The "olympic" sport was baseball when they hired the guy from Nebraska.

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UA breaks tradition by scheduling in-state schools, but Arkansas State? In football? ADs already discussing such a game

Arkansas State Athletic Director Terry Mohajir knew better.

One of the coaches of A-State’s Olympic sports teams had approached him with an unusual situation. The coach’s counterpart at the University of Arkansas had sent a contract for a UA-Arkansas State competition in their sport. Turns out, Mohajir discovered, that coach was new and didn’t know how things worked ‘round these parts.

Mohajir didn’t want to get this UA coach in trouble. “I said, ‘I think their coach needs to go check with his supervisors,’” Mohajir recalls. “That coach went back and checked and said ‘Yeah, they don’t play.’”

No three words have better defined the relationship between the UA and Arkansas State through the decades since A-State became a Division I school. Since the mid-1900s, Razorback athletic administrators had unofficially forbidden its coaches from scheduling games against other Arkansas colleges. That policy was a result of former athletic director John Barnhill’s desire to turn the state of Arkansas into Razorback country.

(full article)
https://armoneyandpolitics.com/hogs-asu-closer-think/