ARKADELPHIA, Ark. - Ouachita Baptist University again will have one of the largest radio networks in NCAA Division II with Ouachita Football Network stations covering most of Arkansas along with parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana and Kansas.
 
Ouachita is the only college football program in the state -- at any level -- that has posted nine consecutive winning seasons. The Tigers have won Great American Conference championships in two of the past six seasons.
 
Ouachita will open its 2017 season at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 31, at Cliff Harris Stadium in Arkadelphia against Northwestern Oklahoma State University. The broadcast will begin at 5 p.m. with the Baptist Health Tiger Countdown To Kickoff.
 
Network affiliates for the 2017 season are:
 
KHTE-FM, 96.5, Little Rock, the flagship station of the Ouachita Football Network KUOA, AM 1290 and FM 97.7, Siloam Springs KAMD-FM, 97.1, Camden KZNG, AM 1340 and FM 105.5, Hot Springs KNAS-FM, 105.5, Nashville KQOR-FM, 105.3, Mena
 
Visit Hot Springs will again be the presenting sponsor of the Ouachita Football Network. Other sponsors are Petit Jean Meats, Taylor King Law, the Church at Rock Creek, the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, Arkadelphia Clinic for Children & Young Adults, Baptist Health, Southern Bancorp, Legacy Termite & Pest Control and Jim Stilwell Nationwide Insurance.
 
Rex Nelson of Little Rock returns for his 35th season of play-by-play, making him one of the longest-serving college play-by-play announcers in the country. He will again be joined in the broadcast booth by Dr. Jeff Root, who has provided analysis for most of those previous 34 seasons.
 
Nelson, one of the state's best-known writers and speakers, serves as the senior editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He was inducted in 2016 into the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. The broadcast booth at Cliff Harris Stadium was named in his honor in 2015.
 
Root is the dean of Ouachita's School of Humanities and also the interim dean of the School of Education. He has served as the football play-by-play announcer for Arkadelphia High School for more than three decades. Nelson and Root grew up within a block of Ouachita's stadium and began doing the radio broadcasts of Tiger games when they were Ouachita students.
 
Richard Atkinson of Little Rock, Casey Motl of Arkadelphia and Michael Westbrook of Texarkana return to the broadcast team this year. Atkinson, in his 10th season as part of the Ouachita Football Network, serves as an analyst during the game and conducts interviews of players and coaches on the field after each game. Motl hosts the Coach Todd Knight Show each week and also interviews the opponent's coach. Westbrook, a former play-by-play voice for Southeastern Oklahoma State University football, produces the broadcasts and hosts the pregame, halftime and postgame shows.
 
The executive producer of the Ouachita Football Network for a fifth consecutive season will be Russ McKinney of Salem Media in Little Rock.
 
"Nothing else in Division II can top the reach and quality of our broadcasts," said David Sharp, the Ouachita athletic director. "We like to say we have a Division I production at a Division II school."
 
Each network broadcast begins one hour prior to kickoff and ends an hour after the game.