With No Hogs on TV Today, What Games Should Fans Watch?

Weekend slate provides Arkansas faithful with plenty of alternate viewing options

Arkansas Razorbacks fans during the second quarter against the Georgia Southern Eagles at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium. / Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – With no Razorback game to pass the time this weekend and basketball season still several weeks away, Arkansas fans need a slate of good college football games to keep them occupied. Fortunately, there appear to be at least four that will do just that.

No. 14 Clemson vs. No. 1 Georgia (Atlanta, Ga.), 11 a.m., ABC

Why Arkansas fans are having to be up and about their wits this early to catch such a big game is dumbfounding. There is no excuse for this to be on in the morning hours across most of the country.

Kirby Smart is trying to prove he is for sure the man to take over the mantle of most feared coach in America following the retirement of his mentor, Nick Saban. Meanwhile, Dabo Swinney is trying to show the world he can still be the man at Clemson as the Tigers' shine has faded over the last few years.

If Arkansas is going to somehow pull off a miracle run that would be enough to squeeze into a lower seed in the playoffs, it needs Georgia to be dominant in this game in addition to the Hogs going and blowing the doors off Oklahoma State the following week. Sam Pittman's team needs the SEC to hold as much clout as possible for voters to think enough of Arkansas to pull off that level of fairy tale story.

If Georgia comes out and loses, along with teams like LSU and Texas A&M dropping the ball, the win total required for Arkansas to get in will drift far to high for it to be possible even in the most optimistic of circumstances..

No. 17 Oklahoma State vs. South Dakota State, 1 p.m., ESPN+

This is a game that could bite ESPN and the Fox Sports Network in the backside. Without a lot of powerful options to fill key game slots, a game between the reigning FCS national champion and a potential Big 12 champion has all the makings of high drama and very few people will see it.

The Cowboys are known to have terrible games early in the season. One just has to look back at last season to see this play out.

Oklahoma State had to score a pair of 4th quarter touchdowns to hold off Central Arkansas and got rolled, 33-7, at home against an average at best South Alabama team in Stillwater during Week 3. This game is going to be tough for a long time, which is bad news for OSU.

Because players don't hit much anymore in the preseason workouts, their bodies aren't where they need to be to hold up to the brutality of a college football game. As a result, a lot of injuries happen in the first couple of weeks of the season.

Not only will Arkansas fans get to see much more of what they can expect next week out of Oklahoma State than the Cowboys got to see of the Hogs Thursday night, but odds are high someone goes down with an injury at some point in the opener. The Cowboys especially can't afford to lose running back Ollie Gordon with former Arkansas running back AJ Green already out for much of the season.

No. 20 Texas A&M vs. No. 7 Notre Dame, 6:30 p.m., ABC

Texas A&M is the new Texas of college football. The hype of highly ranked recruiting classes and the need for networks to promote a game as being bigger than it actually is for early season ratings has the Longhorns, ummm, Aggies, ranked much higher than recent performance and bad culture indicate they should be.

The only way A&M could be more Texas is if the Aggies pull an upset here followed by Connor Weigman looking into the camera and declaring "Texas A&M" is back, then going on to be vastly mediocre for the next few years.

Perhaps the best reason for Razorback fans to watch is to see how much progress Mike Elko has made toward undoing the damage done to the program by his overpriced predecessor, Jimbo Fisher. A win would make quite a statement, but then again, it's Notre Dame, perhaps the only team to rival Texas across the past decade or so for being the most overhyped.

No. 13 LSU vs. No. 23 USC, 6:30 p.m., ABC [Sunday]

Pretty much everyone knows the story by now of USC coach Lincoln Riley getting wind that Oklahoma planned to make the jump to the SEC, so he high-tailed it out to the West Coast in hopes of dominating a much weaker Pac-12 Conference. Now he has to face one of his great fears, a night game in Death Valley, without the rock that held his career together in Los Angeles, Caleb Williams.

From an LSU perspective, Brian Kelly has yet to win a big game opener since his arrival at LSU. He lost to Florida State two years in a row and wasn't able to increase the Tigers' win totals despite having the best player in all of college football in former quarterback Jayden Daniels.

If LSU breaks its losing streak, it could be the beginning of the end for Riley getting to hang out with former Arkansas coach Eric Musselman around the athletics department. If Kelly loses the opener for a third year in a row, those big donors in Baton Rouge might begin to wonder quietly whether he's just got a little too much Notre Dame in him to truly make the step up from good to great in Baton Rouge.

Why was Florida vs. No. 19 Miami left off the list?

The bigger question is why are these two being given a prime 2:30 p.m. slot when Clemson vs. Georgia was available? If this were the early 1990s, then this would be the premier type of match-up worthy of such valuable television real estate, but those days are long gone.

Miami has been a shell of itself for decades\ and Florida is currently experiencing the worst time to be a fan since the 1930s. The Gators are poised to embark on their fourth straight losing season, which would be a school record, and have become irrelevant to the college football world.

This is a nostalgia act getting undue treatment based on name recognition alone. Since Billy Napier isn't going to be fired afterward if he loses this game, there's just simply nothing to see here.

HOGS FEED:

• 10 Touchdowns, 0 Points Given Up, Yet Still Little Known About Hogs

• Arkansas' basic, boring night just what Sam PIttman needed

• Did Oklahoma State see enough to lose sleep over Hogs' win?

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