No Pressure: Hogs, Bulldogs Must Save SEC from Nightmare Scenario

Poor scheduling leaves league with unlikely heroes to stop two schools few want to see from ending up in conference championship game

Missouri running back Cody Schrader runs free in a blowout of the Razorbacks while an Arkansas defensive lineman doesn't even bother to look his way. Tigers fans outnumbered Hog fans for most of this game as things got out of hand quickly for an uninspired Arkansas team. / Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – If the SEC is to avoid its nightmare scenario this upcoming football season, it's going to be up to Arkansas and Mississippi State to keep it from happening.

Texas and Missouri, two schools SEC fans don't really think of as being part of the conference, have a very good chance of facing one another in the SEC championship game this fall. That's not necessarily because they will be the two best schools in the conference. It has more to do with having two of the easiest SEC schedules.

That's right. If the SEC office hopes to not have the Horns vs. Mizzou in an old school Big 12 showdown that would set the conference back years in terms of pride and prestige, it will come down to whether two teams that put together one of the most pathetic games in SEC history last season can pull off late season upsets.

After years of getting to milk wins off the weak SEC East schedule with an uninterested Arkansas tacked on the end in a faux rivalry game, it looked like this would be the year Missouri would finally have to face a more legitimate SEC challenge. However, there may never have be a softer top to bottom schedule ever produced by an SEC team than what Eli Drinkwitz has been handed this season.

The highlight of the non-conference schedule is a pedestrian Boston College team that barely beat Holy Cross at home last season. The conference portion features only one team that had a winning SEC record last season, and that's an Alabama team in the midst of a coaching change.

Five schools on Mizzou's conference slate include teams that finished below .500 overall last year, including Arkansas and Mississippi State. Drinkwitz would have to be Chad Morris level bad at coaching next season to not finish with at least 10 wins.

As for Texas, the Longhorns have an admirable game at Michigan, a team that will be dealing with the fallout of all the shady things Jim Harbaugh did to bring the Wolverines a championship along with breaking in a new head coach. However, the conference schedule seems like it was customized to kowtow to the Longhorns and the giant bags of money conference officials are convinced will come with them.

Their first ever SEC game is in Austin against Mississippi State and includes a stretch from late October to mid-November of Vanderbilt, Florida and Arkansas. A total of four SEC wins were cumulated between the three of them last season.

At first glance, it looks like to sweeten the pot the Longhorns were allowed to have only have three conference road games despite the neutral site game against Oklahoma being a fifth SEC home game for Texas. It immediately screams of the Texas favoritism made so famous in the SWC and Big 12.

However, this is just a case of Texas and Oklahoma being weird and refusing to designate one or the other as the road team on their schedules. This year's affair at the Cotton Bowl is technically a road game for the Longhorns.

Still, of the three remaining true road games, two will be at Vanderbilt and at Arkansas, a pair of teams that went 1-15 in conference last season. The other road game is at Texas A&M to close the season, a program that went 3-5 in SEC play last fall.

For those doing the math, that's only three trips to opposing SEC stadiums, including a trip to Nashville that will probably have more Texas fans than Vandy fans, to face teams with a combined SEC record of 4-20. It's unlikely that's clicked in Alabama, Georgia and College Station because Greg Sankey still has his job as SEC commissioner.

So, with the unflattering optics of Texas throwing a hefty bag of cash to try to rig Year 1 of SEC play in favor of Steve Sarkisian and his band of merry burnt orange mercenaries and someone forgetting Mizzou is in the league until after most of the top tier teams had been scheduled, it's going to be difficult to keep this match-up from happening.

It's unlikely Mississippi State goes into Austin and knocks off the Longhorns in their inaugural SEC game. The Bulldogs are expected to play their role of burnt offering to the Fighting Money Bags of Texas.

If it were a third week of October game down in Starkville there might be a chance at an upset, but there's no way Sarkisian isn't going to be ready to try to convince everyone Texas is the new Georgia by making Mississippi State an example.

That brings things down to the final three weeks as Texas heads to Fayetteville, then Missouri travels to Starkville and then hosts Arkansas in Columbia to wrap the regular season. Texas has Georgia on the schedule, so it's possible a loss to the Razorbacks ends their title dreams.

Late November has been a time when both Razorbacks players and fans have notoriously quit on the season since 2018 with very few exceptions. This is around the time when locker room problems finally bring things to a crashing halt at Arkansas.

However, Texas coming to Razorback Stadium might be the one thing that gets both to hang in there for at least one more week. The 50+ crowd will convince the younger generation UT-Austin is worthy of a little extra energy and the prospect of ruining the Longhorns' season should be enough to motivate a roster made up primarily of players from Arkansas and Texas.

The last time the "Whiny Orange" wandered into Fayetteville back in 2021, Sarkisian and his Longhorns got curb-stomped and quit by halftime. However, that was the tail end of a full decade of Texas being the laughing stock of college football as the team every Power Five school tried to schedule in Week 2 so they could get a rankings bounce off the Longhorns' hype train before things came crashing down in Austin each season almost immediately after.

Those were the days of Top 5 recruiting classes that yielded little to no NFL draft picks because of culture problems and inability to develop talent. Texas just had an SEC-like 11 NFL Draft picks, including five in the first two rounds this past season.

Sarkisian has finally proved culture can change and talent can be developed down in Austin as he's helped a team with a notorious reputation for being among the softest in all of college football grow a mentality fit for SEC play just in time. That means a much different program will come to Arkansas this fall.

However, that doesn't mean it's impossible for Arkansas to pull off the upset. In fact, the Hogs might be the most likely team as they will be overlooked and the energy from the fans will be overwhelming.

A running quarterback who can break off big plays is always a wildcard who can turn things fast and momentum can flow downhill pretty quick in the Ozarks. If the Hogs can jump out with a couple of big punches early and hold a lead through the first half, statistics say the Longhorns are ripe to fall as the secondary wears down in the second half.

Performance of @TexasLonghorns' secondary at spring game chums @SEC waters. Especially intriguing for guys like @ArkRazorbacks OC Bobby Petrino.@RazorbackFB @TexasFootball @SECNetwork @SInow#WPS #Arkansas #HookEm #Texas #GigEmhttps://t.co/mLv31Th9sl

— AllHogs (@allhogswps) April 23, 2024

If that's the case, it might be enough to turn around the close of the season for Arkansas. A win over Louisiana Tech the following week could not only give the Hogs something to play for the final weekend, but offer enough of a boost late in the year to make people care about the Missouri game.

No one knows how Missouri will handle losing. If the Tigers wander into Starkville overconfident around the same time as Jeff Lebby really gets his offensive scheme rolling at Mississippi State, those incessant cow bells might be enough to rattle a Tigers team that has faced little adversity.

That would send Drinkwitz into the final week of the season reeling a little bit. It should be noted that he treats Arkansas week like it's the Super Bowl though, so the potential impact will be negligible.

If Missouri makes it to the SEC championship game, it's unlikely he will personally prepare as hard as he will for the Razorbacks. Also, as much as Hogs fans don't care about Mizzou, Tigers fans care 10 times as much on the opposite end of the spectrum.

For some reason, this game matters to them. However, if things play out well, this match-up might finally matter to Arkansas as well, especially if reminders of all those Missouri billboards across the state pop back up.

If Sam Pittman can keep the locker room from dividing late in the year so his team has a chance to crush Drinkwitz's dreams while also having something to play for, the Hogs might finally see this as a compelling contest heading into the game. The entire SEC will be behind Arkansas if a berth in the SEC championship is on the line because no one outside of about a 20 mile radius of Columbia wishes to see that.

No one wants have to spend the late afternoon sitting on pins and needles hoping Texas A&M can get over its inferiority complex to ensure the Longhorns can't slip through the SEC's backdoor to face Missouri should the Razorbacks not pull off the upset. It's better off if the Hogs play the role of SEC Jesus and rise with the express purpose of saving them all.

Should Arkansas and Mississippi State do what most will probably pick them to do at SEC Media Days and go 0-4 in those contests, it's unlikely this nightmare scenario gets avoided. In that case, fans will just have to take solace that the SEC championship game won't have as much on the line since 12 teams get into the playoff this year instead of four.

Still, it won't make those two fan bases any less sufferable, much less Drinkwitz and whatever odd thing he will do in his postgame glee once he's clinched a spot in the SEC championship game.

Arkansas and Mississippi State might not be the heroes the rest of the league wants, but after letting Texas and all of its baggage into the conference and then putting together these two schedules, the Hogs and Bulldogs are the potential heroes the SEC deserves. The rest of the fan bases just better hope they pull through.

HOGS FEED: 

• Calipari's methodical approach sharp contrast to Musselman

• NFL Draft paints crystal clear picture of Arkansas football’s main problem

* Which trasfers has Calipari targeted hardest?

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