Guiton joins Razorbacks staff to replace Stepp with wide receivers

Sam Pittman has added Kenny Guiton to the Arkansas staff as the new wide receivers coach replacing Justin Stepp, who joined Shane Beamer’s staff at South Carolina.

The announcement was made by the Razorbacks on Tuesday afternoon after multiple reports said he was going to be the choice Monday.

Guiton heads to Fayetteville after spending the 2020 season on staff at Colorado State. The Rams played four games this past fall with one of Guiton’s receivers, Dante Wright, finishing second in the Mountain West with 105 yards per game.

Wright also averaged 15.8 yards per catch with teammate Trey McBride averaging 15 yards per catch.

Prior to joining Colorado State, Guiton spent one year coaching the wide receivers at Louisiana Tech (2019) and two seasons leading the wide receivers at Houston (2017-18).

With the Bulldogs in 2019, he tutored one of the best receiving corps in Conference USA with the team posting the fourth-best passing offense in the league.

He developed Adrian Hardy and Malik Stanley into All-Conference USA honorable mention performers with Hardy catching 42 passes for 534 yards and Stanley catching 40 passes for a team-high 649 yards.

With the Cougars he worked with a pair of the most explosive offenses in the nation and worked with Arkansas offensive coordinator Kendal Briles in 2018 when Briles served as Houston’s offensive coordinator.

The 2018 Cougars ranked fifth nationally in scoring (43.9 ppg) and seventh nationally in total offense (512.5 ypg). Houston scored 30+ points in all 12 regular season games and 40+ in 10 of those games.

Marquez Stevenson, one of Guiton’s receivers, earned All-American Athletic Conference in 2018 after catching 75 passes for 1,019 yards. Steven Dunbar earned the same honor in 2017 after catching 76 passes for 1,070 yards and three touchdowns.

A fast-rising coach in the industry, Guiton was a two-time team captain at Ohio State before beginning his coaching career in 2015 at Houston as a graduate assistant on Tom Herman’s staff.

Houston went 13-1 and 9-4 in his first two seasons before following Herman, his former offensive coordinator at Ohio State, to Texas as a quality control for the Longhorns for four months. He quickly returned to H-Town on Major Applewhite’s staff as the Cougars’ wide receivers coach.

Guiton helped Houston to four-straight bowl games during his time, including a 2015 Chi-fil-a Peach Bowl victory over No. 9 Florida State, and saw the Cougars have at least one 1,000-yard receiver each season.

Guiton was a student-athlete for the Buckeyes 2009-13 playing in 22 games as a quarterback. As a senior, he started two games and played in eight total completing 69% of his passes and tossing 14 touchdowns for the 12-2 Buckeyes.

He had a brief stint with the Buffalo Bills before joining the LA Kiss of the Arena Football League for the 2014 season.

Guiton is a 2013 graduate of Ohio State where he earned his degree in Family Resource Management.

Information from Arkansas Communications is included in this story.

By reading social media breadcrumbs, apparently Odom staying put

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In a day and age where personnel announcements are often made on social media, that’s the platform apparently being used to decide if someone’s staying.

After the reports Monday that Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom was on the short list to join Steve Sarkisian at Texas, some fans were concerned.

Dennis Dodd at CBSSports.com first reported the news about Odom and that former Longhorns defensive coordinator Will Muschamp had turned down the job. He may be waiting on another SEC head coaching position to get fired from because that’s turned fairly lucrative for him after payouts at Florida and South Carolina.

Now if you read between the lines of social media posts by the Razorbacks, you get the idea Odom’s not going anywhere.

Not exactly clear, which requires following the breadcrumbs like Joe Foucha’s tweet.

Then incoming freshman and early enrollee Jermaine Hamilton-Jordan had a few tweets.

And Foucha responded.

There also had been rumblings that strength and conditioning coach Jamil Walker might leave, but that apparently isn’t happening, either.

Now the question is if it cost anything to get Odom to stay.

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Tye & Tommy on the Barry Odom rumors, Burlsworth Trophy, Heisman tonight and more!

 

As college football world turns, moving targets involve Pittman’s staff

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Sam Pittman won three games his first season at Arkansas (probably could have won three other games for a variety of reasons) and that was done with a coaching staff that apparently some folks want to raid.

First, wide receivers coach Justin Stepp is apparently going to South Carolina. That probably involves a chance to return home more than anything else … those things happen.

Now there are reports Razorbacks defensive coordinator Barry Odom is a target for Steve Sarkisian at Texas.

In a whirlwind of activity over the weekend, the Longhorns fired Tom Herman and hired Sarkisian, Alabama’s offensive coordinator, in just a few hours. That means they probably had the second deal done before they pulled the trigger on paying off nearly $30 million of buyouts to unload a coaching staff.

As an aside, if you think that is a big number at the University of Texas, you really don’t know much about how things work at Austin. They have boosters that can write the check by themselves and never blink.

Odom is one name mentioned for the job after Will Muschamp said he wasn’t interested. He was previously the defensive coordinator under Mack Brown, so he might not be interested in doing that again after being a head coach at two schools in the SEC.

Why would Odom be interested in listening (as multiple reports indicate he would) is simply because, well, it’s Texas. Hog fans hate to hear that, but it is a blue-blood program in the world of college football square in the middle of one of the largest hot beds of top-level talent in the country every year. Most years it would be THE biggest.

Citing sources close to Odom, Horns247.com said it will not be easy for the Longhorns to land him. They reported his family enjoys living in Northwest Arkansas and his sons are playing football here.

Colorado State wide receivers coach Kenny Guiton is being reported as the replacement for Stepp and there are also reports offensive coordinator Kendal Briles may be drawing interest, but that has not been confirmed.

Odom reportedly was drawing interest from Ed Orgeron at LSU for the defensive coordinator position there after they paid Bo Pellini about $5 million to leave after one season, but the Texas talk has dimmed that dramatically.

At Arkansas, Odom is making $1.3 million a year after getting a $100,000 pay raise after turning down a defensive coordinator role at another SEC school before he ever coached a game here.

In a year that’s seen revenues drop dramatically, how much deeper the Hogs can dig to get Odom a raise is anybody’s guess.

But the interest is there, which means those outside of Arkansas have taken notice of what he accomplished in just one season.

Now it’s up to Pittman’s recruiting skills to keep not just players on the roster, but his top-level assistant coaches as well.

He hasn’t really had key players enter the transfer portal that’s seeing some fairly big names at big-time programs come in. Oklahoma wide receiver Charleston Rambo, who has started 24 games over the last two seasons, put his name in to leave Monday.

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