Sports

Arkansas Will Struggle To Hire Football Coach After Athletic Director Failed At His Job And Cried Broke

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Arkansas Coaching Search Money Hunter Yurachek
iStockphoto / © Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

Arkansas is looking to hire a new college football coach after the ouster of Sam Pittman. However, the Razorbacks will have a hard time doing so after athletic director Hunter Yurachek admitted to failing at his job while crying broke.

He said the quiet part out loud…

Although money is not everything in this modern era of college football, it is more important now than ever before. The director of athletics is the primary person responsible for finding that money.

Is Arkansas broke?

Here is where I don’t quite understand what is going on in Fayetteville.

Arkansas fired its head football coach on Sunday after a blowout loss to Notre Dame at home. The Razorbacks started the new season at 2-3. They have not won more than seven games since 2021.

A unique clause in Pittman’s contract required the university to pay him a buyout of $9 million because his overall record at the university was (and still is) above .500. That number would’ve dropped to $6 million if Arkansas had waited until that record dropped below .500. It didn’t matter.

The Razorbacks paid up to get Sam Pittman out. There was no time to waste.

And yet, Yurachek said on Monday that his football program ranks toward the bottom of the Southeastern Conference in terms of assistant coach salary pool and overall operating budget. He said, and I quote, “Coach Pittman did not have the resources he needed to appropriately compete in this conference right now.”

Here is the full statement:

I don’t get it. There is not enough money in Fayetteville but there was an extra $3 million laying around to fire a coach who was put in a position to fail.

Let Hunter Yurachek’s treatment of Sam Pittman be a warning.

The athletic director himself said the football coach who was just fired was not provided with what he needed. Why would someone else want to step into that same role?

First and foremost, if Pittman was not provided with the aforementioned resources, that falls directly on Yurachek. That is his job as the athletic director.

Hunter Yuracheck admitted to failing at his job. He effectively blamed himself for Pittman’s lack of success, which led Pittman to be fired. As I see it, based only on the words coming from the athletic director’s mouth, the head coaching change falls more on him than the coach.

I would not want to take a job where the athletic director cannot raise the money necessary to compete. Yuracheck claims to have a better financial backing for the next head coach to take over at Arkansas but I would not want to end up in the same position. I would not want to take a job after the last guy was fired for the shortcomings of the guy who hired him.

Who is to say Yurachek won’t fire me in three years because I “did not have the resources” he failed to provide me? The Razorbacks are going to wish he didn’t say that.