Sam Pittman Likes the 85 For 85

FAYETTEVILLE — The NCAA will allow football coaches to be able to sign as many prospects as they need to get to the 85-overall limit for two years.

This rule is in place to allow coaches to sign more than 25 players in a class. It’s necessary because of not only normal attrition, but the transfer portal is seeing schools lose several players. This rule is like basketball in the sense a coach has 13 scholarships and can sign as many as he needs to in a class to get to 13. Eric Musselman, for instance, has 11 new recruits and only two holdovers from last season. Sam Pittman talked about the new rule on Tuesday.

“I do. I like the 85 for 85 because you can manage your roster better,” Pittman said. “Now, I believe there has to be a portal window. We’re working on it through the AFCA. We spoke about it in the SEC coaches meeting. I think there has to be a window in there just simply for managing your roster, and the kids need to know there’s a couple of windows to go into. Now, that hasn’t been past, but have a couple of windows, after the season and after spring ball. I don’t know if it’ll pass or not. But, it’s a nightmare… I’ll tell you where it’ll be unfair,  if someone got fired and you bring a new coach in. And you know how the world is. Kids leave like crazy when someone gets fired. It would be impossible without the 85 for 85 to get your roster. You’d be playing at 65 and 70 which would be very unfair. You know, I went through it two years ago, but we didn’t have a whole lot of kids leave. But I’m 100% for the 85 for 85.”

Pittman also talked about where the Razorbacks are with the 85 players on scholarship.

“We kicked a couple of kids back,” Pittman said. “Where, you know, because you guys might be putting numbers together and it might look at 86. We had two we could fall back to last semester. So no, I don’t– I’m looking at my board real quick. Let me say this: Everybody that’s left, you know about. How about that? But we kicked a couple back because the numbers would dictate that we could.”

Pittman and the Razorbacks are set to begin an extremely busy month of recruiting in June with camps and official visits.

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