Pittman waiting to see what happens when adversity hits

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman is taking a different approach to the team selecting captains this season.

Pittman was asked Monday about the captains for Thursday’s season opener against UAPB in Little Rock.

“Well, I’ve changed that one too,” Pittman said. “With the portal and all that, I think naming captains this early- When I was at Georgia they named them after the season and they just had rotating guys. I do think what we’re going to do is we’re going to name four game-day captains for a while, and I don’t know how long that’s going to be. I don’t know if that’s going to be till Game 10. I don’t know if that’s going to be during the bowl prep. I don’t know when that’s going to be that we decide who our captains are. But I just think twofold to be honest, I think that we have too many captain-like guys on our team right now to get to four. I think let’s let them play a little bit. Let’s see them in the adversity. Let’s see who really is the leaders on a Saturday afternoon. Again, we have, what, 39 new guys. So I just thought that it would be kind of cool if, at the end of the year, if you had 48 guys, or you had 36 guys that represented the team as captains. I mean, let’s look at this.

“You’re going to Little Rock. So if you’re sitting there thinking, who could be game-day captains, well, you start thinking about your kids from Little Rock that are starting. You start thinking about maybe a guy from Memphis, or whatever. And I think it would mean something to those kids, and they had the opportunity to walk out there. And captains have changed. You know, they never ask a captain, ‘What do you want to do?’ or anything. Most of the time they don’t ask me. They just, ‘You’re going to take the penalty, and we’re moving on.’ So that’s really something that could kind of be neat that I thought about that you could have 40-48, guys in a 12-game go out there and then maybe decide who really earned the captain’s spot after the year, during possibly bowl prep.”

A couple of Pulaski County players that jump out as starters are left guard E’Marion Harris and defensive end Nico Davillier. Harris played at Joe T. Robinson while Davillier is from Maumelle. Does that mean they will be captains on Thursday?

“Yeah, well, you have E’Marion as well, now, and then if you didn’t have a lot of Little Rock kids, you might go back to the state of Arkansas because we’re going over there,” Pittman said. “So we’ve got an idea. We haven’t talked to the team about it yet. You’re trying to get it out of me, and I’m not going to give it to you.”

One thing Arkansas and all schools have to deal with now is distractions from social media particularly with a loss. The negativity can be overwhelming at times. Pittman was asked if the Hogs are ready to deal with that?

“Yeah, I think so,” Pittman said. “We haven’t really gotten into a stressful situation yet, so we’re going to have to figure that out once it happens. There’s game, there’s situations that adverse during a game, then there’s certainly adversity after a game, speaking of media. I think our kids have been pretty good with the media. They’ve been limited availability, but I think we’ve got a mature team, so I feel pretty good about it, and we’ve spoke quite a bit about it, as well. I think we’re going to be in pretty good shape there, as well. We have a mature team, so I think we will be in pretty good shape.”

Thursday’s game will kickoff at 6:30 p.m. and televised on ESPNU.