Arkansas hires Sam Pittman as 34th head football coach
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FAYETTEVILLE — The search is over, as longtime assistant coach Sam Pittman has been hired Arkansas’ next head football coach.
It is a homecoming of sorts for the 58-year-old because he was the offensive line coach, associate head coach and recruiting coordinator for the Razorbacks for three seasons from 2013-15 before taking a similar position at Georgia.
Pittman - who attended went to high school Grove, Okla., which is a 1.5-hour drive from Fayetteville - has been the Bulldogs’ offensive line coach the last four years, adding the title of associate head coach in February.
It will be quite the challenge for the first-time FBS head coach, as Arkansas is currently in the midst of its worst stretch in school history. His hire ends a roughly four-week long search by athletics director Hunter Yurachek that started when he fired Chad Morris a day after an embarrassing 45-19 loss to Western Kentucky.
Morris’ tenure lasted just 22 games and included no conference wins. The Razorbacks then lost their final two games under interim coach Barry Lunney Jr. to finish 2-10 for the second straight year. They are also riding a 19-game SEC losing streak and, including a 4-8 mark in Bret Bielema’s final season in 2017, have posted three consecutive losing seasons for the first time since World War II.
Known as one of the top offensive line coaches and recruiters in the country, Pittman has been in the SEC since 2012 when he was brought to Tennessee by Derek Dooley as an offensive line coach.
He was then hired by Bielema and helped Arkansas build arguably the best offensive line in the SEC. During his three-year stretch in Fayetteville, the Razorbacks allowed only 36 sacks in 38 games. They led the conference and were in the top 15 nationally in that category each year.
One reason for that success was Pittman’s ability as a recruiter. The offensive linemen he landed at Arkansas had an average Rivals rating of 5.75 with four of the 11 being four-star prospects and only one being worse than a 5.7 three-star. (His lone 5.6 three-star was future All-American Sebastian Tretola.)
Pittman’s legend has only grown since he left Arkansas, which has experience a significant drop-off along the offensive line. Over the last four years, the Razorbacks have allowed 121 sacks in 49 games and their average offensive line recruit rating has dropped to 5.53, with none of them being even a 5.7 three-star prospect.
Coaching at Georgia, one of college football’s blue bloods, Pittman has been even more dominant on the recruiting trail. His 19 offensive line recruits since the Class of 2017 have an average rating of 5.9, including nine four-star and six five-star prospects.
The result has been the Bulldogs consistently having one of the top offensive lines in the country. They were one of three finalists for the Joe Moore Award - presented to college football’s most outstanding offensive line unit - last year and are one of 10 semifinalists so far this season.
In the last two seasons alone, Pittman has coached four different offensive linemen who earned All-America or All-SEC honors.
This will be Pittman’s first head coaching job of any kind since the early-1990s, when he led Hutchinson C.C. from 1992-93. He was also a head coach at the high school level in Missouri during the late-1980s, at Princeton High from 1987-88 and Trenton High fro 1989-90.
At the Division I level, Pittman has also been an offensive line coach at Northern Illinois (1994-95, 2003-06), Cincinnati (1996), Oklahoma (1997-98), Western Michigan (1999), Missouri (2000), Kansas (2001) and North Carolina (2007-10).
As a player, he attended Pittsburg State in Kansas - located two hours north of Fayetteville - and was a first-team NAIA All-American and two-time all-conference selection.