Sam Pittman made it clear–Arkansas football is better off when they can play SEC games at home. Besides the more obvious reasons for that like better facilities, not having to travel and more seats, is the recruiting advantage.
When Hunter Yurachek changed venues for Arkansas’s game versus Missouri, he opened up one more opportunity for the football staff to host prospects for a game versus an SEC opponent.
If Arkansas had kept to the original schedule, the Hogs would have had three weekends in November where they couldn’t host official visitors. They’d be on the road at Alabama, on the road at LSU and then at War Memorial Stadium–where they aren’t allowed make contact and would have to factor travel into the 48-hour visit.
Those November weekends are crucial for locking down your current commits for the early signing period in mid-December and they’re some of the last opportunities to sway final targets. Now, Arkansas finishes the 2021 season at home playing Missouri with a chance to end the year and recruiting cycle with a bang.
Despite the change, Arkansas still has another “wasted” recruiting opportunity on the books for next season. The Hogs can’t host recruits the weekend they play the Aggies at AT&T Stadium due to the neutral site rules. The solution to this problem is just time.
The contract with AT&T Stadium runs through 2024. Yurachek highly doubts there will be a renewal.
“If you look at our schedule over the next five years, we have 20 SEC home games and 18 of those will be played here in Fayetteville,” Yurachek said. “The two that will not be will be the two we play in Dallas at AT&T Stadium against A&M. After that, I foresee those games moving back on campus.”
The Razorbacks just went through 10 months without seeing recruits in person, it’s understandable why Pittman is eager not to waste a single visit opportunity.
Arkansas’s newly scheduled, historic 2025 matchup versus Arkansas State is significant, but I don’t think it will have any impact on the Hogs’ ability to pull the top talent in the state. Only in an alternate reality does that happen.
If the program went so far as to make this a yearly in-state showdown, then there’s a marginal chance that once in a blue moon the Red Wolves might at some point get a commitment from someone the Razorbacks were recruiting. But that would require Arkansas State to beat Arkansas several years in a row and they’d need to ascend to top-25 status at least to turn heads of prospects contemplating whether they should shirk an SEC opportunity to play in the Sun Belt. And Arkansas would have to be further in the dumps than we’ve ever seen.
There are many examples I could use but to draw from my own background… TCU plays SMU every year for the Iron Skillet. TCU and SMU recruit a lot of the same players. SMU has beaten TCU three times from 2005 to the present. SMU has pulled maybe a handful of recruits TCU wanted badly in that span.
It’s not even a great example because TCU and SMU are closer in stature based on conference, enrollment, location, etc than Arkansas and Arkansas State…. but you get my point.
