Hogs' Sam Pittman Not Exactly a Social Media Guy, Either

Razorbacks coach probably hears about it, but don't expect him to answer your message

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It's actually nice to hear there are other people that don't pay any attention to social media. Apparently, I'm not alone these days because it's not something I do, but he knows it's part of the noise around everything having to do with Arkansas' first loss of the season to BYU on Saturday.

"It’s my life. That’s what you do," Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman said Monday. "Everybody don’t know you as a regular person. It’s the same way with the kids, it’s hard. Because of the addition of social media has — and the addition of, not opinions so much but negative. Used to it was ‘You gotta do better.’ or something, not ‘You suck. You’re fat. You’re this.’ You know what I mean? Now it’s, the comments have nothing to do with what happened in the game, it’s ‘You suck.’ It’s not just me, it’s the kids."

Players probably have a harder time with the whole thing than the coaches. Most of coaches don't read all of the social media out there in its various forms. Usually, the only reason they do it is for recruiting purposes, but there are exceptions and Hogs basketball coach Eric Musselman is one.

"It’s a time when it’s harder to recover from losses if you’re a social media person," Pittman said. "Your best friends will say ‘Man, you guys are going to get them this week and oh, stay off social media.’ So you’re going, ‘I have been.’ Then you’re going, ‘What’s happening?’ The kids are the same way, so I think it’s hard. It is. Because you want to please the people that are employing you, the team, your wife, the state, the media and you can’t always do that.

"That’s the hard part about our job and I would imagine the hard part about being a student athlete. We all have feelings we all have. When you let people down, you’re already beating yourself up on it and then somebody starts beating the hell out of you with it. It’s a little bit harder to recover. They’re going to recover it as I do. When I get to that meeting today, it’s going to be all about LSU after we get the corrections that we need to do."

It's really pretty simple. It's hard to stay focused on doing what you need to be paying attention to when you're looking at what people ate that day or their latest accomplishment, setback or the same stuff everybody deals with every single day. For an old guy like me, it's good to hear a fellow guy with a few years in the rearview mirror feel the same way.

""If I go in there talking about anything else other than how can we get better and how can we improve and LSU, in all honesty we’re wasting time," Pittman said. "Because what happens is nobody really cares unless they love you. Nobody really cares what your feelings are. They don’t care unless they like you. If you don’t know somebody, why should you be concerned about their feelings? They’re not going to be in your life and they’re not in your life, so why should you care?"

With LSU coming up in a hurry, there's not much of a different way to look at things. There is a four-game stretch coming up away from Razorback Stadium with the Tigers, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Alabama not being anything easy. Don't count on Mississippi State continuing as badly as they showed Saturday night. It won't be an easy month.

The Hogs open conference play against LSU. The game begins 6 p.m. Saturday at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. The game can be streamed live on ESPN and fuboTV. Just don't send a message to Pittman and expect him to even ever see it.

HOGS FEED:

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GAME TIME SET FOR MATCHUP WITH TEXAS AGGIES' CLASH IN ARLINGTON IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS