If you’re listing the toughest places to play in college football, Tennessee football’s Neyland Stadium is certainly toward the top of the list, if not sitting alone in first place. This Saturday, Arkansas will be the team walking in with the attempt to knock off the Vols.
This will be the second time Bobby Petrino, the Razorbacks’ interim head coach, will be in Knoxville for a game. The first was when he was the offensive coordinator for Texas A&M in 2023. Tennessee won that game 20-13 in front of a ‘Checker Neyland’ crowd.
Now, his first game as the interim Head Hog will be in front of a sold-out Neyland Stadium. So far, Arkansas has played one SEC road game in which it lost 41-35 at Ole Miss. Petrino, then the offensive coordinator under now-fired Sam Pittman, thought the team operated well in the face of noise.
However, he did note that Tennessee will be a different beast. Despite that, he’s ‘optimistic’ the team will handle it well.
“It’s awesome. It’s awesome,” Petrino said on the environment at Neyland Stadium. “You know, you always want to go into a hostile environment and have fun with it and go. So I felt like, you know, at Ole Miss, we did a really nice job of handling the noise, the communication, the knock on wood, didn’t have pre-snap penalties. I thought the experience for Taylen (Green) and those guys were right on. So I feel like we’ll go in there and handle it well. I’m optimistic we’ll go in there and handle it well. It is different. It’ll be louder, it’ll be more hostile than Ole Miss was, but we’ve got to do a good job preparing for it. What that says is that you come off the practice field with a headache every day because that noise you play out there is awful.”
More From RTI: What Arkansas Football Interim Coach Bobby Petrino Said Before Playing Tennessee
Petrino isn’t taking a page out of the handbook most coaches follow of preparing for Neyland Stadium, though. While often you hear of teams blaring Rocky Top at practices, Petrino said that isn’t on the docket. Just pumped in crowd noise.
“No, you don’t play that,” Petrino said. “But just the noise that you have to make between plays and all that, so you can call the play. It makes for stressful time. But it’s fun.”
Kickoff is scheduled for 4:15 p.m. ET and will air on SEC Network. Tennessee is a 13.5-point favorite, according to FanDuel. The Vols are looking to enter a road stretch with a second SEC win before playing at Alabama and Kentucky. On the other hand, Arkansas is looking to simply keep its head above water and get out on the right foot under Petrino as he vies for the permanent head job.
