Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

12/23/2011 at 9:00am

Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long sounded unusually tired for 8:30 in the morning during a recent radio interview. In fact, the word “weary” was thrown about at some point during his chat, most of which revolved around the Razorbacks’ 2012 football schedule.

There was a point when Long hoped to have the Arkansas football schedule wrapped up and packaged by Christmas. It’s not happening and that seems — at least from the recent interview — to be taking its toll on the athletic department’s top administrator.

“It’s something we’ve been working on virtually every day for some time now,” Long said on Hog Sports Radio’s “The Show” with Dave Barr and Jordan Stuckey.

Adding Texas A&M and Missouri to the league has complicated things, of course. A&M's addition is especially difficult to navigate because the Aggies and Razorbacks are in the midst of a contract to play at Cowboys Stadium every year until 2018.

A&M would prefer to go home-and-home now that the two schools are SEC opponents. Arkansas likes its presence in the Dallas area too much to agree to pull the game from there.

"We've come out and been very clear that from a University of Arkansas perspective we'd like to remain in Dallas through the end of the contract, which is seven more years," Long said on Hog Sports Radio.

SEC officials aren’t involved in that battle between A&M and Arkansas. Commissioner Mike Slive and his administrators have more than enough going on with scheduling than to get in the middle of this one.

Whatever the schedule looks like in 2012 doesn’t mean that’s what it will look like in 2013 or beyond. Missouri might not always be in the East. Perhaps for next season somebody like Arkansas gets stuck going back to both LSU and Alabama.

Don't forget there is a nonconference game to fill now. And most schools already have contracts in place this late in the year. So even "cupcakes" have leverage when negotiating their price to come in and be an easy win. Arkansas and Coach Bobby Petrino would prefer an opponent the caliber of A&M as a nonconference game, but scheduling that is becoming increasingly difficult.

No wonder Long sounded exhausted, right?

Understandably, the situation has caused some stress for Long. Compounding the issue is that uncertainty often leads to speculation and — sometimes — information getting out before it’s supposed to reach the masses.

For example: recent scuttlebutt that Arkansas and LSU will be meeting in Fayetteville instead of Little Rock to end next season. Surely you’ve heard this is a possibility, right?

Long has. He heard it again on The Show. And here’s his response:

“We’ve not indicated to War Memorial Stadium or the SEC what games we would play in Little Rock,” Long said. “I’ve communicated with Kevin Crass from the War Memorial Stadium Commission and let him know until we receive the conference schedule and until we have our nonconference set, we won’t make a decision on what games will be played in Little Rock this season.

“Those are speculative at best. Rumors. That’s all those are. There’s been no official comment on that to the SEC or to LSU or to anyone else at this point.”

Not to add to Long’s stress levels, but that doesn’t come off like a guarantee the game is in Little Rock next season, does it? If that was a 100 percent certainty, then I suspect that Long would have noted the game stays where it’s been.

It is worth noting the schedule with War Memorial Stadium stipulates only that two games a year be played in Little Rock, including one SEC game and one nonconference game. So there is nothing but tradition keeping Arkansas-LSU in Central Arkansas.

Weigh that against the recruiting disadvantage the Razorbacks have in not being able to play host to official visits at their biggest game of the year. (Essentially, Arkansas can host recruits in Little Rock, but they have to be unofficial, meaning they and their families pay their own way to the game.) Plus, the prospect of playing in a smaller stadium would seem to suggest Arkansas is losing money by keeping the game in Little Rock.

Nobody could blame Long for investigating the possibility, right?

Of course, that would be a lot easier for Long and the administration to evaluate if they knew what the rest of the schedule was going to look like. For now they seem to be left guessing, speculating and worrying just like the rest of us.

Fans might think they're losing sleep over what next year's schedule looks like. Long quite possibly is.

Tagged: Southeastern Conference, Mike Slive, War Memorial Stadium, LSU Tigers, Jeff Long, Bobby Petrino, Arkansas Razorbacks