Sam Pittman’s thankful for the financial support of some of Arkansas’ most well-known boosters. He’s also ready for them to get some relief.
For decades, the Arkansas football program has to a large degree relied on the goodwill of a group of families who can be depended on again and again to come through with contributions that benefit the program, especially when it comes to getting rid of coaches and bringing in new ones.
It almost always costs a Power 4 conference millions to buy out a struggling coach and, as we’ve seen with the likes of Gus Malzahn and Jimbo Fisher, sometimes it costs tens of millions. That’s all just to pave the path to hiring the new guy who will demand millions more.
That accelerating arms race already seemed unsustainable when NIL bidding for the star players who can make or break these coaches’ tenures ramped up in the last couple of years. And now, on top of all this, there’s the estimated $12.5 million – $17 million payout each Power 4 football program is expected to start giving to its players in fall 2025 in the wake of the sport’s new revenue-sharing model.
Arkansas’ head football coach thinks paying college players is ultimately a good thing. “They deserve that,” he recently said in a Hogs+ interview. “They’re the ones out there making the money.”
Pittman, however, is concerned that whatever market value is assigned to each player to determine their portion of the payout will cause locker room division. “At some point someone’s got to make a decision on what your worth is and sometimes it doesn’t go quite as well,” he said. Whatever number is spat may not sit with the player well “because everybody, including myself, thinks they’re probably a little bit better than what they are.”
These kinds of issues, though, are something every team could have. They are in no way unique to Arkansas.
Arkansas Football’s Biggest Issue on NIL Front
In reality, the Hogs’ biggest concern may be figuring out a way to counter the “rich get richer” dynamic that also annually casts them closer to the bottom of the SEC than top in recruiting rankings.
The teams that win can leverage that momentum into NIL fundraising that should help them get/retain better players and keep winning. Expect Ole Miss and Mizzou, coming off 11-win seasons last fall, to prove this out.
Going into 2023, Arkansas had the benefit of two winning seasons in a row. According to one agent, they likely even ranked in the top third of the SEC in terms of NIL budget for their roster.
Last year’s losing, however, has thrown a cold, wet towel on some of optimism heading into previous years. Insiders say Arkansas has dropped in terms of its NIL budget heading into 2024 and Pittman agreed with Hogs+’s Bo Mattingly that the Hogs are behind relative to other SEC programs.
To catch up, Pittman adds that “you’re going to have to have something that generates revenue every year and a large amount of revenue every year.” It’s unclear what that would be, but the folks over at BetSaracen have made it very clear they want that mechanism to be a 50/50 raffle they control.
Given that Florida has entered into very space, BetSaracen’s marketing director feels that only makes the case stronger for Arkansas to begin something similar:
Regardless of the ultimate solution on this front, Pittman told Hogs+ that “revenue sharing is going to help us because it’s not going to put all the responsibility for paying players on individuals what it is right now.I mean, you’re calling and I’m sure they get tired of it.”
In another part, he added “We can’t continue to keep going to those guys each and every year because you’re talking about millions of dollars. We’ve got to generate something in the state that gives us a three, four, or $5 million pot every year where we’re not on the phone calling people.”
Sam Pittman Names Certain Boosters
As far as who these boosters are, Pittman said there are “many” including the ones below he named:
- The Hunts (their support extends to many sports, as the baseball development center is named after J.B. and Johnelle Hunt.)
- The Stephens (including Warren Stephens)
- Frank Fletcher
- Joe Ford (head of Westrock Coffee, announced in 2016 as the official coffee of the Razorbacks)
- Brandon Adams
- Todd Ross
*Adams and Ross grew up in Conway. Adams is president and CEO of Reliance Health Care Inc., a nursing home company. Ross runs a national healthcare supply company that services long-term care facilities.
As far as the actual NIL gap that the Hogs are facing and compel all this phone calling, that is unknown but it’s safe to say it’s somewhere in the millions.
According to multiple industry experts who have spoken to ESPN, football players at most playoff-contending schools are already receiving more than $10 million from NIL booster collectives.
The Arkansas football program could be in the neighborhood of half of that, according to Pig Trail Nation’s Mike Irwin.
“If you talk to different people, here’s what I kind of come up with: the total NIL availability for football is supposedly somewhere around five million bucks,” he said on this week’s episode of “Ask Mike.” “That doesn’t seem like a lot for all those guys and for basketball is supposedly seven” million, which is a bit lower than the estimated range from CBS’ Matt Norlander that went up to about $8.5 million.
Whatever the budget actually is, splitting between $7 to $9 million between 9 rotation players and a handful of walk-ons means the basketball players are making much more on average than the 85 scholarship football players. At first blush, such a disparity sounds insane at a “football” school like Arkansas.
This isn’t Kansas or Indiana, after all.
But it seems more reasonable when considering that the change of head coach in basketball led to an infusion of cash into the program, not just from boosters like John Tyson, but also from excited fans who chipped in small amounts.
Incumbent coaches coming off losing seasons simply can’t compete with an incoming Hall of Famer like John Calipari in terms of generating excitement, even if they do have a Bobby Petrino on staff.
Getting a starting quarterback from Boise State and running back from Utah in exchange for guys like KJ Jefferson and Rocket Sanders, who commanded higher NIL sums, also likely lightened the books significantly.
Taylen Green, as a starting quarterback in the SEC, came out of high school “only” as a three-star recruit. He didn’t even crack his class’ top 100 football recruits in his home state of Texas.
Arkansas will need him to play above a three-star level in 2024 for any chance at success. He and other former three-star recruits will have to play more in line with history’s best Arkansas football squads, who were often filled with guys playing beyond their reputations in high school.
A True Competitive Advantage for Arkansas Football
Yes, renowned blue-chip recruits like Lance Alworth, Billy Ray Smith, Jr, Ahmad Carroll, Darren McFadden and Ryan Mallett all played huge roles on successful teams, but what Arkansas really needs are guys who go above and beyond what was expected of them.
Think of guys like Dick Bumpas, Brandon Burlsworth, Ryan Hale, Trey Flowers and Drew Morgan.
Nowadays, the opportunity to make the doubters eat crow is two-fold for the underrated Razorback. It’s no longer just an opportunity to show up the recruiting analysts, but also any number crunchers who help assign a market value that plays into whatever that player can get via NIL (and in future revenue-sharing as well).
If enough guys getting paid in the five digits start playing like guys who deserve six digits, then double-digit wins on the season will be the result.
The late Brandon Burlsworth, the greatest walk-on in Arkansas football history, played decades before the NIL era. Had that system been in place in the mid to late 1990s, then he would have mustered perhaps a few thousand dollars as a freshman coming out of Harrison High School.
By the time Burlsworth finished his Arkansas career as an All-American, his market value would have skyrocketed to most likley something in the hundreds of thousands. Of course, he played his heart out anyway, with little more than a scholarship and the ongoing respect of generations of fans to earn.
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More from Irwin on the NIL disparity starting at 32:00 below:
More on Arkansas football from BoAS:
