No Pep Rally: Sam Pittman Will Acknowledge Students Before Auburn Game

Arkansas coach wants students to show up early and be factor in homecoming game against Auburn on Saturday

No, Sam Pittman won't be making THAT big of a deal of thanking the students for showing up early for Auburn game.

"It won't be a pep rally," he said on the SEC Teleconference on Wednesday morning.

What Pittman wants is what Georgia had a couple of weeks when their fans showed up and made such a racket it affected Arkansas' players, they said later.

"Anybody that went to that Georgia game, that was 11 o'clock and they had 110 decibels," Pittman said.

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He wants that at Razorback Stadium on Saturday.

"I don't think our fan base is into excuses," Pittman said. "We need 'em in here because they can make a difference in the football game. I think they'll do that because we have the best fan base in the country."

The Tigers will be coming into town not ranked but their offense is the only SEC team to score on top-ranked Georgia.

"Auburn's only two losses were to two Top 7 teams in the country," Pittman said. "(Quarterback Bo) Nix is a superstar. (Running back Tank) Bigsby is as good as anybody in the country."

Last week Ole Miss' running game broke one big run after another. They gashed the Hogs' defense for 324 yards on the ground, averaging 6.6 yards per carry.

"We're going to have to tackle him," Pittman said. "There's a lot of people that have trouble with him. We couldn't get him on the ground last year.

"He's got big, strong powerful legs. He's just special. We're going to have to get more than one guy around him and that's hard to do because their line is playing so well."

And the help is going to have to come from everybody in run support.

"We need to get more out of our safeties in run support," Pittman said. "We need to get more out of our entire defense. It starts up front on both sides of the ball. We've got to do a better job of helping 'em."

The coaches can coach 'em on where to go and what to do, but it's going to eventually come down to the players doing it, he said.

"We've got to give that relentless effort like we did early in the season," Pittman said. "Players on the field need to fix it. It's the effort part and the strain we continue to have on both sides of the line."

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