Pittman taking heat, but how much of it is justified?

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — There may not be a more beloved pastime for Arkansas fans than complaining, especially about football, and boy were Razorbacks fans feeling their oats Monday morning.

They were hitting Hogs coach Sam Pittman with fiery attacks both on social media and the morning radio shows. However, after years of dealing with disgruntled fans, it's unlikely he notices it much anymore and even less likely that he feels the wrath if he does.

Surely he's numb to it all at his point. Monday's grumpiness stemmed from the cancellation of the Red-White game and autograph session.

Let's start with the Red-White game. Anyone who was in Northwest Arkansas Friday knows why the was called off.

All night long, especially between the hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., it rained buckets. It rained sideways, frontways and backways.

It rained so hard that it sounded like it might be possible for mere water to break through the glass of home windows like a bullet. This was on top of what was already heavily saturated ground.

While it wasn't raining for several hours leading up to what was expected to be kickoff of the Red-White game, the field would have been too saturated to be worth the risk. Arkansas has been fortunate to get through the spring with minimal injuries, none of which appear to be long term, so there was no need for Pittman to push his luck by running his players out onto a less that perfect field.

As for the autograph session, that's much harder to defend. There didn't appear to be a good reason for canceling. The official reason given the program didn't want to endanger players and fans by getting them out in bad weather.

The only problem was there was no bad weather. And it's not like there was bad weather leading up to an hour or so before the event and it broke right after they called it off.

There was nothing more than a fleeting faint sprinkle or two Saturday morning once the sun came up and up to when the event would have started. There was a short burst of wind and rain late in the afternoon, but that would have been well after things had wrapped.

All of this was easily foreseeable with a quick glimpse at the weather radar. No one outside of the athletics offices can say for sure who called it off or what the real reason actually was, but it's Pittman who was left to look bad and who is catching all of the heat.

After all, he was the one who said earlier in the week that if the game got rained out, there would be an autograph session for fans. By calling it off, especially with the weather being what it was, it looked like no one wanted to bother with it since there wasn't going to be a game.

Fans, especially those from outside Northwest Arkansas, were furious. A lot of times there's not the money nor the free time available for those fans to get up to Razorback Stadium to watch the team and see the players.

With it being a free event over Easter break, there was at least one extra travel day, so moms and dads saw it as a chance to allow their children to see the stadium without the usual heavy price tag, and if it got rained out, then at least their child would get to stand in front of a few Razorbacks, say hello, and make a memory while getting autographs.

When that was taken away, they were rightfully angry. Fans from outside Northwest Arkansas already have a chip on their shoulders about how little they feel appreciated by the university and this just dug further into that wound.

The wound created from this is real, so someone in the football offices might want to get creative in finding a way to show love to the rest of the state at some point over the summer. If there's an apology and a genuine effort to reach out to those fans to make up for it, all will be quickly forgiven.

The only way this can be made worse is to simply ignore it. The football program didn't keep its word and that means everything in Arkansas, especially in the parts of the state from which these fans would have traveled.

So, for all those fans who are upset or heartbroken over the autograph session, bend over backward to make it right. As for those grumbling about the Red-White game, let them get over it.

They'll appreciate the decision when Arkansas fields a healthy team this fall.