FAYETTEVILLE - Arkansas and Auburn have turned their football series into a strange little road show. Home field hasn’t mattered much lately, and the numbers back it up: after Auburn won five straight from 2016-20, the road team has taken the last five meetings.
That stretch has had some memorable twists. Auburn’s 2021 win in Fayetteville extended its run to six in the series, then Arkansas went to Auburn in 2022 and handed the Tigers the final loss of the Bryan Harsin era. Auburn came back to Fayetteville in 2023 and beat the Hogs 48-10, Arkansas answered with a 24-14 defensive win in 2024, and last season Hugh Freeze picked up his final SEC victory as Auburn’s head coach in Fayetteville against interim head coach Bobby Petrino.
Now it’s first-year Auburn coach Alex Golesh’s turn to walk into the matchup with a smile.
"Excited to be back home," said first-year Auburn head coach Alex Golesh. "Excited to play at Jordan-Hare. This is a big one for us, because it’s the next one."
Auburn has already shown it can beat heavyweight competition. The Tigers opened 4-2, including a road win over then-No.
1 Georgia in Athens, before the wheels came off in blowout losses to LSU and Ole Miss. That skid dropped Auburn to 4-4 overall and 2-4 in SEC play.
Golesh is also no stranger to Arkansas head coach Ryan Silverfield. The two are 0-3 against each other, having met three times when Golesh was at South Florida and Silverfield was at Memphis.
"The coaching circles are pretty small, so I’ve run into him on occasion, sometimes on the road recruiting," Silverfield said of Golesh. "And obviously he’s one of those guys who rose through the ranks and never played a down of college football and just kind of worked his way up. So respect for him in that manner."
Both teams are chasing a win on Nov. 7, but Arkansas may need it even more after a deflating 34-10 home loss to Missouri on Saturday left morale low in Razorback nation.
"You’re playing a football team that in a lot of ways, is trying to, in Year 1, find their true identity," Golesh said of the Razorbacks. "We’ve got to go play our best football on Saturday. We’ve gotta go find a way."
Golesh also went out of his way to praise Arkansas’ offense, describing it as a group built around the run game.
"Offensively, this is a team that’s built on running the football," Golesh said. "Got a mobile quarterback that’s done some really good things and has a running back core that, as this has gone on, has run it better and better."
The production doesn’t exactly match that description. Through eight games, Sutton Smith leads Arkansas with just 217 rushing yards, an average of 27.1 per game.
Golesh also praised the offensive line, calling it "a veteran group" that has improved every week. That came after Silverfield said following the Missouri game that the line played poorly and repeated that assessment Monday.
He had similar praise for quarterback KJ Jackson, saying Jackson had improved every week, even though he took a step back against Missouri with two turnovers and just 20 completions on 34 attempts, with no touchdown passes.
This year’s Arkansas-Auburn matchup may not be the SEC’s biggest draw, but it still carries plenty of weight for two first-year head coaches. And if the recent history holds, the road team may be the one walking away happiest again.
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