Fayetteville-Springdale Friday Could Be Closer Than Expected

For the 113th time Friday night Fayetteville and Springdale will meet on the football field in the battle of the Bulldogs. If you would have looked at this game a month ago you never would have thought Springdale had a chance. Fayetteville is the defending State Champions with three Arkansas Razorback commits and Springdale only had three wins last year. But after seeing what’s unraveled the first four weeks of the season, anything becomes possible.

Fayetteville was in a dog fight last Friday with Van Buren and didn’t even have the game in hand until late in the 4th quarter. Springdale has lost their last two games but they’re getting plenty of points. They’ve scored more than 40 twice so far, including 42 last week in the loss at Rogers.

If Springdale can be competitive in this game, the 7A-West might start to see some parody.

“There’s no gimmie games on any Friday nights,” said Fayetteville head coach Daryl Patton. “Last week when we played Van Buren everyone thought Van Buren would be a weak team in this league. They took us to the wire and had every opportunity to beat us.”

Fayetteville keeps dealing with injury after injury. Arkansas commit Brooks Ellis has been out for a few weeks with a dislocated kneecap and is questionable Friday. All-time leading rusher Brice Gahagans is also out for the next couple of weeks.

Springdale will try to capitalize on that by scoring early and often. The Bulldogs aren’t the only 7A-West team to prove it can score points this year.

 “Heritage, Springdale, Rogers, they’re all getting better every year,” said Brooks Ellis. “This year they’re doing really well so we’ll have to see how the season goes on. This week we have a tough challenge with Springdale and we just got to get ready for it.”

Fayetteville is 1-0 in conference. Springdale is 0-1. The pair of Bulldogs kick off at 7:30pm Friday night in Springdale.