Georgia football favored to barbecue Arkansas Razorbacks opening week in Fayetteville

ATHENS — Georgia football will open the season as more than a three-touchdown favorite at Arkansas, according to a BetOnline.ag press release.

The preseason No. 4-ranked Bulldogs will head to Fayetteville, Ark., for the first time since 2009. The most recent time the teams met was in 2014, when Georgia scored a 45-32 contest in Little Rock.

The Bulldogs have opened as a 24-point favorite in this football game, the oddsmakers perhaps not convinced that Kirby Smart will turn up the tempo on his offense this season.

Georgia has a new offensive coordinator and is replacing its starting quarterback, tailback and offensive tackles. among others, this season.

The Razorbacks bring a 19-game SEC losing streak into the Sept. 26 match (time has yet to be announced).

New Arkansas coach Sam Pittman inherits a program that has gone 2-10 overall and 0-8 in the SEC the past two seasons.

The Hogs most recent win came in 2017, when they defeated Ole Miss 38-37 in Oxford, Matt Luke’s interim season as the Rebels’ head coach.

Georgia won its past two season-opening SEC games by 24 points, beating Vanderbilt 30-6 last season in Nashville, and topping South Carolina 41-17 in Columbia in 2018. The year before, Smart beat a Dan Mullen-coached Mississippi State team 31-3 in its first SEC game of the 2017 season.

There could be some sentiment that Smart will take it easy on the ever-so-popular Pittman, who served as Georgia’s offensive line coach the past three years and helped build Georgia into a national championship contender.

But with a physical stretch of games in Weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5, Smart will need to give new quarterback (s) every opportunity to get in tune.

The Bulldogs will face off against three of the top defensive minds in college football in succession in Auburn’s Kevin Steele, Tennessee’s Jeremy Pruitt and Alabama’s Nick Saban.