Woe is always me for Arkansas Razorbacks football coach Sam Pittman. It’s been that way in the four seasons since the Hogs last had a winning record in the regular season. It’s how he addressed a 56-13 loss to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday.
Pittman said that he’d be mad at himself, too, if he were in the fanbase’s shoes.
“Well, I mean A) I understand. I get it. If I was a fan I’d be mad at me too. You know? I’d be frustrated as hell with me. But here’s what I’ll say: As long as I’m the head coach at Arkansas I’m going to fight my butt off to get the guys out there and how long that is, that’s not, it is partly up to me because of what we put on the field, but that’s not my call,” Pittman said to reporters postgame.
“If I’m worried about that all the time I won’t be able to do as good a job as I possibly can. But I will say this: If I was the fans I’d be mad at me too. Hell, I’m mad at me, to be perfectly honest.
“The game got over, what, 20 minutes ago? Listen, we owe it to everybody to put the best product out there, so there’s a lot of things that come in play with that.”
Arkansas may strategically wait until after the next three games before deciding on Pittman’s fate in Fayetteville. Pittman’s buyout would decrease from $9.8 million to $6.9 million if his record falls below .500.
As of now, he’s 29-27 as the Hogs’ head coach. Arkansas visits the Tennessee Volunteers in two weeks after the bye, then hosts the Texas A&M Aggies and Auburn Tigers at Razorback Stadium.
Pittman is gone if he goes winless in those games. We’ll see how many more times he can take responsibility for the shoddy product with his words without tangibly improving the effort on the field.