Barring divine intervention or utter disaster in the final month of the season, Arkansas fans will look back on 2024 and probably say, you know what, that all tracks.
This year offered up …
… an early-season forehead-slapping loss, albeit one that showed this team had potential under its new coordinators.
… wins over a soft non-conference slate, as well as two teams slumping toward the SEC’s basement.
… one genuinely thrilling breakout win against a top-ranked opponent that, contrary to all earthly sense, has been unbeatable otherwise.
… and morale-crushing losses to SEC teams that are simply rocking more talent than the Hogs right now.
If you were sketching out the season in August, this is about what you’d have guessed, perhaps with the exception of that Tennessee surprise. With three games left on the schedule, Arkansas is looking very much like the 6-6 or 7-5 team most fans were hoping for in August.
No longer are the Hogs playing for a dark-horse shot in the playoff; rather, they’re playing for a bowl game. Any bowl game will do, really. Coaches get bonuses, teams get more practice and players get swag. Fans get something to talk about during December, and maybe a boys’ trip to see Elvis’ old house.
There are no miracle finishes left for this postseason (though things will certainly get more interesting if the Hogs hook ‘em). What’s likely ahead in these six scenarios are a couple of humdrum options, a lot of mid-grade Big 12 possibilities, and one wild card pick that, should it come to pass, might just let the feel-OK Hogs spoil one of the true feel-good stories of a strange year for the sport.
Here’s what major national sports outlets predict is in store for the Hogs’ postseason, ranked subjectively by desirability.
Arkansas Football to Memphis Again?
6. Arkansas vs. Cincinnati in the Liberty Bowl
Source: ESPN
Apologies to folks in the eastern half of the state, but I shudder every time the Hogs accept a Liberty Bowl bid. These games tend to match underperforming and under-motivated Arkansas teams against B-list opponents with something to prove. Recall the OT nailbiter against Eastern Carolina in 2010, the blessedly straightforward win against Kansas State in 2016, and the least-watchable 55-53 triple-OT game in the history of the sport against Kansas two years ago.
The best you can say about Memphis in the winter is Arkansas tends to survive it. ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura sees the Hogs here matched up against Cincinnati, a recent arrival to the Big 12. Cincy’s greatest feat this season was escaping with a win in which Arizona State’s kicker missed two fourth-quarter field goals, prompting that head coach to call for open kicker tryouts. “So if you can kick, and you’re at Arizona State, email me,” Kenny Dillingham declared. He soon apologized and walked back the threat. But that’s how mad he got after losing to the Bearcats.
5. Arkansas vs. TCU in the Liberty Bowl
Source: Saturday Down South
Last anyone noticed the Horned Frogs, they existed mostly as a chalk outline. Georgia’s 65-7 obliteration of TCU’s Cinderella team was so demoralizing, the entire season felt like a flop. It brought back memories of the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, in which No. 2 Florida let No. 1 Nebraska roll up 62 points and everyone knew, definitively and forever, who was best in the country that year. Florida at least returned to win the national title a year later. TCU hasn’t beaten a ranked team in the two years since that mauling, and have settled into the middle of the Big 12 (per the theme of most of these matchups).
The Frogs get the nod as the more exciting Liberty Bowl matchup, though, partly because of their recent successes, and because it’s always fun to see former Southwest Conference rivals in the wild. TCU has played Arkansas 68 times and counting (nice), with Arkansas winning 43 of those games. Their mascots rhyme. They both have strong offenses and wobbly defenses. When Arkansas beats TCU, it irks people in Dallas.
Who’s in charge of the Horned Frogs’ offense? Oh yeah – Kendal Briles. They also have former Arkansas running backs coach Jimmy Smith on staff and former running back Dominique Johnson on the roster.
And, look, to be fair, the Liberty Bowl has its charms. Christmas and New Year’s fall on Wednesdays this year, making the 27th, the Friday between them, the fulcrum of a de facto 10-day weekend, and one helluva date to schedule a trip to Beale Street.
Familiar Faces in Houston?
4. Arkansas vs. Kansas State in the Texas Bowl
Source: The Athletic, Action Network & 247Sports
This matchup would mark the third against Kansas State in the Hogs’ last seven bowl games, and that alone takes some of the sheen off this potential meeting in the Houston Texans’ home stadium. But the No. 16 Wildcats happen to be enjoying a sneaky-strong season. ESPN’s playoff calculator gives them a 16% chance of making the playoffs despite their losses to BYU (understandable) and Houston (woof).
Unless Arkansas closes outrageously strong, they’re not going to wind up ranked at the end of the season. (That farcical Week 2 loss to Okie State, which has yet to win a conference game, looks worse by the week.) Picture instead that the Hogs get an afternoon matchup on New Year’s Eve in an NFL stadium, in the country’s fourth-largest city, against a decent-but-not-great top-20 team that last year won the internet by devouring a door-sized Pop Tart mascot after winning the Pop Tarts Bowl. There would be worse ways to head into 2025.
3. Arkansas vs. Baylor in the Texas Bowl
Source: USA Today
Ugh, Baylor. Another old mid-level Southwest Conference rival who, like TCU, has managed to outclass the Hogs for much of the past decade. The Bears have notched five top-15 finishes since 2013, none more impressive than the 2021 season that saw them beat Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl and finish at No. 5 in the country. They’ve been mostly forgettable since then, and this year have played pretty much exactly to expectations, losing to every ranked opponent while handling business otherwise.
On paper, this could wind up being an oddly even matchup. The Hogs and Bears both give up 26 points a game and score about 33 per, on very similar strengths of schedule. (Likewise, in the all-time series, Arkansas holds a 34-31-2 edge.) Like Arkansas, the Bears’ weakness is on defense — they rank 74th nationally in yards per game allowed. Arkansas meanwhile is (almost incomprehensibly) No. 5 in the country in total yards per game, despite not having a top-30 scoring offense. The Bears also have former Hogs Ketron Jackson and Snaxx Johnson on their team, while the Razorbacks hired away Eric Mateos to coach their offensive line.
This would be in many ways a right-sized game for the Hogs: winnable, losable, and a potentially gratifying end to a year that has seen too many old rivals – and familiar faces – whack Arkansas.
2. Arkansas vs. Texas Tech in the Texas Bowl
Source: ESPN & Sports Illustrated
Of the two ESPN predictions, let’s hope this pick by Mark Schlabach is the winner. Again this would send the Hogs to Houston, and again they’d be pitted against an old Southwest Conference rival. Tech was a late joiner to the old SWC, arriving just as Arkansas was about to hire Frank Broyles. The Hogs have all but owned the series (28-8), though Tech got the last win in the series: Patrick Mahomes rolled into Fayetteville in 2015 and had a 26-for-30 passing day against Bret Bielema’s only eight-win squad.
The Red Raiders may not have much pedigree, really; they’ve had just one 10-win season in the past 47 years. But are they not entertaining? The Air Raid offenses that Mike Leach ran in Lubbock changed college football. Even in this season, when they’re square in the middle of the Big 12 with losses to TCU, Baylor, Colorado, and Washington State, they throw the ball around the yard, score a lot of points, and give up a generous 35 points a game on defense.
If you’re Arkansas, with its porous secondary, the obvious concern here would be giving up 400 yards passing, and you know, fair enough. But what if I told you the Red Raiders are 124th in total defense, and are almost as bad as the Hogs at defending the pass? Now would you want to watch Taylen Green sling the rock 30 times and just see where the afternoon takes you? This could wind up one of those bowl-game shootouts that becomes a mini-instant classic. Because what sort of depraved soul turns on ESPN on New Year’s Eve to watch defense?
Vegas Trip for Arkansas Football
1. Arkansas vs. Washington State in the Las Vegas Bowl
Source: CBS Sports
They’re not the best team in college football this year, but the Cougars are having some of the purest fun. After watching damn near the entire Pac-12 defect to other conferences, Washington State and Oregon State were the last two teams standing, them against the world. When those two teams play on Nov. 23, they’ll each have, at last, played their first and only conference game of the season. Until then, Washington State is 0-0 in the Pac-12 and yet 8-1 overall, mostly against the dregs of the Mountain West. The Cougs’ lone blemish was a beatdown at Boise State.
While Washington State is no longer coached by the late Mike Leach, who once flirted with the Razorbacks, it is still an entertaining team to watch. The Cougars’ defense and special teams are an adventure (Sharp College Football ranks both of those units 83rd in the country). They score nearly 40 points a game, eighth in the country, while giving up 27 per, which is 88th. They’re 106th in sacks allowed. They gave up 52 points to San Jose State (while scoring 54). Tell me you wouldn’t want to see the trick plays they would give up. They haven’t beaten any teams you’d describe as particularly good — they did top their archrival Washington, which sits at 5-5 now — but the Cougars nonetheless checked in at No. 18 in ESPN’s latest playoff predictor, with a 7% chance to make the playoffs. Not too shabby for a team that didn’t receive so much as a single vote in the AP poll until Week 4.
And now, if CBS is reading the cards correctly, this team that has been playing with house money all year could be the Hogs’ opponent in Las Vegas on Friday the 27th, in the Raiders’ home stadium. The game would come on right as the Liberty Bowl was wrapping up. Arkansas would win 49-45, and Hogs fans would head to the roulette tables to keep betting on red.
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