Arkansas DL ready to play Texas A&M at home after years of Southwest Classic at Dallas Cowboys stadium
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Arkansas defensive lineman Cam Ball has been a part of the Southwest Classic since his redshirt freshman season in 2022.
Every year, the Razorbacks would collide with traditional rival Texas A&M, but the game wouldn’t be played in Fayetteville or College Station. Instead, it would be staged at a neutral site, with the most recent installments of the Southwest Classic being held at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas. For the past decade, from 2014 through last season, the Hogs and Aggies would do battle in an NFL stadium, and a big one at that.
Now, starting this fall, the crazy, chaotic and dramatic rivalry between these programs will return to being a home-and-home series.
Fast-forward to Thursday at SEC Media Days in Atlanta, where Ball talked about the Southwest Classic moving away from AT&T Stadium. On Oct. 18, the Hogs will host the Aggies instead of the neutral-site spectacle, and that’ll just make things a little bit different.
“It’s time that we have a level playing field. We’re playing in (AT&T Stadium), but we’re also playing in the state of Texas, so of course there’s going to be more Texas A&M fans,” explained Ball. “But the Southwest Classic is a great game, a physical game, very competitive, and we’ll prepare for them like we prepare for any other opponent.”
Texas A&M hosted the game in 2012 and Arkansas did the honors in 2013, and before that it was a neutral-site contest at the newly opened Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. That first game in Arlington was on Oct. 3, 2009, just months after the stadium opened, and the Razorbacks rolled to a 47-19 victory over their rivals. But the Aggies got the last laugh in Arlington last fall by beating the Hogs, 21-17.
The old Southwest Conference rivals who are now SEC rivals go back a long way, with Arkansas leading the all-time football series, 42-36-3.
The backdrop will be different this fall for the game, but the same intensity will still be there, like it’s been since the teams’s first meeting in 1903.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
