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FAYETTEVILLE — Building a fence around the state and keeping the best players home is a talking point for every coach at Arkansas, regardless of sport.
That is difficult to put into practice, though, especially for a sport like football that doesn’t have very many prospects available on a yearly basis in the Natural State.
When Joe T. Robinson two-star linebacker JT Towers signed with the Razorbacks on Wednesday, he joined a trio of early signees - Jonesboro’s Jashaud Stewart, Hazen’s Blayne Toll and Bryant’s Catrell Wallace - in what’s believed to be tied for the smallest class of in-state players in UA history.
The only year in HawgBeat’s database - which has mostly complete records for the Razorbacks since 1985 - that featured as few signees from Arkansas was 2012. That class, signed by Bobby Petrino a couple of months before he was fired, featured Defonta Lowe (Bearden), Jeremy Sprinkle (White Hall), A.J. Turner (East Poinsett County) and Jeremy Ward (Pottsville).
Unfortunately for the Razorbacks, this has become a trend rather than a once-a-decade anomaly.
In addition to that 2012 group, Arkansas also had five classes with just five in-state players during the 2010s, with the most being nine in 2015. It averaged 5.9 per year over the decade.
From 2000-09, the Razorbacks averaged 9.7 in-state signees per year. Six of those 10 classes reached double digits, highlighted by Petrino’s first class in 2008, which featured a whopping 15. The numbers for the 1990s are similar. Excluding 1992, which is incomplete in our database, Arkansas averaged 9.1 in-state signees.
Prior to that, with fewer scholarship restrictions and recruiting being more regional, the Razorbacks routinely brought in double-digit classes of in-state signees. From 1985-89, for example, they averaged 12.2 per year.
The gradual decrease over the last two decades can’t be attributed to any single coach, though.
Since 2003, Houston Nutt, Petrino, Bret Bielema, Chad Morris and now Sam Pittman have had roughly the same level of success recruiting the Natural State.
Arkansas has landed 61.2 percent of the in-state Power Five signees over that span, with all the five coaches being within 6.4 percentage points of each other.
Surprisingly, Bielema leads the way at 63.5 percent. Nutt’s final five classes with the Razorbacks saw 61.7 percent of those players sign with the Razorbacks. Petrino (59.7%) and Morris (58.8%) were just slightly below 60 percent.
Pittman has the lowest percentage of the group at 57.1 percent, but that is with a very small sample size. He secured four of seven in his debut class.
The seven Power Five signees from Arkansas in the 2020 class are the second fewest the state has produced since at least 1992, but likely longer.
It would have been tied for the fewest with the 2012 class, but four-star offensive lineman Chris Morris - who signed with Texas A&M - moved across the Mississippi River and played his senior season at West Memphis after being ruled ineligible in Tennessee.
Pittman and the Razorbacks tried to flip the other two players, but Morrilton quarterback Jacolby Criswell stuck with North Carolina and Conway offensive lineman Robert Scott instead flipped from Ole Miss to Florida State.
For a list of the top in-state players in the 2021 class, which includes Arkansas offensive line commit Terry Wells from Wynne and a few others already with offers from the Razorbacks, click here.
