Chris Bahn: Arkansas Season Could Hinge On This Weekend

Texas A&M is a must-win game for Arkansas.

There. It's been said.

Seems foolish to attach the must-win label to a nonconference game. Seems especially foolish to do it with a game that's not even being played at home. Generally, that would be the case.

Arkansas is 1-2 overall, though. The Razorbacks are 0-2 in the Southeastern Conference after facing third-ranked Alabama and No. 18 Georgia and the toughest part of the schedule is still ahead.

Raise your hand if you honestly thought things would be different at this point. Were folks really expecting 3-0 or even 2-1 against programs that are in the national title hunt on a regular basis?

Trouble is Bobby Petrino thought the Razorbacks would at worst be 2-1 right now. Petrino put so much attention on Georgia and made it such an important game with all the planning for it that losing 52-41 put his players and coaches into a funk.

It does seem regrettable that the Razorbacks put so much into the Georgia game. At the very least, it wasn't wise for coaches and players to talk publicly about how much they'd been gearing up for the Bulldogs before the game was played.

But what's done is done. Now the Razorbacks face a must-win game with Texas A&M on Saturday.

Forget about all the auxiliary benefits to a win in Dallas. We'll talk about the benefits of impressing 10,000 UA alums in Texas another day. We'll save the importance of putting on a good show for north Texas-area recruits for later in the week.

Arkansas needs to win Saturday because of what looms directly ahead on the schedule. And it's worth noting that this is every bit the difficult schedule that people thought it would be.