Arkansas’ athletic department would like to make something abundantly clear.

Eastern Michigan will be playing the Razorbacks in Razorback Stadium on Saturday night.

Confused? Apparently, you’re not the only one. A satirical look at Saturday’s game ran in Arkansas’ school newspaper, The Arkansas Traveler, today. The focus of the made-up story: Eastern Michigan decided not to travel to Arkansas, saving itself from a guaranteed beating.

It included a statement at the top of the online version of the story: The following story is satirical in nature with fictitious quotes and opinions. It is meant for entertainment purposes only and not to be taken serious. Seriously.

It also included fake (and funny) quotes like this from Eastern Michigan coach Ron English: “We’re going to take the gas money from the Arkansas trip and just take the guys out to Golden Corral. And one of the linebackers just got the box set of Saw DVDs, so we’ve been watching those instead of game film every day so we can go see the Saw VI on Saturday. I can’t get enough of those movies.”

What’s my point? Apparently, it has left some calling the Arkansas athletic department trying to figure out what happened. And if Eastern Michigan won’t play the Hogs on Saturday, then who will? It wasn’t an overwhelming number of calls, apparently, but enough for senior associate athletic director Kevin Trainor to inform his staff the confusion is out there. And to assure fans that Eastern Michigan is playing Arkansas.

(UPDATE) I’ve just been pointed to the actual newspaper version of the story. “Satire” is written in red print above the headline in the print version of the story, but the statement I mentioned above is not in the paper. That’s probably where a lot of the confusion came from.