It's All About the Pittmans, Baby
If there is ever a time to cash in, it's now.
If there is ever an agent to hire, it's Jimmy Sexton.
Sam Pittman is not dumb. He just matched Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher in wins.
He is at a point at Arkansas where eight wins feels like winning a national championship. He just came off a season people are convinced was harder than it turned out to be.
As some of our more youthful followers might say, people are all up in their feels.
Now is the time to push for a pay raise. Pittman can't wait until next year, whether fans like it or not.
Next year, close to a century of experience will disappear from this team, and that's from Grant Morgan alone. I'm only kidding about Grant, although he has been at Arkansas so long that I should probably check to see if he has a kid showing up in the 2026 recruiting services when I'm done.
Treylon Burks took his 1,100 yards receiving with him to the NFL combine, and the core of the Arkansas defense will disappear through the doorway of the Fred W. Smith Football Center not long after.
The losses in personnel probably made Pittman want to ask for his money now while he's hot, but a glance at next season's schedule might well be what triggered the call to Sexton.
There are no cupcakes like Texas, Rice or UAPB on the 2022 schedule to fluff up a difficult SEC run.
The non-conference is No. 4 Cincinatti, a road game in Provo, Utah at No. 12 BYU, and Hugh Freeze's Liberty team that always puts together a solid winning season while literally putting the fear of God in teams.
Plus, Hugh Freeze recently landed former Baylor-Utah quarterback Charlie Brewer in the transfer portal. You might remember him from the past several Davey O'Brien and Maxwell Award watch lists as he racked up over 10,000 yards passing while throwing for 68 touchdowns.
The "cupcake" of the schedule is a Missouri State team led by Bobby Petrino that went into Stillwater and had Big 12 champion Oklahoma State on the ropes and made the FCS playoffs.
It's quite possible the Razorbacks could go winless in non-conference should a few balls and calls by the referees not break their way.
That's not good for a coach's bottom line, which is a great reason to have Sexton negotiate the contract. No one crafts a better golden parachute than Sexton should things take a turn for the worse.
If Pittman were to find himself getting Gene Chiziked, he could float that golden parachute from the top of the hills in Fayetteville all the way down to a cozy yacht he could keep in the backyard of his Lake Hamilton retirement home.
Not a bad life if you can convince someone to let you have it. But, then again, that's why Sexton's here.
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