Campuses are closed but the phone lines are open and buzzing. The COVID-19 outbreak has added an unexpected hurdle to Arkansas's recruiting effort in Sam Pittman's first year as the head coach of the Razorbacks, but he's not going to let this valuable time go to waste.

"We’ve amped it up," Pittman told the media on Friday. "I mean, we have more time, so you can either sit around and not do anything or you can recruit. And again, there’s a lot of ways to get out of where we are right now. Number one way is to recruit."

"We went in on a note writing campaign. We went on a Facetime campaign. So, we were hitting at least 10 kids Facetime at least a day that I was able to talk to. We were writing at least 10 kids a day as a full staff. And we will do it this morning, and we will do it every day until we get back here. So, we’re trying to amp up phone conversations. You know, they have to call us, but we’re trying to amp that up, and we’re trying to amp up our note writing campaign."

Arkansas has now sent offers out to more than 165 2021 prospects (juniors), which is on the lower end for SEC programs right now. One hundred and sixty-five offers is a great base to work with and they'll undoubtedly add to it in the coming months as prospects fall off the board.

Pittman explained to the media how the offer process has gone under his rule in the last few months:

"If (the player) is in the state of Arkansas, it has to go through the position coach, to the coordinator, to me before we can send an offer out. If it’s in a bordering state it goes through the position coach to the coordinator and then they can put an offer out. Then if it’s further away than that, the position coach has the ability to make an offer. What we do is we sit in here and basically I rank the board that’s sitting behind me in the 2021 and the 2022 class."

Based on my knowledge, the process is a little different from Chad Morris's when he was on the Hill. Previously, every recruit's evaluation had to be given the thumbs up by Morris before the offer could be extended. The new process allows the position coaches to move a bit faster in the offer process but in the end, Pittman's preference is the rule of law when it comes to assembling the priority board.

Pittman's process also ensures that in-state kids are a priority. They want to be among the first to offer and they want to be all-in if they offer a prospect from the Natural State.

"We just don’t want to miss anybody in Arkansas," Pittman said. "We want to be right when we offer them, so I feel like on those I have to be every bit a part of that offer. I have to be on all of them. But you don’t want an offer sitting out there for a week on a kid bordering our state and me haven’t watched the tape and they’re waiting on it and we’re getting behind. We want to stay ahead of people, not behind."

While Arkansas has only offered three 2021 athletes in-state so far, they're already up to six in-state offers for sophomores.

Now that the overall numbers are up for juniors, the Hogs have put a big emphasis on 2022 prospects over the past couple weeks. The Razorbacks have sent out at least 55 offers to prospects in the 2022 class over the last four months and 10 just this week.

"I thought we kind of caught up a little bit in ‘21s," Pittman said. "So the last two, maybe three days -- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- we made a big push for 2022 kids. And I would think y’all probably saw that. I don’t know how many we offered but quite a few in that class.

"There were other schools that followed suit right with us on the same eight people, so hopefully people looking at us in recruiting and what we’re doing and that would be a compliment."

Arkansas has just one 2021 commit and with the extended dead period it could take a bit for another to join Wynne offensive lineman Terry Wells, but the Hogs won't stop working in the meantime.