Arkansas tweaked its 2025 football schedule earlier this month, Best of Arkansas Sports can confirm.
Instead of hosting Missouri State in next year’s opener, the Razorbacks will play Alabama A&M at Razorback Stadium in the first ever meeting between the two schools.
The schedule change eliminates the possibility of new Arkansas offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino facing the school he led as head coach from 2020-22.
However, it wasn’t the Razorbacks who canceled on the Bears. According to a copy of the termination agreement obtained by BoAS via a Freedom of Information request, Missouri State will be paying the UA an undisclosed amount to cancel the agreed upon game.
(UPDATE: Missouri State will pay Arkansas $150,000 for terminating the game contract, according to a copy of the termination agreement obtained from MSU via a FOIA request. The copy sent from the UA to BoAS had the amount redacted, citing competitive advantage exemption to Arkansas’ FOIA law.)
When reached for comment, Missouri State indicated its transition from FCS to FBS played a role in the game being nixed.
“The original game contract and game guarantee for the 2025 game with Arkansas were negotiated before Missouri State’s move to FBS was even in the works,” the school told BoAS in a statement. “Since MSU’s move to CUSA has evolved in the past few months, efforts to renegotiate the game guarantee for that game were not successful. Both sides have agreed to cancel the Aug. 30, 2025 game contract which will allow Missouri State to pursue an appropriate game guarantee on that date with another school.
“It is Missouri State’s hope that discussions with Arkansas for future scheduling opportunities could resume down the road.”
Missouri State is beginning its NCAA-mandated two-year transition to college football’s highest level this season, playing an FCS slate while ineligible for the FCS Playoffs. It will join Conference USA next year and play an FBS slate while being ineligible to play in a bowl.
Explaining Missouri State’s Reasoning
The statement made by Missouri State makes sense when you look at the typical differences in payouts to teams at the different levels.
According to the Springfield News-Leader, the UA was set to pay Missouri State $500,000 for the 2025 matchup. That is $50,000 more than it got for the 2022 game, when the Bears nearly pulled off an upset with Petrino at the helm, but about the going rate for FCS opponents.
Here’s what the Razorbacks have paid their last five opponents from what was formerly known as Division I-AA:
- 2018: Eastern Illinois — $525,000
- 2019: Portland State — $550,000
- 2021: UAPB — $600,000
- 2022: Missouri State — $450,000
- 2023: Western Carolina — $550,000
Non-conference games from the Group of Five level are far more expensive.
This year, the UA will pay CUSA’s Louisiana Tech $1.65 million for their Nov. 23 matchup, according to the Monroe News-Star. That’s almost exactly what it paid Kent State out of the MAC last year, giving the Golden Flashes $1.6 million for their 28-6 loss on Sept. 9, according to the Kent Ravenna Record-Courier.
The Razorbacks also dished out $1.5 million for their 2022 opener against Cincinnati out of the AAC, as well as for their losses to San Jose State (MWC) and Western Kentucky (CUSA) in 2019.
With FBS teams, including those from the very conference it is joining, receiving three times what it was set to receive as an FCS foe, it’s understandable that Missouri State wanted to “renegotiate” Arkansas’ payout for next year’s game.
If the Razorbacks weren’t willing to meet their asking price, which is probably at least in the seven-figure range, the Bears will likely find someone else who will.
What it Means for Arkansas Football
This is a bummer for Arkansas football fans because thanks to Missouri State’s transition, 2025 had previously been set to be the Razorbacks’ first non-pandemic season without an FCS opponent in more than two decades.
Arkansas has played one such team every year since 2005, with the exception of the pandemic-altered 2020 season when it was originally scheduled to play FCS Charleston Southern before facing a 10-game, all-SEC slate.
On one hand, it’s fair to be critical of athletics director Hunter Yurachek for not just upping the buyout in order to keep Missouri State on the schedule as a regional FBS opponent.
After all, the Razorbacks are already getting a massive discount for one of their Group of Five non-conference foes. The UA is paying Arkansas State only $900,000 for their historic first matchup at War Memorial Stadium next season — significantly less than the deals in the $1.5 million range mentioned above.
In addition to that, Arkansas is hosting Notre Dame and traveling to Memphis as part of home-and-home series, meaning it isn’t issuing a payout for either of its other non-conference games.
Not wanting to dish out a seven-figure guarantee when they already have a couple on the schedule would make a lot of sense, but the Razorbacks don’t even have one such payout on the books for 2025.
However, in Yurachek’s defense, his job is about to get a lot harder because of the looming revenue sharing coming to college athletics.
Assuming the NCAA’s historic settlement is approved, schools will be able to share around $20 million of their revenue with student-athletes beginning in 2025. That money has to come from somewhere and Yurachek is already preparing for the added expense.
“I need to find levers to increase revenues and decrease expenses,” Yurachek told the UA Board of Trustees last week, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
It’s unclear how the negotiations went between Missouri State and Arkansas — such details will likely never be known — but even a 50/50 split between the agreed upon payout ($500,000) and the market rate for an FBS opponent ($1.5 million) would mean the Razorbacks would be on the hook for another $500,000.
Yurachek may have opted to save that in preparation for the revenue sharing that is expected to kick in next year.
Instead, Arkansas vs. Alabama A&M
One thing is for sure: Arkansas will open the 2025 season against Alabama A&M instead of Missouri State…and it will (almost certainly) be a bloodbath.
Sure, the Razorbacks have had some scares against FCS programs in the past, and fans have probably tried to push the memory of the 1992 loss to The Citadel out of their minds, but simply put, that is not the case when an SEC team plays a team from the SWAC.
That conference is made up of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), like UAPB, that lack the funding and resources that even other FCS programs like Central Arkansas and Missouri State have — and pale in comparison to Power Four schools.
Unsurprisingly, that disparity has produced some ugly games.
Based on research by Best of Arkansas Sports, SEC teams are 19-0 against the SWAC since 2009. The average score of those games is 54-7, which is an average margin of 47 points.
The closest of those games was Mississippi State’s 49-16 win over Alcorn State in 2010, while the biggest blowout was Texas A&M’s 67-0 beatdown of Prairie View A&M in 2016. The latter of those came the same year Missouri crushed Delaware State 79-0, a game that wasn’t included in the above statistics because the Hornets are a member of the MEAC, another FCS conference made up of HBCUs.
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