Arkansas hires Ingram as DL coach, promotes Lunney

Arkansas State assistant coach Kenny Ingram is shown during a practice in August 2012 in Jonesboro.

— Arkansas has hired Kenny Ingram to fill the vacant full-time assistant coach position on the Razorbacks' staff.

The hire was made official Wednesday. Citing unnamed sources, multiple outlets, including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reported the move last Friday.

Arkansas also announced Wednesday that tight ends coach Barry Lunney Jr. will add a second title as the Razorbacks' special teams coordinator. Lunney, a former Arkansas quarterback, has worked for the program since 2013.

According to his contract, Ingram will be paid an annual salary of $340,000 through Feb. 19, 2021, plus $9,200 in other annual allowances. Ingram has team incentives that could pay him a bonus equaling up to four months of his salary.

Lunney has not received a pay increase to reflect his new role as special teams coordinator, according to an open records request. He was paid $350,000 last year.

Arkansas hired Daniel Da Prato earlier this month to assistant with special teams in an off-field coaching role. Da Prato spent the past three seasons in a similar role at Colorado.

Ingram has seven seasons of experience coaching in college football's largest subdivision, but he has not been in an on-field coaching role in three years. He has spent the past two seasons in an off-field role as director of player relations at Auburn, a position he previously held from 2013-14.

Ingram, a Memphis, Tenn., native, played college football at Arkansas State from 1989-92. At ASU, he was coached one season by Steve Caldwell, the Razorbacks' other defensive line coach who works primarily with defensive ends.

Caldwell also replaced Ingram as the Red Wolves' defensive line coach in 2013.

Ingram was a high school head coach in Memphis for three seasons before working one season at Tennessee State in 2005.

He returned to his hometown as an assistant coach at the University of Memphis from 2006-09, and had on-field coaching jobs at Arkansas State in 2012 and Cincinnati in 2015-16. He returned to Auburn after a head coaching change at Cincinnati.

The vacancy on Arkansas' staff came about when John Scott Jr. was hired as an assistant coach at South Carolina last month. Scott spent two seasons with the Razorbacks working under two different head coaches, Bret Bielema and Chad Morris.

Ingram's background could give Arkansas a strengthened recruiting presence in Memphis, which along with Dallas and Tulsa, Okla., are regional metropolitan areas Morris has identified as recruiting priorities for the Razorbacks. Arkansas signed two players, receiver Shamar Nash and defensive lineman Eric Gregory, from Memphis in its 2019 recruiting class.