FAYETTEVILLE — Perhaps the biggest storyline surrounding the 2024 Arkansas football season has been Sam Pittman’s job status.
By beating Louisiana Tech last week, the Razorbacks improved to 6-5 and clinched bowl eligibility for the fourth time in five years. Based on what Best of Arkansas Sports has heard, that is enough for Pittman to keep his job and return in 2025 — he won’t retire and is not expected to be fired.
The fifth-year coach was asked about his job security following the game and, while admitting it was a “legit question,” essentially brushed it off and expressed his desire for that kind of talk to stop.
“Y’all (the media) have been making a lot of money off of, is the guy doing this, the guy doing that or whatever, or your opinion,” Pittman said. “I’ve never one time worried about my job. I promise you, not one time. So I wish we’d kind of move on because it kills us in recruiting.”
Some have interpreted that comment as coming from a man who’s lost his drive because he knows he’s not getting fired, but that isn’t the case. He has said numerous times that he’s more worried about everyone else in the building because while he’d be fine financially with a buyout, the others would simply be out of a job. Pittman, who turns 63 on Thursday, could comfortably retire, but younger staff members with families would need to scramble for new gigs.
That’s why Pittman’s entire focus has been getting the program back on track after last year’s 4-8 disaster and setting it up for future success. In fact, he landed a commitment from a four-star wide receiver a day later.
At the same time, whether he likes it or not, it’s perfectly fair and even reasonable for Arkansas football fans to question if he remains the right man for the job.
Most agree that Pittman deserves credit for bringing the program out of the depths of despair that was the Chad Morris era — even the billboard on I-49 thanked him — but there’s a divide in public opinion when it comes to his job status for 2025 and beyond.
The purpose of this piece is not to take one side or the other, because the decision is up to athletics director Hunter Yurachek, but rather examine all of the factors at play regarding Pittman’s job and how fans feel about him.
Sam Pittman’s Buyout in 2024
The biggest factor Hunter Yurachek must consider is how much it’d cost to make a move.
Following the 2021 season that culminated with an Outback Bowl victory and first appearance in the final AP Poll in a decade, Sam Pittman agreed to a new five-year deal that took him through the 2026 season with a base salary of $5 million.
By winning seven games the following season, though, he received an automatic one-year extension and $250,000 raise, increasing his annual pay to $5.25 million.
Pittman’s buyout, both in the original and current deal, is unique because it’s based on winning percentage. If Arkansas’ record beginning in the 2021 season was below .500, he’d be owed just 50% of his remaining contract if fired for convenience. If the Razorbacks won at least half of their games, it’d be 75%.
Entering the regular-season finale at Missouri, Pittman’s overall record at Arkansas is 29-30. However, that includes a 3-7 mark in the pandemic-altered 2020 season. Take that out and he’s 26-23, which means he’d be owed 75%.
With three years and one month left on his contract, Arkansas is still on the hook for $16.2 million. Firing Pittman after the Missouri game would result in a buyout of about $12.14 million.
Financial Factors for Arkansas Football
That kind of money has never stopped schools, including Arkansas, from making a change in the past, but that was before revenue sharing entered the picture. Beginning next year, the UA will have to come up with approximately $22 million extra to pay its athletes, according to a letter to fans from Yurachek on Oct. 31.
The AD had previously told the UA Board of Trustees that he needed “to find levers to increase revenues and decrease expenses,” according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Adding $12.14 million to the expense sheet in the first year of revenue sharing is probably something Yurachek would like to avoid if at all possible, especially considering that number doesn’t include the assistant coaches’ buyouts or what it’d cost to hire a new and presumably better coach.
It’s not just Arkansas dealing with this, either. With one week left in the regular season, only one Power Four school has made a chance and North Carolina owes Mack Brown a buyout of just $2.8 million.
These are truly unprecedented times in collegiate athletics and it is understandable if he wants to give Pittman another year after he has shown improvement this season — which is notable in its own right.
Since 1990, there have been 37 SEC head coaching tenures of at least five years. Of those, 14 saw a clear and obvious dip from Year 3 to Year 4, as Pittman did (7-6 to 4-8). Only four of those turned things around with clear improvement in Year 5 — Gene Stallings and Nick Saban at Alabama, Les Miles at LSU and Derek Mason at Vanderbilt.
In his eyes, Yurachek could write off the 2023 season as an outlier following a bad coordinator hire, which Pittman promptly corrected by firing Dan Enos after only eight games and replacing him with Bobby Petrino.
Outside of that season, the Razorbacks haven’t been bad. They went 3-7 in a pandemic-altered 2020 season, but if they played their original schedule, they almost certainly would have gone 6-6. In 2021, Arkansas went 9-4 and finished ranked No. 21. Then, in an injury-plagued 2022 campaign, Pittman went 7-6.
Those aren’t Hall of Fame numbers by any means, but they’re right on par with the Razorbacks’ .516 winning percentage over their 28 seasons in the SEC prior to his arrival.
At this point, it should be noted that we are not advocating for Arkansas football fans to accept mediocrity. Barely winning 50% of your games should not be the expectation. However, it could be a solid base line with a really good season mixed in every few years and allowing for a random outlier here and there.
Arkansas Posts Strong Attendance Numbers
It’s also worth noting that fans might not be jumping ship at the rate social media makes it seem. Yes, someone paid money to put up a billboard calling for a coaching change, but Arkansas also averaged 73,392 fans at six Fayetteville games this season. That is the second-best mark in school history, behind only the 2006 season (73,895).
Despite the apparent growing dissatisfaction with the program, attendance was up 6.7% from last season and four of this year’s home games had crowds that rank among the 11 largest in school history.
When those numbers start trending the opposite way, it changes the calculus for Hunter Yurachek. At some point, keeping a coach ends up costing the school more money than a potential buyout.
For example, the 2019 season featured the two lowest-attended games of the post-expansion era at Razorback Stadium (since 2001). That resulted in attendance falling 12.3% from 2018 to 2019. Those two facts made the decision to fire Chad Morris even easier than his four losses to Group of Five programs. There was also a 7.6% drop from 2016 to 2017, which was Bret Bielema’s final season.
Had the Razorbacks experienced a similar dip, which wouldn’t have been surprising considering last year’s 4-8 struggles, it might have tipped the scales the other way and led to Yurachek making a change.
A Case Against Sam Pittman
Those who have jumped ship and turned against Sam Pittman shouldn’t be ridiculed, though. They are justified in some of their criticisms and this season has been sort of a microcosm of his entire tenure.
The Razorbacks have squandered a couple of leads and lost by one possession (Oklahoma State and Texas A&M), been blown out at home twice (LSU and Ole Miss), and been plagued by baffling personnel decisions and special teams miscues.
While it has mostly avoided Colorado State/North Texas/Western Kentucky/San Jose State-level embarrassments, Arkansas has consistently come out flat against Group of Five opponents. It did lose to one – albeit a ranked Liberty – in 2022 and hasn’t looked great against bad-to-mediocre teams like Kent State, UAB and Louisiana Tech. The Razorbacks needed an 82-yard punt return to avoid the ultimate embarrassment of losing to Bobby Petrino and Missouri State two years ago.
Considering some of these things are still happening in Year 5, it’s fair for fans to consider them more than just trends and accept them as pillars of Pittman’s tenure – much like Bret Bielema’s inability to hold fourth-quarter leads or rally from halftime deficits.
Perhaps the most damning thing working against Pittman is the quality of offensive line he has put on the field the last two years. Since back-to-back really solid groups in 2021 and 2022, which were composed of players he inherited, the unit has struggled mightily. That’s a baffling turn of events given his background as one of the top offensive line coaches in the country.
Last year, the Razorbacks could open holes in the run game or protect the quarterback. After bringing in a new offensive line coach in Eric Mateos and Pittman himself taking a more hands-on approach with the position, this year’s restructured line seems to do fine on the ground, but is still tied for 113th nationally in sacks allowed (2.91 per game). Those can’t all be attributed to the offensive line, but even a novice can see the unit has been overwhelmed at times this season.
Of course, to once again play devil’s advocate, Arkansas has won six games – including an upset of CFP contender Tennessee – despite all of those issues.
Certainly a case could be made either way, but with all of the financial factors at play and the clear improvement from last year, this hasn’t been a clear-cut decision – no matter how you slice it.
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