FAYETTEVILLE -- There is no practice going on in all of organized football, so there are no live spring tapes to study for first-year University of Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman.
His Razorbacks missed the start of spring drills by three days when the coronavirus pandemic struck down all athletic activities in the SEC on March 13.
Yet at the end of each day, Pittman's mind is climbing all over the items lurking on his daily check list.
"My day is full," Pittman said earlier this week. "It's full, full. Full to where at night I'm going, 'Man, I've got to get this done and this done and this done.'
"So we're staying really busy, our staff is."
Starting last week, the NCAA allowed schools the ability to provide four hours per week of virtual instruction to talk to players about the playbook, schemes and to display digital video. That doubled the allowable amount of time from the week before.
Arkansas has broken that into one hour of instruction per day by position group, Monday through Thursday, via internet applications such as Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams.
Pittman and his staff also devote time to corresponding with prospects for upcoming recruiting classes.
"We have a certain number of notes we have to write, a certain number of calls we have to get in," Pittman said. "Also, we're having meetings with our players each day. That's over a Zoom deal. What we're doing is we're basically Zooming, Skyping, teleconferencing with our staff. So everything's really just over the internet, over video. It's worked out real well."
Pittman said the football staff has video conferencing at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily to stay in tune, keep on top of daily events and check off their to-do lists. Pittman has gone into his office at the Smith Football Center with some regularity, and the assistant coaches are in and out of the offices.
One thing the Razorback football coaches have tried to do is reduce or eliminate the amount of time spent on make-work items.
"My mind is set on trying not to do anything that's just tedious," Pittman said. "You know, we did it but what did we gain from it? I'm trying not to ... we had a long conversation [on Monday] about that. I'm trying not to put things on our assistants that aren't going to help us win.
"I don't need to cover their time with things that we're not going to use. I'm being really conscious about, if we're doing it, it's going to help us win football games, either now or in the future."
One thing the football staff got a quick jump on in the early part of the year was amassing and preparing digital videos that allow the coaching staff to teach alignment, assignment and schemes because coordinators Kendal Briles and Barry Odom are implementing new systems on both sides of the ball.
"Our video staff is good," Pittman said. "They had us prepared for all of this with a huge amount of video, teach tapes and all those things, so we were ready in case this did happen. And I think we could go -- for what we have on our computers -- we probably could go ... through the month of April without really having to come back in and getting some more film done. Right now we're in pretty good shape for at least four or five more weeks."
Senior linebacker Grant Morgan said the teaching environment is strong with position coach Rion Rhoades in the linebacker group.
"What the linebackers have actually done is we're going through Microsoft Teams," Morgan said. "It's an app where you can pull up different documents and pull up different things while you can still see people's faces. So [Rhoades] can look at all of our faces, but we can still be interactive. But then he can pull something up and show us what our four rules and our bottom line are for our defense.
"We can just look at different aspects. So we see his computer screen and his face ... it's like Zoom on steroids, I guess. Other than that, we have like a Socrative test. He sends us out tests every single day. It's like a 15-question test over like, if this happens, how do we respond as a defense? How do we respond as a Mike linebacker to this?"
Redshirt freshman safety Jalen Catalon said the defensive backs take the virtual instruction seriously.
"We'll just kind of go through and refresh us on what we're going to do as a defense, make sure we know our spots and everything," Catalon said. "Also just kind of talk about life lessons, making sure we're good in life, making sure we're knowing everything that's going on in society and making sure we're educated on that.
"I think coach Odom does a great job with our DB group just emphasizing our coverages, our defense itself, but also just making sure we understand life lessons and stuff like that to make sure we become better men as well. We take [it] real seriously and make sure we're locked in when the times comes."
Catalon played a few end-of-game snaps early last season, finally got significant playing time in a home loss to Western Kentucky, then was done for the year (preserving his redshirt) after undergoing shoulder surgery.
"It actually happened back in high school, but it didn't kind of affect me until into the season," Catalon said. "I started feeling it a little bit when I made contact or using my shoulder whatsoever.
"That's when they tried to figure out the situation, and I had a slight tear in my labrum. I already had three games under my belt so I just played that Western Kentucky game, and I just kind of got surgery after that game."
Morgan and Catalon are two of the more fortunate Razorbacks when it comes to getting in workouts in a time when authorities are asking Americans to stay out of large groups and have closed many workout facilities.
"Speaking for myself, I have a buddy that owns a gym and he gave me the key," Morgan said. "So we've been going every day ... and doing that stuff."
Morgan said he and his wife -- the former Sydnie Henson, who he married on Jan. 4 -- have been splitting time between their house in Fayetteville and Fort Smith, where his buddy's gym is located.
"I've done well with pushing myself, finding new ways to work out," Morgan said. "I've become my own personal trainer. It's pretty fun. I can create my own workouts, I can create everything all the way down to motivation. I make my own meals. We're becoming chefs. It's fun. It's a fun little break."
Strength and conditioning coaches Jamil Walker and Ed Ellis also are imparting workout wisdom.
"They're sending stuff out every single day on what you can do to maintain the body," Morgan said. "Maintain that you're building lean muscle mass.
"I know as linebackers we've all been kind of talking smack to each other, joking around, like who's the one getting fat and who's the one getting lean. But we've all been holding each other accountable.
"I know one thing. We all fought so hard in the winter on how to get our conditioning better and how to get stronger because we're going to be playing a whole different type of football again."
Catalon also has access to a gym in the Dallas suburb of Mansfield, Texas.
"I'm able to go in and work out every single day," he said. "I have a trainer back home too, so work-wise, I get a lot of stuff in.
"I know a lot of people find a way to stay on top of their workouts either in the gym or dumbbell workouts and get stronger. And they're doing field work, finding a field they can go to and work out. I think as a unit everyone is finding ways to work out.
"It's a transition, but this is what builds the team. You find out who are the strong out of everybody. I felt my team has done a really good job of being communicators and finding access to find work. It's good to know a lot of people are finding ways to get their work in."
Sports on 04/11/2020