Oklahoma football: What to know about Week 1 opponent Arkansas State
By Chip Rouse
Arkansas State comes to Norman on Saturday to open the 2023 Oklahoma football season.
While not a Power Five team, Arkansas State is an NCAA Division I school and one of the 131 teams that constitute the Football Bowl Subdivision tier of college football.
The Red Wolves are located in Jonesboro, Arkansas, located in the northeastern corner of the state, and are members of the Sun Belt Conference. They have been a member of the Sun Belt Conference since 2001. The school colors are scarlet and black.
Longtime college coach Butch Jones is in his third year as head coach at Arkansas State. His college coaching career began at Rutgers in 1990 where he served as a graduate assistant. He was an assistant coach at Central Michigan for seven seasons and became head coach there in 2007. His other head-coaching stops were at Cincinnati and Tennessee, and he was an offensive analyst under Nick Saban at Alabama for two seasons before taking the head coach’s job at Arkansas State.
Jones is 5-19 in his two seasons at Arkansas State. He was the head coach at Tennessee when the Sooners defeated the Volunteers 34-10 in Norman in 2014 and 31-24 the following season in double overtime in Knoxville in Baker Mayfield first season as the OU starting quarterback.
The Red Wolves began playing varsity football in 1911 and have a record of 488-510-38 all-time.
Arkansas State was 3-9 a year ago and finished 1-7 in last place in the 14-team Sun Belt Conference.
The Sooners and Red Wolves have played each other two other times in football. Both games were played in Norman, where Saturday’s contest will be played. Oklahoma won 61-0 in 1992. The two teams played again eight years later, in 2000, on OU’s national championship season and Bob Stoops’ second as the Sooners’ head coach. The margin wasn’t quite as bad as in 1992, but the Sooners still won rather handedly, 45-7.
Three players to watch from Arkansas State on Saturday are QB J.T. Shrout, WR Corey Rucker and S Travian Thomas on the defensive side.
Shrout was part of the fallout at Colorado when Deion Sanders became head coach and cleaned house. Shrout played just one full season at Colorado, throwing for 1,220 yards and seven touchdowns in nine games. He was at Tennessee during the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
Rucker is back for a reunion with Arkansas State. He started his college career with the Red Wolves in 2020 and 2021 but transferred to South Carolina for the 2022 season, where one of his teammates was Oklahoma TE Austin Stogner.
Thomas started 12 of 13 games for the Red Wolves in 2022. He’s profiled as a tough and aggressive defender who is like a magnet to the ball.
Of note: Arkansas State played Ohio State in Columbus last season. Ohio State prevailed 45-12, but the game was much closer than the experts predicted.
As of Thursday, Las Vegas oddsmakers have Oklahoma as a 36.5-point favorite over Arkansas State on Saturday.