One sitting offensive position coach is gaining a cult momentum among some fans to try and dodge the rotating glass of the revolving door to the Arkansas football program.
The only queston is if athletics director Hunter Yurachek would consider that … or does the candidate have to be a sitting coach at a Power 5 program?
Only two people in the state will know that for sure and both are pretty good at limiting leaks. As we found out during the basketball coaching search, by the time we find out anything the narrative has moved one or two spots ahead.
But current Georgia offensive line coach Sam Pittman has developed a following from his three frustrating seasons dealing with the Bret Bielema five-year kegger that went sour almost as soon as Sam sailed out of town.
One thing Pittman has seen is a couple of seriously messed up football programs.
He was John Blake’s offensive line coach at Oklahoma in 1997-98, which was the worst (and most dysfunctional) in that program’s history in about three decades.
Pittman was the offensive line coach and associate head coach during the Butch Davis time at North Carolina that ended in a quagmire of academic misconduct and improper benefits paid to players.
Then he was the offensive line coach for Derek Dooley’s last year at Tennessee, which was a 5-7 train wreck.
Pittman came to Fayetteville from that and did a credible job helping Bielema turn things around in three years to an seven-win regular season and an offensive line that was getting more publicity than the rest of the offense combined.
Finally, he got fed up with trying to find Bielema, who spent as much time in his private office behind a bar on Dickson Street as he did in the Smith Center.
Pittman was left making excuses for Bielema no-showing two straight weekends on a recruit he wanted to offer while the boss man simply partied away one of the weekends in Vegas and who knows what on another one. That player, who came to Fayetteville with his family on unofficial visits both weekends, is now a starter in the SEC.
After all that, he’s at Georgia now and that’s going to be a gig hard to leave.
The Bulldogs have played in SEC Championship games and national championship games. It’s an environment where going to the Sugar Bowl is a disappointment.
Exactly why he would leave that is a question only Pittman can answer, but stranger things have happened.
In Yurachek’s background as the athletics director at a Power 5 school, he inherited Tom Herman, who was hired from Ohio State by Houston athletics director Mack Rhoads. Yurachek hired Major Applewhite to replace him in December 2016.
Applewhite was Herman’s offensive coordinator.
The only clues we have into what Yurachek is going to do is that he promoted the offensve coordinator the head job at Houston and hired Eric Musselman as Arkansas’ basketball coach.
That’s not being negative because Applewhite went 15-11 over two seasons before being fired by Yurachek’s replacement in Houston. Yes, he was fired and never had a losing season, but that’s somebody else’s issue to sort out.
The question hanging out there that nobody will know for a few weeks is if Yurachek is going to go for a sitting Power 5 coach or will he take a chance at a position coach with no head coaching experience.
Clemson did it with Dabo Swinney and, well, the results have been spectacular.
And it’s the exception.
Most folks won’t hire a coach that hasn’t been a head coach … or at least a coordinator. Pittman hasn’t been either one.
Don’t get carried away. Yurachek isn’t going to take a straw pool of fans or even boosters to see who he should hire. Those days are long gone and the guess is everybody is guessing because I don’t get the idea Yurachek is going to hint at things to anyone outside of Jon Fagg.
While Pittman may have a cult group who are enthusiastically pushing him as a viable candidate, it’s a gamble. Those same fans will be screaming bloody murder if he wins four games over two seasons.
If you doubt it, just look at the current situation.
Two years ago, a lot of us thought Morris was the answer and we were wrong.
Yurachek can’t afford to be wrong on this decision.
