Buzz Around Arkansas Razorbacks Football Strictly PR Lately

Repairing relationship with Hogs fans has been Ryan Silverfield's main project but spring football less than three weeks away

Arkansas Razorbacks new coach Ryan Silverfield speaks to the crowd during halftime against the Louisville Cardinals at Bud Walton Arena. | Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

With the start of Arkansas spring football practice just three weeks away, this ranks up there with some of the quietest periods of almost no talk about football in recent memory.

Granted, in earlieryears the media the talk was almost every day of the year. Of course, that's back when the Razorbacks started most years ranked in the Top 20 (it didn't become 25 until a few years later). A lot of those years were Top 10.

During my college years when I was also covering the Hogs quite a bit, they played in the Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowls. Only one year didn't include a bowl game in a train wreck season where they auditioned students to play quarterback.

It's partly understandable. When Arkansas goes 2-10 for a third of the the last nine seasons, folks lose interest.

Built in the dark 💤 pic.twitter.com/BA1ElHdPEz

— Arkansas Razorback Football (@RazorbackFB) February 20, 2026

Ryan Silverfield is inheriting a program with very low expectations. Fans are polite, but very guarded about any optimism. They don't want to go all in and lose their emotional investment. Most of the money coming in is probably corporate dollars and not out of folks' personal accounts.

With the new world of college athletics wondering about who the new players will be is just part of doing business these days. Everybody seems to be kind of used to it.

Everything Silverfield does these days is more public relations than anything it else. All you have to do is look at the stories we've had at Hogs On SI in the past week:

• Silverfield Sets One Major Requirement to Be Part of Arkansas Program
• Now We Probably Know Razorbacks Rebuilding Football from Scratch
• Silverfield Ready to Prioritize In-state Recruiting For Years to Come
• Silverfield Signals Patience, Clean Slate for Razorbacks but Few Answers

There are some semi-informative stories and the new coach has already lost two assistants he just hired a couple of months ago. Five years ago that would have been a really big deal. These days it seems to be just part of the way business goes.

How we feeling about 6 am stadium runs, gentlemen? 🎤 pic.twitter.com/m4YSsUfvCT

— Arkansas Razorback Football (@RazorbackFB) February 20, 2026

Now it's on to the spring recruiting cycle and getting ready for a spring practice that will be interesting, to say the least. Fans should be paying attention to the news out of that, even though as everybody should have learned by now, it's not exactly a dead solid perfect way of knowing what's coming.

There are a lot of All-Americans and super stars in spring practice. Part of it around the Razorbacks the past few years is they are playing against themselves. That hasn't been the best test to accurately evaluate what the players for the Hogs can do when SEC teams are suddenly on the schedule.

It's also part of why Arkansas plays one of the hardest schedules in the country. They can't play themselves and that always makes it much more difficult. It also makes things hard on fans.

Right now all they have is hope. Which is something fans are used to seeing.