This Might Be Best Year to Have So Many Newcomers

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With spring practice now in the rear view, a lot is being made about the importance of newcomers for Arkansas football.

Welcome to the new world because this may be the wave of the future in college athletics, but it's going to hit the Razorbacks this year in football. For Sam Pittman, it's just another change from what he spent decades preparing for as a head coach. With so much new stuff, everybody is learning.

Should the expectation be different? This is almost like starting over for Pittman, but he may have had more veteran players coming back his first year back in 2020. With a raging panic over COVID in full swing that first year was wacky everywhere.

You can slice it and analyze it however you want, but making any projection on this season right now is more than by guess and by golly. We don't really know what to expect with all the new coaches, too. Regardless of past results at other places, it might be a little early to make plans for any championship games this year.

The reality is this team has a quarterback, some running backs and a couple of proven linemen coming back. Throw in a lot of hope and guesses you get a pretty accurate picture of what to expect.

Others can dissect and break down all these newcomers and recruits. I talk about the players who are here and only after I see with my eyes on the field. The same with how they function as a unit and team.

Sorry, but in over 60 years of watching the Hogs play football, I've seen incredibly high predictions turn into losing seasons (1963 was the first crash I remember). Oh, there's 1967 and a lot of the early 70's, too, but folks tend to forget that. They remember the good times.

There are exceptions to all-new coaches having their share of difficulties in the first year (Lou Holtz in 1977 being the most spectacular and Houston Nutt's 1998 team wasn't bad, either). Most are lucky to win one more game than they lose.

Holtz inherited the best roster in the history of the Hogs. Nutt walked into one of the best. Pittman inherited some good players, but the best were playing in the NFL last year and most of the others transferred.

They do have a good quarterback coming back who was already on campus when Pittman got to Fayetteville. It took a couple of years for him to become one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC. Unfortunately, you can't win a championship without one, but having one doesn't give you anything automatically.

Don't expect the revelation of any type projection. If I ever do that at all, it's not before August and usually when it happens, it's the week before the first game and somebody talked me into doing it.

Oh, and hold off the blasts that bringing up championships is ridiculous. If you're not playing to win a championship, then somebody needs to explain to me what the point of all this stuff is. You can bet that's Pittman's objective.

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