Hogs fans must wait for Yurachek to try to overcome bad decisions of his bosses

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Arkansas coaching search keeps dragging on, which will continue to be the case for a couple of more weeks, despite fans constantly falling for random social media guy swearing the Hogs have their man and the nation is going to be stunned sometime within the next 24-48 hours.

Then, as usual, crickets. That's because there is no hire.

Even if Hunter Yurachek has zeroed in on his target and is quietly trying to iron out details of an agreement, he is hopefully smart enough to have at least five or six strong options right behind him. That's because until the press conference has taken place and the ink has officially dried, as people should have learned with the Dana Altman attempted basketball hire many years ago, there is no done deal.

The truth of the matter is, with each weekend that passes, the Razorbacks fall just a tad further back in the pecking order. For instance, someone clearly has it out for Shane Beamer over in South Carolina, otherwise, false rumors that his quarterback LaNorris Sellers had quit the team wouldn't have been incorrectly picked up as truth by 247 and word that he is being fired before his next game wouldn't be gaining traction.

Breaking news from Columbia.

South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers plans to sit out the remainder of the season and enter the transfer portal. Sources say Miami has emerged as his top destination. pic.twitter.com/XvFwzSNZD8
— 274 Sport (@274sport) November 12, 2025

While this continues to appear to be more Hogwash being pushed, possibly by a disgruntled booster throwing a fit because he really wants his way, it's a real eventual possibility. Repeat something long enough and it becomes truth in the minds of fans much like the idea that Sam Pittman spent the last four seasons as a loser at Arkansas despite having a winning record over that time with only one losing season, an average of seven wins per year and a perfect 3-0 bowl record.

Go back to the day of his hire and tell fans this affable offensive line coach is going to qualify for a bowl game four out of five seasons, never lose one and also mix in a nine-win season where he wins all trophy games, they would have lost their minds in disbelief at their good fortune.

Still, despite having lived through it and Google existing, fans got in their minds that the last three seasons have featured losing records. That stuff happens in a world where social media exists.

So, despite what Twitter and Facebook try to twist fans minds into believing, the coach isn't already hired while being kept a deep secret. That would be a dumb move that no agent would allow his client to make.

The initial dominoes aren't done falling, and with each one that does, an Eric Morris or even a Jeff Traylor moves up the list. If Eli Drinkwitz leaves Missouri for Penn State and Beamer does get bounced over at South Carolina, that raises everyone on Yurachek's list up two rungs.

Suddenly, the guy he was in early talks with is no longer on the table, nor is the back-up plan. It's likely at least two additional jobs that precede Arkansas in desirability will come open, pushing his third and fourth options off the board as well.

Now, there are a lot of people out there who want to chime in right here and say "Well, it's his own fault. Yurachek ran the athletics program into the ground with his terrible coaching hires."

Let's examine that. He brought in Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber, who has built Razorbacks gymnastics into a national power.

He also brought in John Calipari, a man whom Arkansas fans once hated, but now believe walks on water, and also Kelsi Musick, who inherited a difficult situation after Mike Neighbors found the NIL era too much.

There's more to be seen from Musick, but so far the fire is definitely there and so are the building blocks for the turn around of the program. She seems to be exactly what was needed to eventually get Arkansas back on its feet.

As for Pittman, it's already been established that he brought the program back to respectability before Bobby Petrino was handed the keys as the interim and drove it into the ditch with one-score loss after one-score loss.

That's the only football hire Yurachek has made, and considering he took the ugliest girl at the ball and executed a desperation decision that made the Hogs at least datable again from a coaching perspective is a mere miracle.

"B-b-b-b-b-b-but, but, but what about Chad Morris?" some of you are muttering.

Yurachek didn't technically hire Morris. Yurachek, for some reason that made little sense in the overall scheme of things, was hired after the head football coach search.

Instead, it was an interim athletics director Julie Cromer-Peoples who ran the search and identified Morris as the candidate to be hired. Yurachek was hired Dec. 4 and a press release announcing Morris had a clearly ironed out contract of six years at $3.5 million per year rolled out Dec. 6.

Yurachek had no role other than he had better agree to back the hire. Even if they legitimately asked him what he thought of Morris, there was no way anyone in their right mind is going to say "I think it's a terrible idea. He's going to run this program into the ground."

The contract was already done. Yurachek's new bosses believed Cromer-Peoples has landed them the next Houston Nutt, but with a more high-powered offense. He couldn't go around insulting that decision and refuse to back it in his first 24 hours on the job.

However, because the university went about their business that way, finding the football coach without the athletics director in place to be in charge of such a critical hire, Yurachek has been climbing uphill the entire time he's been at Arkansas.

He fired Morris the first reasonable chance he got, barely one and a half years into his tenure. But, it was too late.

The administrators that had allowed his hiring to happen in the first place had sunk the program down so far that Yurachek had no fair shot at finding a new coach. He had a shot at Lane Kiffin, but people backed out when the money got reasonable for an SEC coach, and everyone knows know that Mike Leach was good to come to Arkansas before a person of influence decided he might say something embarrassing at the opening press conference.

Arkansas should consider itself lucky Yurachek could even land Pittman at that point. Those above him kept up their streak of program killing decisions from the Morris call, so getting this thing out of the ditch was a miracle.

There's no telling what Yurachk is up against this time. One would think after what was able to happen once a single booster bothered to partner with him on the basketball search that others would join in on trying to make the football coaching search a success, but no one knows for sure other than Yurachek and a small handful of powerful people, although it certainly looks like he is being undercut.

The one thing that is certain is no hire will be made until the dominoes start falling. Right now, unless someone is holding a massive bag of cash, and even that may not be enough, Arkansas is pretty far down the pecking order. Until Penn State, Florida, Auburn, potentially Missouri, potentially South Carolina, most likely Oklahoma State, perhaps Virginia Tech and possibly LSU are filled, the Razorbacks aren't going to have their coach nailed down for certain.

So hang back, make sure there's a good plan for the turkey, wait until the leftovers are all gone, then start getting truly worked up about who the next coach at Arkansas is going to be.