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Jan 18, 2024

Arkansas strengthening locker room culture

Something was off with Arkansas last season. Nobody said it directly, but there were hints, and the actions of head coach Sam Pittman certainly indicated there were issues within the Fred W. Smith

Something was off with Arkansas last season. Nobody said it directly, but there were hints, and the actions of head coach Sam Pittman certainly indicated there were issues within the Fred W. Smith Football Operations Center. Even if it's going too far to suggest there was a 'culture problem' within the program, at the very least there certainly wasn't a 'culture solution.' Change was needed.

That is not something I would have ever thought would be possible with a Pittman-coached team. The entire strength and conditioning staff and nutrition staff, the people who spend as much time around the players as anybody, were fired immediately after the team got off the plane following a 29-27 loss at Missouri in the last game of the regular season.

That doesn't just happen because the coach feels the players weren't strong enough or lacked endurance... even though that was part of it. Pittman sent a message in that moment. I bet he wishes he could have done it sooner...

"I feel that we’re way closer, but it’s I guess because we’re all basically starting over," running back AJ Green said on Saturday. "We’ve got a new staff, all that stuff, so it’s like we’re all starting over and we’re all just connected more because our workouts were more bigger groups, kind of. I would definitely say we’re closer this year than we were last year."

MASS EXODUS

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