Razorbacks’ Sam Pittman Has Best Line Ever on Portal

No better comparison has ever been uttered how teams have to replace players leaving.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas coach Sam Pittman delivered the best line ever uttered about the transfer portal Friday.

Don't get all out of sorts about it, either.

"If your wife wants to get in the portal it's hard to bring her back," he said during his first press conference since the season ended at Missouri.

Speaking from first-hand experience, it's guaranteed no better comparison will ever be uttered. Most folks won't know that first-hand, thank goodness.

"At some point you're going 'okay, I'll go replace her,'" Pittman said. "You kinda have to have that mindset because then it just becomes oh woe is me."

It's an approach the Razorbacks have developed with this entire chaotic thing around the portal. Nobody has gotten divorced that I'm aware of, but the comparison is extremely accurate.

Pittman flat-out confirmed that.

"Our mindset is if they want to go then we're going to go replace 'em," he said.

Word started coming out in reports later in the day from multiple media reports on social media safety Jalen Catalon had entered his name in the transfer portal and Pittman sounded like he was expecting it.

Arkansas Safety Jalen Catalon has entered the transfer portal, per @ESPNRittenberg pic.twitter.com/T0n7FjHkQc

— PFF College (@PFF_College) December 16, 2022

It's chaos out there right now and this wasn't hard to see coming with the early signing period a lot of coaches were pushing for based on the rules when everybody finally threw up their hands and gave in.

Now things are different. There was no transfer portal then.

Probably the only thing that can be changed is that early signing period, which has turned into a three-week dash after the season ends to lock down commitments to an early signing date.

Most of that was done because coaches wanted players to graduate early, enroll in January and go through spring.

From a competitive standpoint, it's helped some freshmen be contributors during the season.

It has created chaos with the the addition of the transfer portal.

"Some time frame from the NCAA has to change," Pittman said. "It's a lot right now, but everybody's having to deal with it,"

To his credit, certainly no coach in memory for the Hogs has had to deal with the massive changes to the game Pittman has endured since he accepted the job in December 2019.

A pandemic, a transfer portal, players getting paid. Everything he spent decades learning and preparing for sailed out the window in terms of building a program in just a couple of short years.

Now everybody is trying to figure it out and Pittman's got to adjust some of his thinking unless somebody gets a handle on the whole NIL thing, which probably isn't going to happen without a lot of lawyer trying to get paid from somebody.

"I still don’t believe in buying players," Pittman said. "I believe in somebody that wants to come to the university and then you talk about what they might be able to do in their name, image and likeness program. The way of football going right now is disturbing a little bit."

He's going to have to adjust that a little bit or at the least modify it because that' already going on. What used to be done under the table is now being done in the open right on top of the tables.

And nobody is going to be able to do a thing. Any semi-decent lawyer can tie up any restrictions on that. A good one will remind the kangaroo court in Indianapolis it really doesn't have much control over anything the best thing they can do is worry about their March Madness thing while they still can.

We already have a more unrestricted free agency in college sports than any professional sport because the players got collective bargaining which basically put the power back in the owners' hands.

They just give the players a little more money and keep rolling along.

No two conferences can agree a much of anything and it's hard to find two schools to agree on every single thing.

Nobody has figured out a way to regulate that and the NCAA is powerless because their court record the last 40 years isn't very good at all.

The market will have to settle all this sooner or later. Economics says it will determine the pecking order.

But Pittman has a handle on exactly what free agency is like.

I can verify he's completely accurate on that comparison.

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