An easy decision
UA linebackers coach couldn’t wait to say ‘yes’ to Pittman’s offer.
FAYETTEVILLE — Twenty-seven years after Sam Pittman recruited standout linebacker Rion Rhoades to play for him in his first college head coaching gig at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College, Pittman re-recruited Rhoades to join his first staff as a Power 5 head coach.
It wasn’t like Rhoades needed to have his arm twisted to join Pittman at the University of Arkansas in December.
“You know, he didn’t even tell me if or how much he was going to pay me before I said yes,” Rhoades said this week.
Rhoades was at Hutchinson, in his 14th year as head coach, when Pittman and defensive coordinator Barry Odom made the call.
“He and Coach Odom were together on the speaker phone, and I don’t even know if he finished the sentence before I said yes,” Rhoades said. “It was an easy decision. Definitely because it was him, but even more so because it was Arkansas.”
Rhoades and his wife Darcy were frequent visitors to Fayetteville to see Sam and Jamie Pittman during Pittman’s first stint as an assistant with the Hogs from 2013-15.
“So I knew what a neat place this was,” Rhoades said. “It’s such a great place to live and work, and then doing it for him, it’s just like a dream come true.”
Rhoades is unique among Pittman’s first Arkansas coaching staff in that he’s already seen the 58-year-old in action as a head coach. Rhoades racked up 138 tackles as a freshman when Pittman led the Hutchinson Blue Dragons to a 6-5 record and a trip to the Valley of the Sun Bowl in 1993.
“All I know about Coach Pittman is he must have been desperate for players back then,” Rhoades said with a laugh. “What’s amazing is all these years later, he’s just the same guy. The same guy that
recruited me. I instantly fell in love with the guy. He was just very genuine and real. Very personable. It was very easy to have great conversations with him, from the first time he called me until really I was done with the recruiting process.
“Then that relationship continued as a player. He was always very easy to talk to. I think he had a great balance of being positive and being hard on us and pushing us to achieve. And I think that’s a great art, a gift that he has.”
Pittman takes over a Razorback team that has posted back-to-back 2-10 seasons and is in need of confidence and direction.
“I think he’s the perfect guy to be in this situation, because he is very positive,” Rhoades said. “He has a way of helping you to perform at your best and maybe even better than you even know or think you’re capable of.
“He exudes confidence. He has confidence, and I think that confidence he has rubs off on people around him. I can speak for our staff and our players to say that we feel a lot of confidence about the direction we’re headed and our ability to have success moving forward, because he exudes that confidence.”
Though the Razorbacks have not conducted a single practice with their new coaching staff and 2020 roster, they have spent quality time together in online meetings, and got to conduct some NCAA-allowed walk-throughs in the winter. After a twoweek break to allow athletes to prepare for and take finals, the Razorbacks resumed the allowed eight hours per week of video instruction this week.
“I feel like our meetings were really good to start with,” Rhoades said. “I feel like we did a good job of putting together some structure and some interaction to keep the guys interested, to keep them on track with learning what we were teaching. They’ve continued to get better. As everybody’s kind of gotten used to it, it’s gotten better. I feel like we’ve benefited a lot.”
Rhoades said he thinks the work in winter and the current visual installations will help the Razorbacks practice faster when the time comes.
“Before everything happened with the pandemic, we had done a lot of kind of walking through where we were going to be in practice and how practice was going to be structured and how meetings were going to be structured,” he said. “We knew a lot of that and now we’ve been able to stay on track with installs and that type of stuff to really have the substance of what we’re doing football wise, in addition to the structure of just the logistics of practice and meetings.
“I think when you add all that together, when we do get back and the players are able to be here, I think we’re really well-equipped to hit the ground running.”
Rhoades said staff members have had the option to work at the Smith Football Center recently while practicing preventive measures against the coronavirus, and that he prefers working at his office.
“I like doing that a little bit better, just because I feel like it gets me in the right mode,” he said. “I’m at my office from the time I get here in the morning until the time I leave, and really the rest of the building is locked up. You can’t get in to certain areas right now.”
Staff meetings have continued to be conducted remotely, via laptops and other online devices.
“We do all those virtually,” Rhoades said. “It is a little bit funny to think we’re in the same building but we’re connecting on the computer. It’s just odd, you know, but it’s the situation we’re in.”
Rhoades said he had offers to join four-year college coaching staffs over his years at Hutchinson, but none touched him like the opportunity to work with Pittman at Arkansas.
“I did have some opportunities, but it was never the right one,” he said. “It was such an easy decision because, No. 1, it was Coach Pittman. That’s 95% of it.
“But being at the University of Arkansas, that just made it even better. I probably would have worked for him anywhere, but being here made it even more special because, like I told you, Darcy and I have kind of fallen in love with this area and the university. We knew it was such a special place. It was the break of a lifetime. It really was for me in so many ways.”