Even when the Hogs outpace preseason expectations, some Arkansas football fans can’t enjoy it.
No question, getting embarrassed two games in a row at home is depressing. But one of the biggest questions under Sam Pittman isn’t whether Arkansas can consistently beat the creme de la creme of the SEC – it’s whether it can take care of business against the teams it should beat.
To that end, this year has been a success so far. No perplexing losses in the vein of Liberty ’22 or Mississippi State ’23 this season. Pittman’s squad has taken care of business against UAPB, UAB, Auburn and Mississippi State while sneaking in a long-awaited upset against Tennessee.
But that doesn’t stop the caterwauling from the Pittman haters. For example, last week on the “Chuck & Bo Show,” the new ESPN Arkansas morning radio program, a listener texted in lamenting that Arkansas didn’t hire new Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko. Elko, who came from Duke, has led the the Aggies to a 7-2 record and a Top-15 ranking so far.
Last year, it was Deion Sanders when Colorado got off to a hot start and reports surfaced that the former Jackson State head coach and NFL legend interviewed for the Arkansas job after Chad Morris was fired.
Sam Pittman Safe at Arkansas … For Now
Even after Arkansas drilled Mississippi State a couple weeks ago to move to 5-3, some fans were insistent on talking about replacements for Pittman or wishing Arkansas had a different coach such as Elko. I’m not indulging the coaching candidate crowd. I will give you my two cents on Elko, but first Pittman.
Through nine games, I’d give him and the staff a C. And he still has a chance to pull that grade way up if Arkansas can wash the Ole Miss rout out of its system with No. 5 Texas looming. His stock would more than make up the loss it suffered after Ole Miss if he wins that game.
For now, Arkansas hasn’t over or underachieved. They should have won at Oklahoma State in Week 2 and had another chance to beat Elko’s Aggies. A blowout loss to LSU was disappointing after Arkansas’ upset of then-No. 4 Tennessee, but then they responded with an easy win over hapless Mississippi State. Tightening up the secondary in the next game would go a long way toward preventing the kind of 60+ point blood-letting they suffered against Ole Miss.
Unless the Hogs lose to Louisiana Tech, which is 3-5, Pittman will be safe. His team will be bowl bound, and have a chance for at least 7 wins even if Arkansas drops the Texas game. The season-capper vs Missouri is winnable because of the Tigers’ recent struggles and the possibility of Tigers QB Brady Cook being a bit rusty in his expected return from injury later in November.
There’s a chance Pittman, who turns 63 on Thanksgiving Day, could retire and go out on a winning note. I’m not talking about replacements until Arkansas finishes the season with a losing record, which would mean a loss to Louisiana Tech, or he announces he’s heading to Lake Hamilton for good. He still has a chance to make this a very good season. The rest of this month will tell the tale.
Why not Mike Elko?
This answer is simple. Why would Arkansas have hired him? When they fired Chad Morris, Elko was the defensive coordinator at A&M. He hadn’t been a head coach yet. Duke took a chance on him in 2021, and he lasted two seasons before bolting back to A&M.
Arkansas isn’t a juggernaut and the past 12 years and three head-coaching hires haven’t been great, but Duke, even with some recent success, isn’t on the same plane as Arkansas. The Hogs play in the SEC and have had success and tradition. Duke endured 19 straight losing seasons until David Cutcliffe, who had been fired at Ole Miss, got the job. His first five seasons at the perennial basketball power school where all under .500 (the Blue Devils were 6-7 and lost in the Belk Bowl his fifth season) before leading them to the first of five straight bowl appearances. Still, even with seven bowl appearances, Cutcliffe was 77-97 at the school with three straight losing seasons to round out a 14-year tenure.
Duke was fortunate to get Cutcliffe, who was the most successful coach in school history, after he finished 44-29 at Ole Miss. The Rebels endured their first losing season in six years under Cutcliffe, who recruited Eli Manning to Oxford, and after that 2004 campaign, he refused to retool his staff, so he was fired. After another stop at Tennessee, where he was a longtime offensive coordinator and coached Peyton Manning, Duke hired him.
Even after Cutcliffe had a measure of success at Duke, the administration had to settle for an up-and-coming assistant and struck gold with Elko, who was also a DC at Notre Dame for a season.
In 2019, Elko wasn’t on Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek’s radar and shouldn’t have been. However, after Duke took a chance on him, and he went 17-9 and engineered two bowl wins, it was an easy decision for the A&M brass after an over-paid, underachieving Jimbo Fisher was shown the door.
Elko knew the A&M culture, had head-coaching experience, and came at a bargain price. And now, the Aggies are undefeated in the SEC. To say Arkansas missed out on him is reaching — and the mere suggestion of it lit a fire under the two Arkansas insiders on ESPN Arkansas’ “Chuck & Bo Show.”
Arkansas Insiders Fired Up
In addition to their morning sports talk radio show, Bo Mattingly and Chuck Barrett both have direct ties to the program. Mattingly does exclusive interviews as part of his role with Hogs+, while Barrett is the Razorbacks’ radio play-by-play man for football and men’s basketball.
“You can’t just put Mike Elko, in my opinion, anywhere and have the same success that you can have at A&M,” Mattingly said on Tuesday. “You can put a lot of coaches at A&M and have success. Arkansas is not the same job as A&M. Doesn’t mean Arkansas can’t be as good. It just means it’s a different job just by nature of the financial situation and the recruiting base that exists within a five-hour radius of the A&M campus versus the Arkansas campus.”
Arkansas’ problem is not being able to land who they REALLY want. We all know Pittman was closer to a last option. Yurachek would’ve taken three other coaches who were targeted and wound up at SEC programs – Eli Drinkwitz (Missouri), Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss) and the late Mike Leach (Mississippi State). Both Drinkwitz and Kiffin have been more successful than Pittman at their current stops.
Going back farther, neither Bret Bielema nor Chad Morris was high on the list either. I liked the Bielema hire at the time, but he couldn’t keep a staff intact. Morris wasn’t a good idea from the beginning, and it showed immediately. The next time the football job is open, find someone who has good experience and wants to be at the school. I won’t mention names, but there is one coach at an ACC school who grew up in Northwest Arkansas and is an Arkansas alum and was a graduate assistant. Another has been a head coach in the SEC, was a coordinator at Arkansas and is now turning around a dormant Mountain West school, largely with the help of Arkansans and Hogs transfers.
“I’m sorry folks, but the consensus around the country among a lot of people in the coaching profession is that this is going to be a very, very difficult spot to win ball games,” Barrett said last Tuesday. “I’m not saying that anyone should concede anything. I’m not saying that anyone should say, ‘Oh, poor old us, we’re never going to be any good.’ That’s not what I mean. I’m saying for this job to work, you’ve got to have somebody that wants to be here first that wants to be here as badly as you want ’em to be here.”
For now, the Hogs have someone who wants to be here, and UA freshman running back Braylen Russell’s dad, Bishop, told me a couple of weeks ago that many players and parents are happy with what Pittman has done taking over a wrecked program during the pandemic. Also, for bouncing back from a down year last season. Pittman has a passion for the program and still has a chance to prove he’s the right pick for this job and he’ll be here until he wants to leave.
“People keep qualifying all the good things that are happening with the program and they act like they’re happening in spite of the head coach,” Mattingly said. “It’s fine to criticize the head coach. It’s fine to criticize the head coach when things are going wrong, when things are going bad. It’s happened. They’ve blown games, he’s owned it. You’ve criticized, that’s fine, but don’t make positive statements about his program and act like it’s in spite of him. That’s just bias.”
“Give him credit for what he’s done.”
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