Arkansas football in position for sustainable rebuild in 2020
After three terrible seasons, Arkansas football has hired the right coaches for a huge turnaround starting in the 2020 season.
The Arkansas Razorbacks are a team that has been fitting to get back in the relevance of not the SEC but all of college football. If the Razorbacks cannot create momentum to start a push for more wins, they will continue to struggle.
In the 28 seasons that the Razorbacks have been in the SEC, there have been some highs and many lows. Throughout their 28 seasons, Arkansas has a 174-166-2 record but no SEC titles. The last conference title the Razorbacks won was in 1989 when they were in the Southwest Conference with Texas, Texas A&M and Houston.
Arkansas has been at the bottom of the SEC West barrel for three consecutive seasons as they had an 8-28 record with only one win (out of 24 games) in SEC play. This past season, the Razorbacks finished with a 2-10 (0-8 in SEC play) record with an embarrassing 31-24 loss to San Jose State.
The impact of another disastrous season for Arkansas cost Chad Morris his job as head coach.
The Razorbacks decided to hire former Georgia assistant head coach Sam Pittman to be their third head coach in three seasons. He was the Razorbacks’ assistant coach for three seasons from 2013-15 under head coach Brett Bielema. During that time, the Razorbacks went 18-20 in the first three seasons of Bret Bielema, Pittman and the rest of the staff at Arkansas.
Pittman coached two offensive linemen in center Travis Swanson (2013) and tackle Dan Skipper (2015) to AP first-team All-SEC selections.
The new head coach will be tasked with developing a whole new team that was left with serious needs of upgrades after the firing of Morris. There is some good news for the Razorbacks going forward. They are a team that has created some highly-efficient players in the past that were either undervalued or overlooked. They are also making some significant improvements in recruiting especially from transfers from other teams.
Finally, Pittman has hired some solid assistant coaches to help with the rebuilding process.
If the Razorbacks want to get out of the bottom of the SEC West, which might be one of the toughest divisions in college football, they will have to stick to the path to do so.