State legislature could force Arkansas and Arkansas State to play annual game
Former Arkansas Razorbacks head football coach and athletic director Frank Broyles and current athletic director Jeff Long call the hogs during a dedication ceremony before the start of a game against the Louisiana State Tigers at Donald W. Reynolds Stadium. (Beth Hall-USA TODAY Sports)
There are no professional teams and only two D-I college football teams in the state of Arkansas. However, the SEC’s Razorbacks have not included the Sun Belt’s Arkansas State Red Wolves on their schedule for decades.
They may not be the case very much longer, if the state’s legislature and the population at large have their say in the matter. The state of Texas recently introduced a bill that would force Texas and Texas A&M to resume their annual rivalry game, and the Iron Bowl battle between Alabama and Auburn has been a state-mandated game for years.
Now, according to ThePostGame, the Arkansas state legislature could take matters into its own hands in very much the same way.
Arkansas Rep. Andy Mayberry recently submitted House Bill 2274, which, if passed, would call for one game to be played between the Hogs and Red Wolves in Arkansas’ War Memorial Stadium.
Unlike the Alabama law or what is currently being put to vote in Texas, this would not make an annual meeting mandatory. Instead, it would simply call for one game to be put on the schedule for the sake of charity.
No joke. Mayberry wants $250,000 of the game’s profits to go directly to a charity not of his choice, but to wherever the people of the state of Arkansas believe it would serve the best purpose.
Further, the people will actually have a real chance to decide whether or not they would like to see this game played in the first place.
Mayberry has started a website that features an area where fans can vote as to whether or not they would like to see an Arkansas-Arkansas State game scheduled in the future. At the time of this writing, 12,037 folks had voted on the matter, with 53.9-percent in favor of the one-time benefit game.
“For those people who say, ‘Should you really be spending your time legislating something like that?’ that’s why it says ‘the people’s game’ – that’s what it says on the website,” Mayberry told TalkBusiness.
Of course, many people within the state would love to see the game played as a matter of pride.
However, the next question obviously becomes, is it the government’s right to simply step in and force to college football teams to play one another?
