30 p.m. Thursday and be televised on ESPNU.