Some interesting clues from Yurachek on why Razorbacks fired Pittman now

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek made it clear Monday he was reading tea leaves making the decision to fire Sam Pittman.

You can make your own call about whether that's fair or not. There are arguments to made on both sides of that whole issue, but we probably still don't know all the issues.

Money was probably a big part of it. They didn't have it to give Pittman a level playing field the last few years, but there's been some sort of dysfunction anybody could see. It's been there since the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1, 2022.

"You were at the board meeting," Yurachek said at a noon press conference Monday, "and I gave you some statistics where our head coach compensation, our assistant coach salary pool, our support staff salary pool, and our overall operating budget ranked towards the bottom of the Southeastern Conference.

"With that information, Coach Pittman did not have the resources he needed to appropriately compete in this conference right now."

If it was simply a matter of getting through this season to improve things, Pittman would probably still be the coach. The problem ran much deeper and it may be awhile before we find out exactly everything that was going on.

Yurachek threw out some numbers without any context showing how the Razorbacks are doing nearly three times better on one metric than the national average.

"There's some misinformation out there about how competitive we are going to be moving forward in the NIL space," Yurachek said. "We've had over $500,000 of agreements that have gone through The NIL GO system, by way of our student athletes, is roughly $15,000 per agreement. The national average is about $5800."

That sounds great, but is that national average just among the SEC schools, only Power 5 teams or the entire group of NCAA schools?

What I would like to see is an average of the SEC teams. That's really the only number that matters because after this season, they are going to have play nine of those teams every year.

Arkansas Razorbacks athletics director Hunter Yurachek on the sidelines against the Arkansas State Red Wolves at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Ark. | Ted McClenning-allHOGS Images

Somehow it's hard to rationalize how the Hogs are suddenly going to be paying three times the amount of the other teams in the league. You can justify just about any numbers off a spreadsheet simply by not providing the context.

One of these days, Yurachek will probably admit he miscalculated how fast the NIL thing would take off and grow. He looked at times like he was waiting on Congress or somebody to level the playing field.

That was never going to happen. According to legal people I've spoken with, there has always been a problem with the NCAA's rules being against what the law actually is. He's like a guy that missed the train and is trying to catch it running down the track.

"We have an NIL strategist within our front office, our team at Learfield is actively soliciting opportunities for our student athletes to have NIL agreements," Yurachek said. "We're at full level of the cap from a revenue-sharing standpoint. Whoever the next football coach is, is going to have the resources from a revenue-sharing percentage and NIL to compete within this conference."

It sounds like he's looking for somebody to step forward like John Tyson did with getting John Calipari to the Hogs for football. Right now the two programs aren't even close enough to seriously compare the public perception.

"We saw with the hiring of Coach Calipari and what we were able to do there with him and his staff and what that’s meant to our basketball program," Yurachek said. "We can build a similar model within reason for our football program. There'll be people across this state that will step up for us.

"There’s an opportunity for the university to potentially help us , and we’re continuing to look at new ways to generate revenue within our athletic program. Our football program is far too important to the health of our athletic program for us to take it for granted."

It's probably what he's hoping to accomplish bringing Bobby Petrino in as the new coach. That may have been the only way to even begin having a reasonable hope for the financial future.

Getting him the job going forward is going to open up a lot of questions nobody really wants to deal with right now. That goes back to Petrino's exit in 2012 and we're not getting into that here.

But there are some folks with deep pockets in Petrino's corner. Yurachek probably factored that into his decision. Whether anybody really wants to admit it or not.

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