Sam Pittman talks portal happenings, bowl practices

FAYETTEVILLE — Sam Pittman held a press conference today to talk about the transfer portal happenings, AutoZone Liberty Bowl and the signing class.

Pittman was obviously hit with a lot of questions about the 23 scholarship players who have currently entered the transfer portal. He tried to answer each of them.

 “Well, it’s been a lot of decision making,” Pittman said. “The portal comes two different ways. It comes by guys wanting to explore opportunities to go play somewhere where maybe they’re not able to play here. There’s the first one. The other one is financially. They want to explore what their opportunities may be somewhere else, financially. And then we as a staff, we’ve got to make all those decision on whether the financial asking price is what we determine the value of the player is. And if it is, then we try to keep him here. If it’s not, then obviously we wish them well. If it’s strictly about the financial piece, then we know at that point we’d be out of it. 

“I do want to be very specific here: we have money. Our donors have been very good financially to us. Revenue sharing coming up here in July, we have money. And so we’re not losing these kids because we don’t have money. We’re losing them because what our value is compared to what maybe they can get elsewhere has been, at times, substantially different. We were a 6-6 football team and we’ve got money, and so we need to use it wisely. There are, we have 29 visits already set up coming out of the portal. What’s hard, I think probably on the fan base is that we know more about who’s in the portal than probably anybody does, the availability of us getting them. And so, basically is comes down to those two things. If we weren’t able to match what the number was out there nationally for somebody, then we were saying ‘hey, we believe that we can go get somebody as good or somebody, two somebody’s for that amount of money.’” 

Pittman had stated previously he didn’t believe the transfer portal would be a big factor this season. As it turns out several key players have left. Is the money being offered out there more than what Pittman expected?

“Yes. … A lot more,” Pittman said. “So I think at some point we had to decide are we going to pay a whole lot of people or are we going to pay a fewer number of people more money. And that’s kind of where we went in that. But to answer the question, I think when the term “revenue sharing” came out, I think that drove the price of doing business up four or five times what it may have been even last year.”

Some of the departed Razorback players are visiting other SEC schools such as Ole Miss, Alabama and LSU. Pittman admitted that is frustrating.

“Yeah it is, and I’m sure it’s frustrating to them whenever we do the same,” Pittman said. “But it just comes down to a staff decision on are we going to be able to improve our team from 6-6 if we give this one, this one, this one, this one, the amount of money they’re … because they’re going to get better. The kids are going to get better. But how much better than the 6-6 can we get unless we go with portal available kids. As you know we’ve been pretty good in the portal. As you know, our four All-SEC players were all transfer portal guys. We’re very confident that we can do that again.

“But we wouldn’t have had financially — and we’ve got money — but we wouldn’t have had financially the money left to go out and get what we might consider big-time difference makers had we just said ‘yes, yes, yes, yes.’ And if we’d said that to every one of them, as much money as we have, we would have ran out. Listen, let’s go back. Is it very frustrating? Absolutely. And I get that it’s frustrating. But what we decided to do was save a huge pool of money to go into the portal. And that’s what we decided.”

Pittman did state that it wouldn’t surprise him if some of the departed Razorbacks opted to return at some point.

“Obviously everything changes, as the landscape of football,” Pittman said. “And to be honest with you, I think we’re going to have some guys come back. Some guys that went in the portal that decided either they’re not getting the finances they wanted or that they liked it here. I do think we’ll get some guys that went in will come back, will want to come back.”

While Texas Tech allows players in the transfer portal to play in the Liberty Bowl, Pittman isn’t expecting that for the Hogs.

“I don’t think so,” Pittman said. “Our first practice is tomorrow and on our roster, as of right now, we don’t have anybody going to be at practice that’s in the portal. Now if they came and talked to me, that might be a different situation. And it would be different for different kids, too, to be perfectly honest with you.”

Pittman was asked if any players leaving such as offensive guard Patrick Kutas had surprised him? Kutas had reportedly told Pittman he wanted to redshirt. When Pittman asked I am not redshirting you for another school am I? Kutas replied no.

“Oh there’s been — I hate to talk specific kids, and I appreciate the question,” Pittman said. “Yes, there’s been several surprises and what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to figure out is… What’s happening right now is the agents are just making random calls to schools saying, ‘If Joey gets into the portal, how much would you pay him?’ What happens, then the agent gets back to the kid and says, ‘Hey, so-and-so offered you X amount of dollars.’ The young man obviously wants to make money and that’s wonderful, that’s what the portal’s for. Then he comes in and says, ‘Hey coach, whatever we agreed on, that’s not the number. This is the number.’ And if you don’t match it, then obviously they’ve already got the security of another university. I think… I certainly would welcome any of those guys that did it the right way back, if that was a fallacy of their conversation with their agent. But yeah, there’s been some guys that surprised me coming in saying they’re going to transfer. But most of the time it’s about finances and we have to make a decision on what we’re willing to do coming off a 6-6 team.”

Arkansas will hold its first bowl practice on Friday.

“”We start tomorrow,” Pittman said. “Then we go M-T-W-Th. Then we go S-M-T-W-Th and play the game on Friday. So there will be 11 practices starting tomorrow. Now they’ve been throwing, lifting. But not a set practice per se with coaching and all that.””We start tomorrow. Then we go M-T-W-Th. Then we go S-M-T-W-Th and play the game on Friday. So there will be 11 practices starting tomorrow. Now they’ve been throwing, lifting. But not a set practice per se with coaching and all that.”