Hopefully all hands from both teams will run to the correct sideline before this morning’s LSU-Arkansas game.

It could get confusing. Former LSU head coach Les Miles famously once took a wrong turn in the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium during the Tigers entrance for a season-opener against Oregon.

But welcome to college football in the age of the NCAA transfer portal.

Both LSU (7-2, 5-1 Southeastern Conference) and Arkansas (5-4, 2-3) will have two starters apiece who played in his game last year for the opposite team.

In all, 16 of the 44 listed starters in the game are transfers.

LSU safeties Joe Foucha and Greg Brooks both played for the Razorbacks last season. It was more coincidence than a straight swap, but the Razorbacks shipped in cornerback Dwight McGlothern and defensive end Landon Jackson from last year’s LSU team.

It’s not the way LSU head coach Brian Kelly wants to do business long term, but there wasn’t much other choice when he was cobbling together a roster that had 38 scholarship players when he took the job last December.

“They’re from Louisiana,” Kelly pointed out of Foucha and Brooks, both from the New Orleans area.

“We didn’t spend too much time asking them what they know (about Arkansas),” Kelly said of his former Razorbacks. “There’s only so much you can do.

“Certainly this will be a big thing for them going back to Fayetteville as transfers, but first and foremost what was appealing to us as we were putting this back together was to have SEC experience and a connection with the state of Louisiana, for LSU. That’s why they came back.”

On the other side, McGlothern, who saw considerable time in LSU’s secondary, leads the Razorbacks with three interceptions, along with six pass breakups and a forced fumble. He had come to LSU from the Houston area.

“They’re obviously playing very well for them,” Kelly said of the former Tigers.

Jackson, who has 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble, was from right across the Arkansas border in Texarkana, Texas.

The Tigers should have plenty of incentive regardless of what familiar faces are on the other sideline.

Coming off last week’s upset of Alabama, the makeshift team Kelly has put together controls its own fate in the race for the SEC West title.

An LSU victory over Arkansas, coupled with an Alabama win over Ole Miss later in the day, would clinch the Tigers a trip to Atlanta for the SEC Championship game.

An Ole Miss win would force LSU to also beat Texas A&M in two weeks (after a nonconference game against Alabama-Birmingham next week). An Ole Miss win and an LSU loss today would put Ole Miss in the driver’s seat with games remaining against Arkansas and Mississippi State.

“We’re not going to walk in with a powerpoint about the SEC race, who’s got what and all those things,” Kelly said. “But, yeah, it’s there, it’s out there. They know what they’re going for.

“If they want to be champions they know that there are steps along the way in this process … So let’s do the things we need to do.”