That felt like all she wrote on the Sam Pittman era at Arkansas
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It just felt inevitable. That’s the problem.
Down 1 after blowing an 18-point lead, you just knew that Arkansas was going to find a way to, well, get in its own way. Just as it did a week earlier against Ole Miss when it was down 6 and driving deep into opposing territory, the Razorbacks fumbled away a victory. Pick your poison which one was worse. The former included Lane Kiffin guiding a backup quarterback to a win against the Hogs, who could’ve climbed into the AP Top 25 for the first time in 3 years and ended the SEC‘s longest active drought. The latter included Sam Pittman watching his team blow the largest lead of any FBS team in college football this season thanks to 3 turnovers against a Group of 5 team.
Either way, that felt inevitable. So, too, is the end of the Pittman era at Arkansas.
That’s the type of loss that Year 6 coaches on the hot seat don’t come back from with favorable schedules, much less the one that awaits the Hogs. That is, one with 7 AP Top 25 teams in the final 8 games of the season. No big deal.
Nobody should be surprised if Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek lets Pittman coach out the remainder of the season and this turns into a 2021 Ed Orgeron situation, wherein the firing was announced and he essentially got to be his own interim coach. Yurachek has been loyal to Pittman, who he hired after the Chad Morris disaster at the end of the 2019 season. But Pittman has had more than enough time to avoid moments like what played out on Saturday. He knows that.
Sure, there’s the spin zone. If Arkansas holds onto the football at the end of those 2 games, the Hogs are 4-0 with one of the most enticing quarterbacks in America in Taylen Green. But that’s not the case. Green was part of the problem on Saturday. Inexplicable interceptions and 3rd-down sacks that drove out Arkansas out of field-goal range proved costly. That’s the guy who’s supposed to be the rock. Unfortunately, Green had a finish to forget.
It feels like the same will true of Pittman, who fell to 4-14 in 1-score games since the start of 2022.
At this point, it’s neither bad luck nor excusable. It’s inevitable.
If that is indeed the last straw for the Pittman era, it shouldn’t take away what he did to rebuild the dumpster fire of the Morris era. Losing that way to Memphis, while devastating, was hardly on par with getting blown out by Ty Storey’s Western Kentucky squad a year after Morris told him he wasn’t good enough to play in his “offense.”
But sometimes, things run their course. The Pittman era appears to have run its course.
Fresh blood could come in the form of someone like USF coach Alex Golesh, UTSA coach Jeff Traylor, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall, Texas State coach GJ Kinne or someone else. Shoot, perhaps Yurachek will look across the sideline and make a serious push for Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield, who has done nothing but win since taking over for Mike Norvell in 2020.
Whoever that replacement is, a couple things are clear. Arkansas cannot afford to have offseasons wherein half the roster departs for the transfer portal. The late-game issues can’t continue, either. That seems obvious, but those 2 things are at the root of all of the majority of the Pittman era problems.
Pittman always said that he wanted Arkansas to be his last job before he retired in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Saturday felt like the last moment in which Pittman had complete control of that kind of ending.
The only silver lining of the latest devastating Pittman era loss was that soon, it made it inevitable that a new era will arrive.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
