New Arkansas head coach will have resources Pittman didn't
FAYETTEVILLE — Money rules college football these days.
From Name, Image and Likeness deals to revenue sharing brought about by the House settlement this past offseason, even the best head coaches will struggle when their resources aren’t to the standards of their peers.
Arkansas has been in that situation for the past several years. The football program did not have the resources to compete at a championship level, something athletic director Hunter Yurachek said point blank at the Little Rock Touchdown Club a few weeks ago and reiterated while talking about the firing of former head coach Sam Pittman on Monday.
“Our head coach compensation, our assistant coach salary pool, our support staff salary pool, and our overall operating budget ranked towards the bottom of the (SEC),” Yurachek said. “I think with that information, coach Pittman did not have the resources he needed to appropriately compete in this conference right now.”
Yurachek says next head coach won’t have that problem
For whatever reason that it was that Pittman didn’t have those resources available to him, Yurachek said that won’t be an issue for the next man to take the role. He said the U of A Board of Trustees gave him “a charge” to increase the amount of funds available so he’s able to attract a quality candidate.
“Coming out of board meeting last Friday I received a charge from our board to come back to Chancellor Robinson with a plan of how we can increase the head coaches’ pool, the assistant coaches’ pool, the support staff pool, the operational pool moving forward, and how we would support the increases in that,” Yurachek said. “And I have an opportunity to do that in the next couple of weeks, and I truly believe that we will be able to have everything that we have needed in place to attract the best head coach for our program and give that coach the resources they need to be competitive in the SEC.”
On top of having an aggressive amount of funds to allocate for salaries, just as important is the amount of money available to the next coaching staff to pay the players. The football team will receive the lion’s share of revenue sharing (a total of $20.5 million across all sports), but that can’t be the only avenue.
Despite saying minutes prior that Pittman didn’t have the resources necessary to compete, Yurachek lauded the administration’s NIL efforts.
“I think there’s some misinformation out there about how competitive we are going to be moving forward in the NIL space,” Yurachek said. “We’ve had over $500,000 of agreements that have gone through The NIL Go system, by way of our student athletes, is roughly $15,000 per agreement. The national average is about $5,800.
“We have an NIL strategist within our front office, our team at Learfield is actively soliciting opportunities for our student athletes to have NIL agreements. We’re at full level of the cap from a revenue-sharing standpoint. So whoever the next football coach is, is going to have the resources from a revenue-sharing percentage and NIL to compete within this conference.”
Whether that NIL development is new or was simply looked over by the previous regime is unclear, it has to be a focus for, not just the football program, but the athletic department as a whole moving forward.
Yurachek said they’re talking to search firms now to develop a list of candidates to fill the head coaching vacancy. That firm will present options to Yurachek and Chancellor Charles Robinson and the hiring process will go from there.
