Don’t Assume This Weather Favors Either Hogs or Rebels

Only edge Saturday night will go to team that still wants to be there in second half

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Okay, everybody knows it's going to start off really cold and gets worse.

Arkansas plays Ole Miss and considering it's expected to have wind chill below 30 degrees and kickoff and get colder, nobody will get an advantage from that.

Who wants to be there coming out of a warm locker room at halftime?

"Whenever you can have a game when the weather is down in the 20's it comes to a game of wills," Razorbacks linebacker Bumper Pool said this week. "We’re going to have a lot of fight and a lot of will.

Arkansas Razorbacks linebacker Bumper Pool tackles LSU running back Noah Cain in the Tigers' 13-10 win on Nov. 12, 2022, at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Ark. (Nelson Chenault / USA TODAY Sports)

That's the normal rhetoric but it's easy to miss the main part of that is basically which team wants to be there.

The Hogs are still trying to qualify for some kind of bowl game. They can't reach last year's regular season of eight wins, which sailed out the window in a loss to Liberty.

Getting a win now for the Hogs could be the difference in a trip to somewhere like Birmingham or Las Vegas in mid-December or Houston or Nashville closer to New Year's.

The Rebels are still playing for a New Year's 6 game or the next tier.

It's also when Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin's propensity for being perfectly willing to use all four downs trying to get a first down which challenges the defense's natural instinct to feel like a stop on third down usually means the offense is getting the ball back.

"it's going to be big for us," Hogs coach Sam Pittman said this week about the way they just go for it often. "You can even see in a lot of calls that Coach Kiffin makes," Pittman said. "On film, it looks, 'Hey, let's get it close here. Let's get half of it here on fourth down.' And you know, I believe he thinks a lot in, 'Let's get it manageable, the fourth down.'"

Mississippi Rebels coach Lane Kiffin reacts during the second half against the Alabama Crimson Tide at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. (Petre Thomas / USA TODAY Sports)

Weather won't have an effect on that decision-making. Kiffin uses a different analytics card than most people use and a big part of it is his feeling at the time

"Those are going to be key for us to stop," Pittman said. "He's going to do it. That's what he believes in."

The game starts at 6:30 p.m. on the SEC Network and fuboTV.com. You can listen to the game online at HitThatLine.com or on the radio at ESPN Arkansas 99.5 in Fayetteville, 95.3 in the River Valley, 96.3 in Hot Springs and 104.3 in Harrison-Mountain Home.

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