We Might be Staring Down Barrels of Dangerous Season

Hogs may have gotten better, but every team on schedule did, too, and that's a problem

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — If you think this whole roster thing is frustrating for fans, imagine being a coach. They are usually are making spring plans right now to get ready for fall camp starting in August when they begin preparing for a grueling season. They still don't know who will be on the roster.

Don't forget there's another one of these transfer portals in the spring. Nobody knows what players are going where right now. There will probably still be some coming and going. It's probably going to start driving a lot of coaches out of the game.

Don't expect Nick Saban to be the first guy over 55 to just figure out he actually can just walk away. That was never considered a decade ago, which is what a lot of Arkansas folks can be re-imagined for 2024. You can't. Everything is different now. Not just here, but everywhere.

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Sam Pittman has to be frustrated almost beyond belief at times. He spent decades learning the game, preparing for that shot for his dream, then got it. Within weeks all he had learned had to be thrown into the trash. Blame a worldwide pandemic and a rash of new things with little guidance or patience to figure out some of the potential problems.

Now it's unrestricted free agency and turned coaches into high-priced full-time recruiters. With the rules now, just look at what happens with coaching changes. Kalen DeBoer leaves Washington for Alabama. Now players that were on one playoff team two weeks ago are leaving for the other to stick with the coach that initially recruited them to college.

Complaining about it and standing on principles will have you in the same situation Dabo Sweeney finds himself these days over at Clemson. If he doesn't win enough, he can have all of that and a lot of time on his hands to think about it when he gets fired.

Ole Miss Rebels coach Lane Kiffin celebrates with quarterback Jaxson Dart (2) after a touchdown against the Penn State Nittany Lions in the second half at Mercedes-Benz Stadium :: Brett Davis / USA TODAY Sports

Or coaches can take the Deion Sanders and Lane Kiffin routes. They aren't particularly afraid to clean house and bring in new guys. Neither one of those two particularly like the new way of doing things, but they aren't going to lose games taking advantage of it. I don't blame either one. They didn't make the rules.

Now Pittman has to figure out something quick. The 23-25 record is what it is. So is 11-23 in SEC play. There doesn't appear to be a lot of enthusiasm to pony up the money to make a change and the best they could do is get enough to try and re-kindle what Bobby Petrino did over a decade ago. That's a longshot to happen again from a coordinator's office.

There is zero evidence to support any argument this Razorback team is better than last year from a roster evaluation. A lot of it is hope. I'm not saying it's a lock it will be worse, either. There's no evidence to support that, either.

We've talked for a couple of years about all the questions around this Hogs' team. I'm not going back and count, but it feels like there may be more with spring practice just over a month away than the last two springs combined. At least with those we knew who the quarterback was going to be.

Now nobody knows what to expect. There will be the usual hype about this player or that one looking great in practices or scrimmages. We have that every year. Nearly every SEC team on the Hogs' schedule has a much higher ranking of new players they've gotten.

Everybody wants to ignore those rankings and analyzing each one forgets the percentages. It comes down to who gets the most of those multiple stars playing to their potential. Nobody has a 100% hit, but it's interesting to see playoff teams have a much higher percentage. And the Hogs aren't there yet.

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