It’s difficult for eternal optimists to understand why Saturday’s game against South Carolina is huge for Arkansas.

No, make that HUGE.

After all, the Razorbacks are sitting at 2-2 overall, 0-1 in the SEC. There’s a lot of games left to be played, right?

If Alabama wasn’t coming up next week, I might be inclined to go along with that.

It’s along the same lines as running the ball on second down after an incomplete pass. Nearly everybody does it and if you see a team not do it, then that’s the exception that proves the rule.

The reason is to give everybody something positive before a big third down play.

Well, the Hogs need something positive before marching into Tuscaloosa where it is likely not one single person in the stadium will think Arkansas can win. That includes players and coaches, who would never admit it, but deep down, they know.

When Southern Methodist came off the death penalty in 1989, they played Notre Dame in South Bend. Lou Holtz had his Irish players stepping out of bounds and everything else, some in the first half.

At halftime, Mustangs coach Forrest Gregg demanded of his team, “Who in this room doesn’t think we can come back and beat this team?”

He didn’t expect to see the overwhelmingly large number of hands raised.

“Hell, I almost raised my hand,” one assistant coach whispered later.

Years later, he admitted he knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as he said it.

The point is, the players know how good Alabama is. There isn’t a team in the SEC that can stay with the Crimson Tide this year. The guess here is nobody will unless they shoot themselves in the foot in some game.

Arkansas has to beat South Carolina on Saturday. Pure and simple.

This Razorback team doesn’t have good enough players to start what is going to be a fairly tough stretch of games with Alabama-Auburn-Ole Miss coming up with a loss to the Gamecocks.

Getting a split in these four games is important. Going 1-3 puts them at 3-5, and it’s going to be interesting at that point.

Who knows how it will break out?

The guess here is the rather ragged start by everybody in the SEC except Bama and Georgia will be smoothed out by the middle of October at the latest.

By November is when teams often return to form if they have the talent. Coaches will have a handle on things by then and talent makes it easier to figure out.

On the Hogs’ schedule, a lot of people are trying desperately to talk themselves into favoring the Hogs over Auburn. Unless they have a rash of injuries, particularly on defense, you can forget about that as they are the closest thing to the Tide in the West.

LSU and Mississippi State have, for lack of a better word, stunk things up the last couple of weeks. The guess is they will have things smoothed out by November. No way to even begin guessing on those games now.

Every season is made up of mini seasons. College football breaks smoothly into thirds. In the summer, I thought if Arkansas could go 3-1 in the first third they could have an eight or nine-win season.

Now that it didn’t happen, reassessing things puts them with an eight-game schedule and there’s two games in there — Alabama and Auburn — the Hogs won’t be favored to win.

Which means there’s six games left and Arkansas is a big choice against Coastal Carolina and Missouri, which cancels the previous two possible losses mentioned.

Which still leaves them at .500 with four toss-up games in there. Winning two is essential and the obvious ones the Hogs will be favored in are South Carolina on Saturday and Ole Miss at the end of October.

Win those and you may still get that elusive eight-win season with a chance to get nine wins in a bowl game.

Bret Bielema’s teams got better towards the end of nearly every season he’s been in Fayetteville. Last year was all over the place, trading wins and losses after September.

If that repeats, then this will be a 6-6 team.

But even that is likely dependent on a win Saturday.

Which is why this game is HUGE.