FAYETTEVILLE — On a stormy, rain-soaked Friday morning in Northwest Arkansas, a merry and bright vibe was at play on the top floor of the University of Arkansas’ Broyles Athletic Center.
The Razorbacks are headed to the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla., to face Penn State in the program’s first New Year’s Day bowl game since 2007.
The athletic department is coming off a calendar year that featured 10 SEC championships, the same number the Razorbacks claimed during the 2020-21 school term. The next closest team on that list was Alabama with five SEC titles during the 2020-21 academic year.
Fourth-year Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek knows he has ongoing contract talks with Coach Sam Pittman, the Razorbacks’ football assistant coaches and other coaches in the department.
He is jolly.
“There’s not a timeline,” Yurachek told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette regarding a renewed contract with Pittman.
Pittman’s new agent, Jimmy Sexton, submitted a first proposal to Yurachek last Friday for a seven-year deal worth about $50 million, or more than $7 million per year.
Pittman is currently working under a deal that would pay him $3.75 million per year and roll to five additional years on Jan. 1, with an extra year available if the Razorbacks go to another bowl in the next five years.
Yurachek and Sexton have been in contact during the past week.
“Obviously the proposal we received has been well documented during the course of the past week,” Yurachek said. “Sam’s agent and I have spoken a couple of times on the phone. I don’t think he and I are in a rush or a sprint to get this done. We’ve had some very productive dialogue this week.
“We’re not on the same page yet, but we’re moving in that direction.”
Sexton recently closed a negotiation with Ole Miss that raised football Coach Lane Kiffin’s salary from $4.5 million to $7.25 in 2022 with loads of incentives. Another Sexton client, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, is likely to receive a salary bump after leading the Bulldogs to a 12-1 record and the No. 3 seed in the College Football Playoff.
It is believed the initial proposal sent in by Sexton would slot Pittman behind Alabama Coach Nick Saban ($9.75 million), Texas A&M Coach Jimbo Fisher ($9 million), new LSU Coach Brian Kelly ($8.6 million) and Kiffin, and right around the range of Smart ($7.13) and new Florida Coach Billy Napier ($7.1 million) in the SEC.
“Right now we’re having some discussions about what’s important to the University of Arkansas department of athletics and what’s important to Sam Pittman, and trying to find where we can get to some common ground for what’s important to both parties,” Yurachek said. “I don’t know where we’ll end up.”
Pittman said Wednesday the UA administration is also working to redo contracts with the football assistants.
“I don’t want to lose anybody on the staff,” Pittman said. “So I’m sure the university will sit down and figure out what we can do to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ve already started on a couple of guys.”
Yurachek confirmed that process is in the works.
“One of the things I want to do is reward our assistant coaches for having a great year,” Yurachek said. “I don’t want to reward them for looking at other jobs, I want to reward them for having a great year here at the University of Arkansas.
“I think you look programs across the country that have some really solid continuity within their coaching staffs, it helps you from a recruiting standpoint. It helps you in the development of young men. It’s important that we retain as many, if not all of our assistant coaches moving forward.”
Yurachek added, “We have coaches on our staff that have aspirations eventually to be head coaches. We don’t want to stop them from that, but we don’t want them to take what I would consider a lateral move because of the compensation they may receive.”
During a rough year financially due to the covid-19 crisis, the Razorbacks put up championships across the spectrum of SEC athletics and the result is better cash flow.
Yurachek said football revenues exceeded expectations by $7 million, and that’s just the start.
“Men’s basketball revenue is significant when you sell out for the season,” he added. “We’ve sold out baseball for the season. We’ve set season ticket revenue records in soccer, volleyball, we believe we will in gymnastics and we’re trending that way in softball. So our revenue is up, and correspondingly, the Razorback Foundation revenue climbed as well. So yes, there’s going to be some increases in expenses, and it’s not just football.”
Yurachek noted soccer Coach Colby Hale “deserves to be paid at the top of our league” after winning a second consecutive regular-season SEC title, advancing to the SEC Championship Game for a sixth straight year and reaching the Elite 8 in the NCAA Tournament.
“He’s an elite coach, and we want to make sure that he feels like he’s appreciated here as well,” Yurachek said.
“That’s the price of success. I mean all of our programs are doing really, really well and with that we’ve got to make sure that — I think all of our coaches want to be here, but we can’t take that for granted that they want to be here. We have to make sure that we reward them because they’re a key cog in our success.”