Hunter Yurachek admits Sam Pittman did not have the resources needed to compete in SEC

Following the team’s loss to Notre Dame on Saturday, Arkansas Razorbacks athletic director Hunter Yurachek decided to move on from head football coach Sam Pittman. That ended a tenure dating back to 2020 in Fayetteville.

There are a lot of great things that can be said for the job Pittman did at Arkansas. He inherited a program that needed to be completely rebuilt and was at the bottom of the SEC. Pittman would find success early, but with struggles increasing throughout his tenure, it was time to move on.

Hunter Yurachek addressed the decision to move on from Sam Pittman at a press conference on Monday. There, he would admit that Pittman didn’t actually have the resources necessary to compete with the top teams in the SEC. That could now, in hindsight, be considered part of why he struggled in recent seasons.

“You were at the board meeting,” Hunter Yurachek said. “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 toward the bottom of the Southeastern Conference. I think, with that information, Coach Pittman did not have the resources he needed to appropriately compete in this conference right now.”

Money and how much programs spend have always been tied to success. That includes traditional methods of spending money, like on facilities that help recruit. Yurachek mentioned another one of those, staff salary pools, which help a head coach hire and retain their ideal staff members.

However, in the modern era of NIL and the House Settlement, that is going to include financial investment in the rosters on the field. It’s become key to both recruit and, ultimately, retain the players that a coach needs to succeed.

There is a clear point where NIL and the Transfer Portal started to impact rosters too. In the summer of 2021, players could start to make money off their NIL. At that point, it was up in the air what exactly that would look like, until it eventually took the shape it’s in today. That winter, with the Transfer Portal more accessible than ever, player movement rapidly increased. For his part, Pittman’s best season at Arkansas was in 2021, going 9-4, a height he wouldn’t be able to reach again.

Sam Pittman finished his tenure at Arkansas 32-34 overall and 14-29 in SEC play. That includes going just 13-17 overall since the start of the 2023 season.

Another new challenge came to college athletics in the summer of 2025. That’s the House Settlement. Among other things, like trying to control the NIL market, the House Settlement allows for revenue sharing of up to $20.5 million with student-athletes. However, that doesn’t end NIL, making another expense for athletic departments to navigate.

Regardless of who the next head coach is at Arkansas, they’ll need more resources than Sam Pittman had. Hunter Yurachek seems to recognize that. Now, the challenge is delivering those resources to the next coach.