Hunter Yurachek on firing Sam Pittman: 'We all watched the same thing'

Arkansas made the decision to fire coach Sam Pittman in the middle of his sixth season, tapping Bobby Petrino to serve as the program’s interim coach for the rest of the season. Athletics director Hunter Yurachek spent some time meeting with the media explaining his decision.

He did not arrive at it lightly. Ultimately, though, Pittman just wasn’t getting the job done.

“Obviously yesterday was a really tough day for me personally,” Yurachek said. “It was a real tough day for coach Pittman and his wife, Jamie. But I think we all watched the same thing here at Razorback Stadium on Saturday in front of an incredible crowd, incredible atmosphere before a national television audience against the first time playing Notre Dame.

“And our performance was just unacceptable. It wasn’t a Razorback football performance that any of us were proud of, and that ultimately falls at the feet of the head coach.”

Sam Pittman finished his six-year tenure with a 32-34 overall record, as well as a 14-29 mark in SEC play. That simply wasn’t good enough.

And while there were signs that Arkansas might be close to turning the corner, the view around the bend never materialized. Yurachek referenced the team’s penchant for dropping close games as a key factor in the decision.

“I’ve often through his tenure here given coach Pittman a lot of credit for how competitive we have been in the past six years,” Yurachek said. “He had gotten a lot of credit for those one-score losses, but at some point in time as the director of athletics I had to hold him accountable for those one-score losses as well. So the culmination of what happened on Saturday and then a couple more one-score losses, one at Memphis, one at Ole Miss, just felt like it was time to make a change in the leadership of our football program.”

So how did the firing go down? Yurachek walked the media through that process on Sam Pittman step by step.

“I met with Chancellor Robinson and president Silveria after the game on Saturday,” he said. “Woke up Sunday morning with a great sense of peace that this was the right decision at the right time heading into a bye week. Made that recommendation to Chancellor Robinson, it was improved by the board.

“Went to visit with Sam and Jamie at their house. Ironically at their kitchen table, which is the same place that I hired them at in Athens, Ga., six years ago. As you can imagine, Sam was incredibly gracious, incredibly thankful for the opportunity that he had had to be the head coach at the University of Arkansas, and made a really tough day as well as it could for me as a director of athletics.”

With Sam Pittman officially out, Yurachek could turn to the next step. He’s hoping the decision to move on from Sam Pittman could galvanize the team, with the right coaching.

“I then met with coach Petrino at my house, asked him if he would be willing to serve for the remainder of the season as our interim head football coach,” Yurachek said. “And he accepted that opportunity.”